It all started with a mustache: a thick, beefy mustache—on my face and mistaken for the one belonging to Jim Croce. I looked him up on the ‘net, just to see if the comparison was true. Then I fell for the man. Youtube has a bunch of clips taken from TV appearances, and all of them feature Croce with his right hand man, Maury Muehleisen. It turns out that Croce had previously backed Muehleisen, but the roles reversed in the early 70s as Croce’s success grew. On tour they played stripped down versions of his classics, and the results are pretty beautiful. Needless to say, I’ve been digging into the Croce hardcore through all of 2010. So I decided, for the purposes of this blog, that I’d go back and check out his studio albums—all three that were released prior to his death. What I found is that he’s got some decent songs in between the huge handful of sing-a-longs. All the albums have plenty of songs you know and love, but as the years go by, the songs in between seemed to grab me less and less.
If I were to recommend one proper Croce album, it would have to be 1972’s YOU DON’T MESS AROUND WITH JIM. 1973’s LIFE AND TIMES had some good tunes, several of which made it into my iPod playlist, but they didn’t grab me quite as much. There was a bit more cliché working there. I GOT A NAME (also 1973) didn’t do a whole lot for me outside of the standard “I Got a Name,” “Workin’ At the Car Wash Blues,” and “I’ll Have to Say I Love You With a Song.” But the first one really was outstanding. Three new tunes (well, new to me) made it into heavy rotation on the iPod. These include “Box #10” and the closer, “Hey Tomorrow,” a wistful and hopeful tune that had just enough cheese to make it tasty. “Hey tomorrow, where are you going?” he sings. “Do you have some room for me?”
Sadly, the answer was no. Croce and Maury Muehleisen were both killed in a plane accident on September 20, 1973. But those guys left a heck of a lot of beauty behind before they departed.
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