Jim Croce biography
James Joseph "Jim" Croce (; January 10, 1943 - September 20, 1973) was an American singer-songwriter. Between 1966 and 1973, Croce released five studio albums and 11 singles. His singles "Bad, Bad Leroy Brown" and "Time in a Bottle" were both number one hits on the Billboard Hot 100 charts.
Biography
Early life
Croce was born in South Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on January 10, 1943, to Jim and Flora Croce, and grew up in a family of Italian background. Croce took a strong interest in music at a young age. At five, he learned to play his first song on the accordion, "Lady of Spain."
Croce attended Upper Darby High School in Drexel Hill, Pennsylvania. After his graduation in 1960, Croce went to Malvern Preparatory School for one year before deciding to enroll at Villanova University in 1961. During his time as a student, Croce became a member of the Villanova Singers and the Spires. When the Spires performed off-campus gigs or made professional recordings, it was under the name, "The Coventry Lads". Jim was also a student disc jockey at WKVU.
Croce did not take music seriously other than as a hobby until his time at Villanova, where he formed various bands, performing at fraternity parties, coffee houses, and at universities around Philadelphia, playing "anything that the people wanted to hear: blues, rock, a cappella, railroad music... anything." One of those bands was chosen for a foreign exchange tour of Africa and the Middle East. Croce later said of the experience that "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."
Croce met his future wife Ingrid Jacobson at this time during a hootenanny at Philadelphia Convention Hall where he was judging a contest.
Early career
From the mid-1960s to early 1970s, Croce performed with his wife as a duo. At first, their performances included songs by artists such as Ian and Sylvia, Gordon Lightfoot, Joan Baez, and Woody Guthrie, but in time, they began writing their own music. During this time, Croce got his first long-term gig at a rural bar and steak house in Lima, Pennsylvania, called "The Riddle Paddock". His set list included every genre from blues to country to rock 'n roll to folk.
In 1968, Jim and Ingrid Croce were encouraged by record producer Tommy West to move to New York City. The couple spent time in the Kingsbridge section of the Bronx and recorded their first album with Capitol Records. During the next two years, they drove more than 300,000 miles, playing small clubs and concerts on the college concert circuit promoting their album Jim & Ingrid Croce.
Becoming disillusioned by the music business specifically and New York City in general, they sold all but one guitar to pay the rent and returned to the Pennsylvania countryside where Jim got a job driving trucks and doing construction to pay the bills while continuing to write songs, often about the characters he would meet at the local bars and truck stops, and his experiences at work; these provided the material for such songs as "Big Wheels" and "Working at the Car Wash Blues."
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