Jim Croce

James Joseph “Jim” Croce (pronounced /ˈkroʊtʃi/; January 10, 1943 – September 20, 1973) was an American folk rock singer-songwriter. He recorded for Capitol and ABC Records between 1960 and 1973, Croce released six studio albums and eleven singles. His singles “Bad, Bad Leroy Brown” and “Time in a Bottle” were both Number One hits on the Billboard Hot 100 charts, while the latter and “I’ll Have to Say I Love You in a Song” were both number-one singles on Hot Adult Contemporary Tracks.

In 1970, Croce met the classically trained pianist/guitarist, singer-songwriter Maury Muehleisen from Trenton, New Jersey through Joe Salviuolo (aka Sal Joseph). Salviuolo was best friends with Jim when they attended Villanova University together, and Salviuolo later discovered Maury when he was teaching at Glassboro State College in New Jersey.

Sal, along with Tommy West and Terry Cashman, brought this duo together in the Cashman and West production office in New York City. Initially, Croce backed Muehleisen on guitar at his gigs. But in time, their musical strengths led them each to new heights. Muehleisen’s ethereal and inspired guitar leads became the perfect accompaniment to Croce’s down-to-earth music.

Jim Croce live at a BBC recording

In 1972, Croce signed to a three-record deal with ABC Records releasing You Don’t Mess Around with Jim and Life & Times in the same year. The singles “You Don’t Mess Around with Jim”, “Operator (That’s Not The Way It Feels)”, and “Time in a Bottle” (written for his unborn son, A. J. Croce) helped the former album reach #1 on the charts in 1974. Croce’s biggest single, “Bad, Bad Leroy Brown”, hit #1 on the American charts in the summer of 1973, selling two million copies.

Croce, 30, and Muehleisen, 24, died in a small commercial plane crash on September 20, 1973, shortly before his ABC single, I Got a Name was to be released. The album of the same title was released on December 1, 1973. With his then busy touring schedule, (largely due to the recent success of “Bad, Bad Leroy Brown”) Croce had only finished recording the album eight days before his death. The posthumous release included three hits, “I Got a Name”, “Workin’ at the Car Wash Blues”, and “I’ll Have to Say I Love You in a Song”. Three months after his death, the song “Time in a Bottle”, originally released on Croce’s first album the year before, became a #1 hit single (the third posthumous chart-topping song of the Rock Era following Otis Redding’s “(Sittin’ On) The Dock of the Bay” and “Me and Bobby McGee” by Janis Joplin). Both the song “Time in a Bottle” and the You Don’t Mess Around with Jim album cover were featured in the ABC-TV movie “She Lives!”,[7] which aired on September 12, 1973. The movie was responsible for thousands of telephone calls to radio stations across the country the next day, with everyone wanting to know ‘who sang that song?’ eventually propelling the obscure album track to #1. Jim lived long enough to hear of the public’s curiosity about the song, although it was not released as a single until a few weeks later.

A bit of a tear jerker, shows Jim and Ingrid Croce  Playing with
their son A.J. and other home movie clips set to Time in a Bottle!

Croce had just completed a concert in Natchitoches, Louisiana, and was flying to Sherman, Texas. The pilot and all passengers (Croce; Muehleisen; Croce’s booking agent Kenneth D. Cortose; George Stevens, the comic who was the show’s warm-up act; and Dennis Rast, another passenger) were killed instantly at 10:45 PM EDT on September 20, 1973, less than an hour after the end of Croce’s last concert.

Upon takeoff, the Beechcraft E18 plane did not gain enough altitude to clear a pecan tree at the end of the runway, which investigators said was the only tree for hundreds of yards. The official report from the NTSB hints that the charter pilot, Robert Newton Elliott, who had severe coronary artery disease and had run a portion of the three miles to the airport from a motel, may have suffered a heart attack, causing him to crash into the trees on a clear runway with excellent visibility. A later investigation placed sole blame for the accident on pilot error.

Croce was laid to rest in Haym Salomon Memorial Park, East Whiteland Township, Chester County, Pennsylvania even though he had recently relocated to San Diego.