Jim Croce turned 70 last Thursday

[rn57]

In the last couple of weeks a lot of living pop musicians have had birthdays - Steve Stills, Jimmy Page, John Paul Jones, Scott Walker, Donald Fagen, Chris Stein, and of course Van Dyke's 70th.  A lot of the dead ones have had their birthdays marked in cyberspace and on hipster radio too - Syd Barrett and NRBQ's Tom Ardolino comes to mind.

But it wasn't until a friend posted a link to "I Got A Name" on Facebook that I suddenly realized Jim Croce would have been 70 on the 10th. And I hadn't remembered. From what I can tell at Google News, nobody else did, apart from somebody who put up a short article at Legacy.com.  Forget the music sites - Croce's hometown newspapers in Philadelphia didn't publish anything to mark it.  Nor did the paper in San Diego where his widow and son are prominent civic and cultural figures.

I figure even though a few days late I'd put up some clips of my favorite songs of his.

First, my all-time fave, "I'll Have To Say I Love You In A Song" -
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EN1nMpmC0n4

"Salon and Saloon," written by Jim's gifted accompanist Maury Muehleisen, which has a kind of Dennis feel to it -
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5oXo03k8AIY

A live version (with Maury) of "Workin' At The Car Wash Blues." (Henry Gross once told me he was lead guitarist on the studio version. He's not on the sleeve credits but then again he was under contract to a label other than ABC which put this out at the time.)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tLKhUnl_yhc

[EgoHanger1966]

The thread title is a head scratcher - he didn't really turn 70....

A wonderful artist with a beautiful catalog of music. You have to wonder what his albums would have been like had he been alive to keep making them.

One of my favorites is "Walkin' Back To Georgia" - his words paint a vivid image and the acoustic picking perfectly complements everything.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9e8VuYZu-SU

[rn57]

The thread title is a head scratcher - he didn't really turn 70....

A wonderful artist with a beautiful catalog of music. You have to wonder what his albums would have been like had he been alive to keep making them.

One of my favorites is "Walkin' Back To Georgia" - his words paint a vivid image and the acoustic picking perfectly complements everything.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9e8VuYZu-SU

Maury Muehleisen is so beautifully restrained and exquisite in those fills and phrases - senses so precisely when to come in and hold back that, as has been said of Dave Brubeck and Paul Desmond, he must have had telepathy going on with Jim.

I should clarify the earlier statement about Henry Gross - he doesn't play electric lead on "Car Wash Blues" so much as he does fills very ably alongside Maury. Henry's wife just wrote me that a little while ago he and Jim's son A.J. performed "Operator" together - my second favorite Croce song.

The what-if's in Jim's story....well, I remember reading a blogpost a while back written by a guy who said when he was in engineering school he would daydream about building a time machine. And he always had the same scenario in mind - to head to Natchitoches, Louisiana, on Sept. 20, 1973, get out, walk into a hardware store, buy an axe, head to the airport, and chop down the pecan tree the plane struck.