Jim Croce a true hero
Posted: Wed Aug 31, 2005 10:03 am
Any Croce fans here?
Copyed from http://www.hotshotdigital.com/tribute/JimCroce.html
Jim Croce is remembered both for his gentle, playful music and for his life, which was abruptly ended as he teetered on the brink of great success.
In 1943, James Croce was born to loving parents who nurtured their son's musical interests from a very early age. He was only 5 years old when he learned his first instrument, the accordion, and before long he had taught himself guitar as well. By the time he graduated from college, Croce had formed several bands and was a regular performer at local restaurants and bars.
Though he had to work several other jobs to pay the bills, he continued to dream of making it big in the music business. He eventually moved with his wife Ingrid to New York where they recorded an album together, appropriately titled Jim and Ingrid.
This album failed to reach a wide audience, however, and the Croces were forced to return to Pennsylvania. They remained there until 1972, when Jim's big break finally came. The ABC/Dunhill record label discovered him and Jim released a new album, You Don't Mess Around With Jim. Within a year , he had multiple hits to his name including “Time in a Bottle”, “You Don't Mess Around With Jim” and “Bad, Bad Leroy Brown”.
Unfortunately, just as Croce's career was beginning to take off, a plane crash prematurely ended his life on September 20th, 1973. Jim's music became more popular after his death. The album I Got a Name was released posthumously and several of its songs went on to reach #1. There are those who believe that Jim had yet to produce his best work, while others maintain that his death was what gave his music the publicity it needed to reach its audience. Whatever the explanation, Jim did not leave behind only a wife and son on September 20th, but thousands of individuals whose lives he touched, both through his music and through his simple and decent personality.
While in his third year of college, one of Jim's bands was invited to perform in a tour of Africa and the Middle East. "We had a good time," Jim recalls. "We just ate what the people ate, lived in the woods, and played our songs. Of course they didn't speak English over there... but if you mean what you're singing, people understand."
Early in his career, Jim injured his right index finger with a misplaced sledgehammer, forcing him to developed a new method of fingerpicking using only four fingers.
Croce wrote his hit song "Time in a Bottle" for his infant son AJ. Adrian James, who was born only two years before his father's accident, is now himself an accomplished singer/songwriter
For Jim Croce, the touring life meant mostly one small collage campus after another. When he was killed at age 30 on September 20, 1973 in Natchitoches, LA., he was doing what he had done many times before - - taking off at night in a light plane from a small airstrip.The plane snagged in a treetop at the end of the dim runway outside Natchitoches La., and sent 30 year old Jim and five others to their deaths. Maury Muehleisen, Jim's lead guitarist and constant companion, also died in the crash.
In a burst of discovery, the U.S. record-buying public was making it up to Croce. You Don't Mess Around With Jim , his first solo LP, had tripled it's sales and has jumped past the 1 million mark. And was No. 1 on Billboard's chart of bestselling LP's. Croce also occupied the No. 2 position with I Got A Name, recorded only a week before his death. As if that were not enough, at No. 22 was a third Croce album. Life and Times (released in January 1973).
His death left his wife, Ingrid Croce truly alone. She had already lost both her parents, and after the fatal accident, at age 26, she was instantly transformed into a single mother and thrust into 12 years of legal litigation to retrieve the right to her husband's royalties.
Two years later her only son, Adrian James, now 26, suffered a neurological disease that left him with limited eyesight. And her own singing career was dashed when surgery damaged her vocal cords.
Now, at age 50, Ingrid Croce is a success story. She owns two restaurants and three bars in the Gaslamp district of San Diego, including one named Croce's Restaurant and Jazz Bar. A giant mural portrait of Jim Croce takes up the back wall of that restaurant, and Ingrid says it serves as an inspiration to her ``to build a community for me and Jim's
Jim's memories.''
Adrian is a talented, young singer, pianist and songwriter, with a voice, stage presence and sensibility aged well beyond his 26 years, specializing in an up-tempo brand of jazz.
Copyed from http://www.hotshotdigital.com/tribute/JimCroce.html
Jim Croce is remembered both for his gentle, playful music and for his life, which was abruptly ended as he teetered on the brink of great success.
In 1943, James Croce was born to loving parents who nurtured their son's musical interests from a very early age. He was only 5 years old when he learned his first instrument, the accordion, and before long he had taught himself guitar as well. By the time he graduated from college, Croce had formed several bands and was a regular performer at local restaurants and bars.
Though he had to work several other jobs to pay the bills, he continued to dream of making it big in the music business. He eventually moved with his wife Ingrid to New York where they recorded an album together, appropriately titled Jim and Ingrid.
This album failed to reach a wide audience, however, and the Croces were forced to return to Pennsylvania. They remained there until 1972, when Jim's big break finally came. The ABC/Dunhill record label discovered him and Jim released a new album, You Don't Mess Around With Jim. Within a year , he had multiple hits to his name including “Time in a Bottle”, “You Don't Mess Around With Jim” and “Bad, Bad Leroy Brown”.
Unfortunately, just as Croce's career was beginning to take off, a plane crash prematurely ended his life on September 20th, 1973. Jim's music became more popular after his death. The album I Got a Name was released posthumously and several of its songs went on to reach #1. There are those who believe that Jim had yet to produce his best work, while others maintain that his death was what gave his music the publicity it needed to reach its audience. Whatever the explanation, Jim did not leave behind only a wife and son on September 20th, but thousands of individuals whose lives he touched, both through his music and through his simple and decent personality.
While in his third year of college, one of Jim's bands was invited to perform in a tour of Africa and the Middle East. "We had a good time," Jim recalls. "We just ate what the people ate, lived in the woods, and played our songs. Of course they didn't speak English over there... but if you mean what you're singing, people understand."
Early in his career, Jim injured his right index finger with a misplaced sledgehammer, forcing him to developed a new method of fingerpicking using only four fingers.
Croce wrote his hit song "Time in a Bottle" for his infant son AJ. Adrian James, who was born only two years before his father's accident, is now himself an accomplished singer/songwriter
For Jim Croce, the touring life meant mostly one small collage campus after another. When he was killed at age 30 on September 20, 1973 in Natchitoches, LA., he was doing what he had done many times before - - taking off at night in a light plane from a small airstrip.The plane snagged in a treetop at the end of the dim runway outside Natchitoches La., and sent 30 year old Jim and five others to their deaths. Maury Muehleisen, Jim's lead guitarist and constant companion, also died in the crash.
In a burst of discovery, the U.S. record-buying public was making it up to Croce. You Don't Mess Around With Jim , his first solo LP, had tripled it's sales and has jumped past the 1 million mark. And was No. 1 on Billboard's chart of bestselling LP's. Croce also occupied the No. 2 position with I Got A Name, recorded only a week before his death. As if that were not enough, at No. 22 was a third Croce album. Life and Times (released in January 1973).
His death left his wife, Ingrid Croce truly alone. She had already lost both her parents, and after the fatal accident, at age 26, she was instantly transformed into a single mother and thrust into 12 years of legal litigation to retrieve the right to her husband's royalties.
Two years later her only son, Adrian James, now 26, suffered a neurological disease that left him with limited eyesight. And her own singing career was dashed when surgery damaged her vocal cords.
Now, at age 50, Ingrid Croce is a success story. She owns two restaurants and three bars in the Gaslamp district of San Diego, including one named Croce's Restaurant and Jazz Bar. A giant mural portrait of Jim Croce takes up the back wall of that restaurant, and Ingrid says it serves as an inspiration to her ``to build a community for me and Jim's
Jim's memories.''
Adrian is a talented, young singer, pianist and songwriter, with a voice, stage presence and sensibility aged well beyond his 26 years, specializing in an up-tempo brand of jazz.
)that I would renew over and over, one was a Croce album. I believe it was Photographs and Memories.