Photographs, Memories and Music: Keeping the Memories of Jim Croce Alive

Originally published Discoveries magazine, April, 2005

When I think of the late Jim Croce, who died all too young at 30 in 1973, I think not only of his heartfelt songs with beautiful expressions of love and human character, but also of a nice dinner featuring a Wild Salmon Tournado entree with herb-crusted eggplant medallion, grilled asparagus and seasonal vegetables served with a tarragon beurre blanc. Okay, not really, but that does sound good, doesn’t it?

Actually, there is a connection there, the salmon being an extension of the various creative ventures from Jim’s widow, Ingrid, each pursued in the loving interest of keeping her late husband’s music alive and well. With much thanks to her, it’s doing just fine.

Not only has she opened a classy downtown San Diego restaurant dedicated to Jim’s memory (Croce’s, where the Wild Salmon Tournado is $27.95), she has also created an adjoining jazz club (Croce’s Jazz Bar), a blues club (The Top Hat Bar & Grille, after Jim’s song of the same name), a photo book (Time In A Bottle), a cook book (Thyme In A Bottle!), and now some new musical releases, culled from the unreleased archive, shedding new light on her late husband’s musical gift.

When Jim Croce showed up on the scene at the beginning of the ‘70s, he’d already spent years making music in various settings and figurations, most notably with Ingrid as a folk duo. Throughout that time, he held regular jobs, too, from which he drew inspiration for what would become his best-loved anecdotal character songs. “Speedball Tucker” came from his time as a truck driver. His breakout hit, “Bad, Bad, Leroy Brown,” was about a very real person who Jim knew in the service.

His rise to the top of the pops was quick, in an era in which one could do so without benefit of an American Idol television show. Penning and singing a good song was the ticket at that time, and this shy young artist had plenty more where that came from.

He was lucky, actually (as was the popular music audience of the time), to be heard by all of America. It’s different now. The very best acoustic singer/songwriters of the 21st century (like Jimmy Lafave, Slaid Cleaves, and Terri Hendrix, to name some personal favorites) keep their music alive on the Americana underground, while ephemeral acts like Hillary Duff and Clay Aiken fill basketball arenas, celebrity magazines, and Clear Channel play lists.

If there is any hope left in the world of radio, the newly released recordings of Jim Croce should show up on Adult Contemporary and Americana play lists. Whether that happens or not, the great news is that they are available by CD and DVD technology that Jim himself could never have imagined. It’s safe to say that he’d be proud and happy about their release.

JIM CROCE LIVE

The Have You Heard Jim Croce Live DVD brings to life the gentle man behind the intimate and intricate songs, the moving pictures animating the songwriter who completely missed the MTV video age. Consisting of various live performances for music shows of the time like the BBC’s Old Grey Whistle Test and Don Kirshner’s Rock Concert, Croce can be seen smiling, laughing, and talking in and around his storytelling songs. The cigar-smoking tough guy seen on his album covers and publicity photos of the time can now be seen more as who he actually was: a personable, humble, and warm artist, enthusiastic about any chance to sing to an audience.

This is as close as history will allow us to experience a Jim Croce concert, and the songs are performed the same way they were when Jim was on the road. There was no band, no strings, no glitz, no glamour, just a man and his rhythm guitar with his friend and partner, Maury Muehleison, taking harmony vocals and lead acoustic.

Unplugged versions of hits “Operator (That’s Not The Way It Feels),” “Bad, Bad Leroy Brown,” and “You Don’t Mess Around With Jim” appear among other songs that should have been hits. It’s fortunate that “Lover’s Cross,” “The Hard Way Every Time,” and the extraordinary “These Dreams” were committed to videotape, and the same goes for some of the bonus footage included on the video. An excerpt of a filmed documentary at the Croce family farm gives us a glimpse of Jim’s family life before it was cut short. The young parents Ingrid and Jim are seen enjoying life and doting over their toddler, Adrian James.

THE FAMILY NAME

A. J., now an artist in his own right, was an active participant with his mother in the production of these recent projects. “It took about two years to put the DVD tapes and Facets together, and during that time I was writing every day but I was also working in the studio and listening to old stuff of my dad’s,” says Croce, whose fifth album, Adrian James Croce, was released in July. “It wasn’t until that was completed a year ago that I could get a chance to get into the studio and start recording the stuff that I’m putting out now.”

The stuff he’s putting out now is pure jangly power pop, a somewhat different sound from his swinging jazzy debut of fifteen years ago. His varied solo career draws more influence from Elvis Costello, The Beatles, and Louis Armstrong than from the father he lost at age two, but there is still clearly a strong musical, familial, and spiritual connection.

He came to realize this himself while preparing the newly released recordings of his dad. “There was a moment when I went into my studio, and I was transferring all these cool tapes [of my father’s] onto digital, listening to make sure everything was good. I was listening to these recordings and they were the same songs I was listening to, probably three or four of them, since I was thirteen or fourteen. I’d never heard him play them, and they were obscure. Fats Waller and Bessie Smith songs, some Mississippi John Hurt stuff. All of a sudden there was this amazing thing: How is it that we wound up playing the same stuff, that became such an important influence on us?”

FACETS OF AMERICAN MUSIC

Jim was indeed a student of the blues and jazz of America’s musical roots, and like so many guys with guitars at the time, his music came out with the sound and spirit of the folk movement. In 1966, Jim was able to commit some of his songs to tape, thanks to a $500 gift from his parents for the express purpose of making an album—to get it out of his system before getting a real job. Only 500 copies were printed of that record, Facets, which Jim sold for five dollars apiece. It included several traditional tracks, a song by Nashville’s Harlan Howard, one by Gordon Lightfoot, and some of the young songwriter’s own compositions. The most stunning track was an original musical interpretation of Rudyard Kipling’s epic poem, The Ballad Of Gunga Din. The haunting melody was introduced by a banjo and carried to its tragic end by a voice wise beyond its twenty-four years.

The sparse arrangements and echoed vocals captured something unique, a Pennsylvania white boy with the rural sensibility of southern blues. It was the very sound that had already drawn a kid from Minnesota named Bob, along with dozens of others, to the funky downtown New York neighborhood called Greenwich Village.

But New York would not be the home to Jim Croce, literally or musically (though he did try living there, by the way, as documented in his song, “New York’s Not My Home”). In the few years following the self-released album, Croce would find his own musical niche, which would soon bring more commercial success than that of some of his more folk-oriented contemporaries.

Before making pop music history with his three ABC albums, Jim and Ingrid released a duo album for Capitol, out of print for many years and now also available on compact disc. With the new release of Facets comes a bonus disc, Jim And Ingrid Too, itself a seven-song collection of original rarities written by the young couple. “Railroads And Riverboats” should’ve made its way to Peter, Paul, and Mary—and as songwriting, it was a sign of things to soon come.

THE CROCE KITCHEN

Years before Ingrid Croce would take her lifetime of culinary skills into her own restaurant’s San Diego kitchen, her husband sat down in their Pennsylvania kitchen to play some songs he liked into a small reel-to-reel tape recorder. That was how he wrote songs too, but as any musician knows, sometimes it’s fun to just play.

The Home Recordings: Americana CD may be the most interesting of these recent releases. Unlike Facets, Croce’s voice is more settled, more natural, effortless in its execution. There was no apparent commercial purpose and why should there be? After all, it was just a man and his tape deck, making a recording that was not necessarily supposed to be heard by anyone outside the breakfast nook. Therein lies its charm, as Croce plays some of the two thousand songs he had committed to memory at one time or another.

The influence of the blues can be heard in Brownie McGhee’s “Living With The Blues,” classic country in Jimmie Rodgers’ “In The Jailhouse Now,” and contemporary country in Merle Haggard’s “Mama Tried.” A rolling version of the great Harlan Howard’s “The Wall” provides a different approach on the prison tale made famous by Johnny Cash. That track alone justifies the release of whatever can be found in the remaining archives of the young writer and interpreter.

THE CROCE COLLECTION

Jim Croce was riding high on overwhelming success at the time of his death. He had two hit albums under his belt and a third on the way, and a huge hit in his fourth single, “Bad, Bad Leroy Brown.” The future looked bright for the man with a promising musical future. In the years following his death in 1973, there were other releases, a few of which added new tracks to the painfully short canon of work.

But there were plenty that added quite literally nothing. The tracks from the three ABC albums were shuffled about into multiple variations on the greatest hits format, including a collection of the love songs and another of the great character songs that Jim had become known for, thanks to that Army buddy, Leroy Brown. For collecting purposes, virtually all of them are unnecessary, always pulling from the same forty tracks (and within that, usually the same dozen or so).

The few worthwhile additions include the 1975 double Lifesong LP release, The Faces I’ve Been, which featured unreleased studio tracks from various periods (some of which were from the Facets album), and an entire side is dedicated to the onstage recordings of Jim introducing the songs, sharing their background and revealing a gift of storytelling beyond that found in his songs. All in all, it’s a worthwhile addition for the completist, but its best tracks would show up on CD later.

Those best tracks included an extraordinarily powerful version of “Ol’ Man River” and a heartfelt medley of “Searchin’,” “He Don’t Love You,” and Sam Cooke’s “Chain Gang.” Both would appear on the quintessential double CD on Saja Records, The 50th Anniversary Collection (released the year Jim would’ve turned fifty). The most important distinction between this and other compilations that preceded (and followed) is that the entirety of all three ABC albums is included, along with nine additional tracks like the two mentioned above. It’s still available, as are at least three other variations on the greatest hits theme.

No longer available is Saja’s 1989 CD release, Jim Croce Live-The Final Tour. Like the new DVD, it features just Jim and Maury onstage, acoustic and intimate in the final weeks of their lives. Jim’s endearing introductions are again included, allowing us just a few more glimpses of the man behind the songs.

Jim and Maury died on the way from one gig to another, doing it the now old-fashioned way, taking the songs to the people. Jim Croce had that rare gift of melody, and his unwritten tunes died with him in an airplane just as they had with Buddy Holly a decade and a half earlier. But like Holly, Hank Williams, and others who were gone before their thirties, Croce’s musical talents far exceeded that of the melodic hook. The words, the voice, the presence, and the playing all worked together in musical unity with the tunes behind them. Thanks to the determination and loving care of Ingrid and A. J. Croce, they are now further shared with the audiences of Jim’s stolen future.

JIM CROCE DISCOGRAPHY FOR THE COMPLETIST (most available through www.croces.com):

• The 50th Anniversary Collection, Saja Records, 1992 (includes all three original ABC albums, You Don’t Mess Around With Jim, Life And Times, I Got A Name, plus nine additional tracks)
• Live, The Final Tour, Saja Records, 1989
• Facets (includes Jim And Ingrid Too), Shout Factory 2004
• Home Recordings: Americana, Shout Factory, 2003
• Jim And Ingrid Croce, Capitol Records, 1969
• Have You Heard Jim Croce Live, Shout Factory DVD, 2004
• The Faces I’ve Been (LP), Lifesong Records, 1975

A J CROCE CDs:

• A J Croce, Private Music, 1993
• That’s Me In The Bar, Private Music, 1995
• Fit To Serve, Ruf Records, 1998
• Transit, Ruf Records, 2000
• Adrian James Croce, Seedling Records, 2004