Jim Croce

Jim Croce [ dʒɪm kɹoʊtʃi ] ( born January 10, 1943 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, † 20 September 1973 in Natchitoches, Louisiana; actually James Joseph Croce ) was an American singer-songwriter. He has published in the years 1960-1973 six studio albums and eleven singles, of which Time in a Bottle and Bad Bad Leroy Brown No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 reached. At the age of just 30 years, Jim Croce died in a plane crash.

• 3.1 albums
• 3.2 Singles

Biography

Youth and Education

Jim Croce was born on January 10, 1943 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and took an early interest in music. At the age of five he began, by his own admission, with limited success, to play accordion. At eighteen, he made his first experiences with the guitar; soon after, he began to write songs first.

In 1960 he graduated from the Upper Darby High School in Drexel Hill, Pennsylvania, after which he worked for three years at a stage construction crew and spent some time in the military. He also started at Villanova University in Radnor Township a psychology studies, which he completed in 1965. He then worked for a time as a teacher at a junior high school in the South Philadelphia.

In Philadelphia Croce Ingrid Jacobson met; when he married her in 1966, he converted to Judaism.

Early career

Even at college times played Croce in his first bands that occurred among others in coffee shops and universities. At Villanova University, he worked as a disc jockey for the university's own radio station and continued to play in various musical groups, presented the music from blues to rock music to Railroad. With one of these groups there was even a trip to Africa and the Middle East. From the mid- sixties he also appeared with his wife. They played as a duo Ian and Sylvia first music of Gordon Lightfoot, Joan Baez and Woody Guthrie, but then, increasingly, his own compositions. At the same time, Croce got his first long-term job at a steak house in Lima, Pennsylvania.

In 1966 he composed the music for the TV documentary Miner 's Story, which won an Emmy.

1968, the couple moved to New York City where, produced by Tommy West and Terry Cashman, the album Jim & Ingrid Croce was born. Over the next two years, the two campaigned with numerous concerts in small clubs for their music, but the album was a commercial failure. Disappointed by the experience of the music business and from New York in 1970, they returned back to Pennsylvania, where Croce earned a living as a truck driver and construction worker. Meanwhile, he continued to compose and sang in New York studios some background passages a.

Success

1970 learned Croce on the initiative of producers and mutual friend Joe Salviuolo the pianist and guitarist Maury Muehleisen know. At the beginning Croce Muehleisen accompanied at his concerts, in the course of time, however, the roles are reversed itself.

In September 1971 Adrian James Croce was born, which is dedicated in a Bottle Time.

The following year, Croce signed a contract with ABC Records and recorded the album You Do not Mess Around with Jim, which was a resounding success, reaching # 1 on the U.S. album charts. The coupled- singles, the title track as well as operator, achieved high rankings. In the following years he made ​​numerous television appearances and concerts. Middle of the following year released their second album, Life and Times, which occupied temporarily # 7 on the U.S. album charts. In contrast, the single Bad Bad Leroy Brown reached number 1

In August 1973, the family moved to San Diego.

Death

On September 20, 1973 a day before the release of his fourth album I Got a Name, the 30 -year-old Jim Croce the brand Beechcraft came along with his friend and guitarist Maury Muehleisen, three other passengers and the pilots in their private aircraft D-18 killed. The flight should they bring from Louisiana to Sherman, Texas, where in the evening a concert was planned when the machine despite clear view of treetops brushed and crashed. Later suspicions were raised, the pilot may have suffered a heart attack.

Croce was buried in Haym Solomon Memorial Park, East Whiteland Township, Chester County, Pennsylvania.

The posthumously released singles Time in a Bottle Album You Do not Mess Around with Jim, and I Got a Name, Workin 'at the Car Wash Blues and I'll Have to Say I Love You in a Song of his fourth album reached as the album itself high rankings in the charts.

There have been published several best-of albums, Jim Croce was also included in the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1990.

His son Adrian James Croce is now a successful singer-songwriter in the area of ​​piano blues and folk.

Trivia

The glam metal band Poison in 2006 took a cover version of the song You Do not Mess Around with Jim on the 2007 on the album Poison'd! was published.

Discography

Albums

• Facets (1966 )
• Ingrid & Jim Croce (1969 )
• You Do not Mess Around with Jim (1972 ) U.S. # 1
• Life and Times (1973 ) U.S. # 7
• I Got a Name (1973 ) U.S. # 2
• Photographs & Memories / His Greatest Hits (1974 ) U.S. # 2
• The Faces I've Been (1975 ) U.S. # 87
• Time in a Bottle / Jim Croce 's Greatest Love Songs (1977 ) U.S. # 170
• Home Recordings (recorded 1966, released 2003)

Singles

• You Do not Mess Around with Jim (June 1972) U.S. # 8
• Operator / Rapid Roy ( August 1972 ) U.S. # 17
• One Less Set of Footsteps / It Does not Have to Be That Way ( January 1973) U.S. # 37
• Bad, Bad Leroy Brown / A Good Time Man Like Me Is not Got No Business ( March 1973 ) D # 38, U.S. # 1
• I Got a Name / Alabama Rain ( August 1973 ) U.S. # 10
• Time in a Bottle / Hard Time Losin ' Man ( October 1973 ) U.S. # 1
• It Does not Have to Be That Way / Roller derby queen ( November 1973) U.S. # 64
• I'll Have to Say I Love You in a Song ( early 1974 ) U.S. # 9
• Chain Gang Medley / Stone Walls ( December 1975 ) U.S. # 63