Jim Croce: Regular Guy
"Hey tomorrow, where are you goin'? Do you have some room for me?"
James Joseph Croce and Maury Mueshleisen were on a college tour,
leaving fromNorthwestern University to play at another college not more
than seventy miles away that same night. In an effort to stay with a strict
schedule, they flew the short distance to Natchitoches, Louisiana, where
a small barrier of treetops hindered their view of the runway. The plane
snagged on those treetops, crashing down and taking the lives of everyone
on the plane. The world had lost an amazing guitar player, and one of its most
astounding souls.
young Jim
Born in 1943 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Jim was a typical under achiever.
At the age of six, he was playing "Lady of Spain" his accordion, but it was not
until he was eighteen, when he worked at a toy store and the other employees
would hide in the stock room between breaks and played the blues. Inspired,
Jim bought an old Stella 12 string for $5.
He attended Villanova University where he had the opportunity to host a three
hour folk and blues show on the college radio station. In interviewing various
artists and listening to the music he played, he was constantly reminded of the
traditional jazz his father played when he was young.
With his faithful 12 string, he formed a variety of bands and played whatever the
audience wanted to hear. Soon he was invited to do an embassy tour of Africa
and the Middle East.
Jim and Ingrid
In 1966, Jim found himself in love with a singer, and married her. He and his wife
Ingrid, at the encouragement of Tommy West (Jim's college friend and producer
to be), they moved to New York City and performed in coffee houses. After a
year and a half, he found his career going nowhere, and with agitation and
pressure from living in the city became to suffocating to bear, they moved to a
small farm in Lyndell, Pennsylvania.
Pressed for money, they sold all their collector guitars one by one, until they
were gone and he went to work in construction and did studio work consisting
of the "oooooo's and ahhhhh's" for commercials. He also became a truck
driver, which gave him a good amount of solitude to where he could think
about his future.
One night, Ingrid told Jim that she was going to have their child. Jim was so
inspired at the prospect of becoming a father, that he stayed up the entire night
and wrote his best work, including "Time in a Bottle" and "Operator."
Soon Tommy West convinced him to return to music, and actually producing it.
Jim took the offer, convincing himself that he would have time to write and spend
time with his family. His first album "You Don't Mess around with Jim"
was an instant success, and the title song and "Operator"
(pulled from the album)were both highly successful singles.
Of course he never could have done so well without Maury Mueshleisen:
jim and maury
Maury was seventeen years old when he had taken piano for eight years and
discovered that the guitar was the better instrument for playing the folk songs he
heard on the radio. In all of Jim's song, the lead guitarist is usually Maury.
Jim's tragic death in 1973 left 26 year old Ingrid with a son and 12 years of legal
litigation to attain rights to her late husband royalties. 2 years later, her only son,
Adrian James, now a talent aged well beyond his years, acquired a neurological
disease that left him with limited eyesight, and her own aspiration to sing were
smashed when surgery damaged her vocal chords.
Ingrid now owns two restaurants, and three bars in San Diego, including Croce's-
dedicated and inspired by her late husband's memory.
7/ 13/ 99
I am seventeen years old, and I just discovered Jim Croce not more than
one week ago (today is July 13, 1999) and I have been blown away to an
absolute extreme. The day I bought that CD, was the day my life changed
into something better, and a little more purpose. Sometimes it's so hard to
believe that some one who embraced the same philosophies as I do and
sings songs sopping with ideas that have run through my very mind so often
as an moment passes- it becomes progressively harder to remember that
Jim Croce is not sitting in my room with some sort of connection to my head
and singing my thoughts, but still tangled so deeply into his soul: from the
place he sings. I can sometimes actually feel his music touch my heart with
a grace of the kind and magnitude I have never encountered Regardless
of secret doubts in God, I feel as if I had been destined to here this and tell
my generation, a regular guy named Jim Croce reached into my soul, and
lured all that was good to the surface with his harmonious words of an incredible
wisdom I have yet to see in this lifetime.
8/9/99
So I guess this portion of this page is to become my journal (with a Jim Croce
theme). It seems I have done quite well in introducing him to my friends that
had never heard of him before. I even got one of them to buy the CD and she
says that it helped her get through so much that she was going through at
that particular time. I am in theater - I live for theater. From Rent to Music Man,
musicals are all we ever listen to or talk about. We feed off the cheese in
American pop culture from the fifties to the ninties, and entering this new
millenium. Jim Croce has brought something of a change of pace in my life.
It seems for the greater portion of my seventeen years, I have been searching
for something just like what he created. I have cried and laughed so much in
the past few days, going through a trial of this part of my life in which I guess i
am meant to come out stronger, and his musica has paved the rocky road I
have been striving to walk across. His music seems to blur the boundaries I
have in live and love and deep and shallow, and he makes me feel more
complete and at peace because of his way of singing songs that every
part of me can relate to in a certain way. So I guess that is all for now. I will
be back soon, and thankyou for your response. It is very much appreciated.