Where did my love of music start? I could answer that question in a number of ways. When I was little, my brother bought all sorts of records, and I listened to them. Mainly, he had (and, I believe, still has) a lot of the hits of the mid-sixties, as well as a healthy dose of Allan Sherman records. My mother bought me records, but they weren't the ones I heard my brother playing, and ones I'd never choose for myself. In fact, I still have the Barry Sadler album she gave me, which had his hit, "The Ballad Of The Green Berets." In my teens, she showed she understood my musical tastes better, picking up second-hand copies of "Abbey Road," "Sticky Fingers," and "Houses Of The Holy" for my collection. The first albums I specifically wanted and acquired, though, were the hit albums from Jim Croce - "You Don't Mess Around With Jim," "Life And Times," and "I Got A Name." Originally released on the ABC Dunhill label in 1972 and 1973, I still have these three titles on vinyl. I received two of them as gifts when I turned fourteen. Even though I don't play my Jim Croce music as often as I once did, I still know these sings by heart nearly thirty years after I first got them. It's these albums which will be the basis of my answer regarding where my love of music began.

About ten years ago, I bought the Croce CD, "The 50th Anniversary Collection," a two disc set released in 1992 that contains fifty tracks from Croce, including every track on his Dunhill albums. This collection also includes tracks from the 1969 album "Croce," which was recorded with his wife, Ingrid, and has also been released under the titles "Another Day, Another Town," "Ingrid And Jim Croce," and "Bombs Over Puerto Rico." Selections from the 1975 release "The Faces I've Been" and a few unreleased tracks round out this collection. There is a bit of a difference between the Dunhill albums and the other works. On the other tracks, all of which were recorded before his hits, Croce still had not solidified a musical persona. With Ingrid, he was recording folk tunes that sounded like the Croces were trying to emulate Peter, Paul, & Mary. His singing during this period was nice, but undistinctive. "Big Wheel," a track from that album, is a vignette of life on the load as truck driver under the pressure of "making it back to Baltimore with my load." The playing and singing are fine, but the performers seem to be at some distance from their words (Croce, by the way, did drive a truck for a while to pay bills). A better Croce song of life on the road in a rig was the "Life And Times" track, "Speedball Tucker," where he brings that experience to life. "Croce" failed to generate much interest, but that didn't completely deter Jim Croce or his dreams of success. This was just a roadblock.

He would find his niche when he added more of a storytelling element to his music, as well as an air of intimacy. While the marriage with Ingrid would last, they would not remain remain recording partners. Ingrid Croce still helped with some song contributions, and Jim Croce would eventually re-record the Croces' composition "Age" for the "I Got A Name" album . He would find a partner of a different sort, though, in guitarist Maury Muehleisen. Croce, in fact, played in concerts as a part of Muehleisen's band. They became friends, and Croce started writing songs and recording demos that wound up that wound up in the hands of Tommy West, an old friend from their days at Villanova University who'd found some success in recording and producing, and was one of the producers of "Croce." In the fall of 1971, shortly after the birth of his son, A. J. (now a musician himself), Croce started recording the album that would become "You Don't Mess Around With Jim," which West produced with Terry Cashman. Muehleisen took the lead in a different way - he became the acoustic guitar lead. The story approach paid off for Croce. In the summer of 1972, "You Don't Mess Around With Jim" reached #8 on the Billboard charts. The song provided a theme that Croce would tap again one of his biggest hits, "Bad, Bad Leroy Brown." "You Don't Mess Around With Jim" is the tale of a New York pool hustler who gets his comeuppance. Croce summons up the grit and humor in his voice, while Muehleisen adds some flashy picking that adds character to Croce's words. Muehleisen was yet another missing link in Croce's earlier work. In a way, everybody wants to feel the air of invincibility Croce delivers in his chorus: "They say you don't tug on Superman's cape/You don't spit into the wind/You don't pull the mask off that old Lone Ranger/And you don't mess around with Jim."

Croce also excelled at telling stories that dealt with love, and, sometimes, the loss of it. Croce's second hit single, "Operator (That's Not The Way It Feels)," deals with a man's desperate attempt to make peace with his ex-girlfriend. As he tries to give the operator the number, he finds that his information is "old and faded." As the frustration grows, he realizes there's no good reason to continue to take up the operator's time. He concludes with humility and relief, "Thank you for your time/Oh, you've been so much more than kind/And you can keep the dime." "I'll Have To Say I Love You In A Song," the second single from the "I Got A Name" album, tells the dilemma many a man faces - finding the right time and the right words to tell a woman he loves her. "Well I know it's kind of late," Croce begins, "But what I gotta say can't wait." It's a lesson that the best time to say these words usually cannot be prepared. All along the way, Muehleisen perfectly captures emotions with six strings that Croce captures with his voice.

He also sang songs about the assortment of characters that could be found in rough and unsophisticated areas of America. Croce sings with ease in the vernacular as he paints his word portraits. In these recordings, Croce sounds more folsky and bluesy than he had when he recorded with Ingrid. There's "Rapid Roy (That Stock Car Boy)," the Sunday afternoon "dirt track demon" who's such a show-off, he drives "a hundred thirty mile an hour, smilin' at the camera, with a toothpick in his mouth." There's also the bouncer in "Top Hat Bar And Grille," a "honky-tonky, heavily fonky, ex-Marine." People who don't have money or get out of line wind up receiving an unpleasant dance lesson from this bouncer. The most well-known of Croce's characters is the subject of one of Croce's #1 hits. "Bad, Bad Leroy Brown" Croce takes us to the south side of Chicago, where the gambling Leroy is infamous for his vices, his toughness, and his luxuries. When he tried to make a move on the wrong woman, he found out that the woman's husband was even tougher. While this song and "You Don't Mess Around With Jim" sang of violent confrontations, Croce and the other musicians used tones light enough to suggest that nothing went seriously wrong. In the summer of 1973, I had this song on my lips because it used that naughty d-word. The song was indicative of the growing permissiveness of the seventies. That word seems virtually harmless by today's standards.

At the end of that summer, Croce was on tour with Muehleisen, playing college campuses and other small venues. On September 20, on their way from one gig to the next, they lost their lives, along with the other passengers and crew, when their small plane crashed in Louisiana. He was just 30 years old. Just one week before his death, Croce had completed the sessions for the "I Got A Name" album. The album became an instant success, and "Life And Times" and "You Don't Mess Around With Jim" became top sellers. After the title track from "I Got A Name" cracked the Top 10, Dunhill went back to Croce's first album for the label for the next single, "Time In A Bottle," a love song made even more poignant by his passing. It's a ballad about finding the right person for life, and wishing the best things never had to end. Croce's words echo the sentiments of anyone who's been in love for keeps: "There never seems to be enough time to do the things you want to do once you find them." The result was a posthumous #1 hit.

In the last two years of his life, Jim Croce learned how to be special when he sang. His songs not only sing to people, but he sang them as if he wanted to get to know you personally. Since that wasn't possible, he used his music to compensate. Over the years, Ingrid Croce has met and heard from a number of people who have been deeply touched by her husband's music. His music was the first I wanted to collect in its entirety (I am, by the way, still looking for "Facets," his very first album from 1966). Jim Croce's music is still remembered today because it is filled with humor, heart, and character. "The 50th Anniversary Collection" shows Croce at his best, and includes other tracks that represent his progression before most of us took notice of him. The CD concludes with Croce's philosophy in his own words: "If you dig it, do it. If you really dig it, do it twice."

If only that second part were that easy.

Tracks (Disc 1);
1. Spin, Spin, Spin
2. Vespers
3. Big Wheel
4. Cigarettes, Whiskey, & Wild, Wild Women
5. (And I) Remember Her
6. Cotton Mouth River
7. More Than That Tomorrow
8. The Migrant Worker
9. Child Of Midnight
10. Stone Walls
11. King's Song
12. Mississippi Lady
13. Which Way Are You Goin'
14. Rapid Roy (That Stock Car Boy)
15. You Don't Mess Around With Jim
16. Tomorrow's Gonna Be A Brighter Day
17. New York's Not My Home
18. Hard Time Losin' Man
19. Photographs And Memories
20. Walkin' Back To Georgia
21. Operator (That's Not The Way It Feels)
22. Time In A Bottle
23. Box #10
24. A Long Time Ago

Tracks (Disc 2):
1. Hey Tomorrow
2. Chain Gang Medley: a. Chain Gang b. He Don't Love You (aka He Will Break Your Heart) c. Searchin'
3. Old Man River
4. Careful Man
5. These Dreams
6. It Doesn't Have To Be That Way
7. Dreamin' Again
8. Alabama Rain
9. A Good Time Man Like Me Ain't Got No Business (Singin' The Blues)
10. Next Time, This Time
11. Bad, Bad Leroy Brown
12. One Less Set Of Footsteps
13. Roller Derby Queen
14. Speedball Tucker
15. I'll Have To Say I Love You In A Song
16. I Got A Name
17. Recently
18. Five Short Minutes
19. Thursday
20. The Hard Way Every Time
21. Age
22. Workin' At The Car Wash Blues
23. Lover's Cross
24. Salon And Saloon
25. Top Hat Bar And Grille
26. (Untitled narrative by Jim Croce)

This has been my entry in the "Where It All Began" write-off hosted by lambchops. In addition to myself and the host, here are the other music lovers who are telling where it all began for them: Aerocat, age6racer, Atchesonate, beckytcy, bigd99999, Bouthat82, cntaur5, cr01, cryptosicko, darkofnight, dbbum, deaser26, drdevience, DrFaustus, e-kleptic, emptywishes, eplovejoy, ez013182, foxy_shy, Freak369, fuche_bu, Guildenstern, Hipyx, insomniac1587, jeff_wilder78, Joubert, KCFoxy, Kieli, kristinafh, lemon_lime, MattA75, mfunk75, mike.holmes, netnut746, PacManY2J, paulyoungotti, plorentz, pogomom, Psychovant, pt-paratroopa, quasar, RedDiva, rmthunter, roheblius, sfarmer76, shilmafone, sparkless, speeddemon531, standells, SurgRN911, telynor, thegeniusx, thevoid99, trust12345, vanwarp, voxpoptart, waynio, and youngchinq.

You may link to any completed entry on lambchops' profile page: http://www.epinions.com/user-lambchops

Thank you Shelly.

Recommended: Yes

Great Music to Play While: Hanging With Friends