Greatest Hits / Have You Heard Jim Croce Live?
Thursday, 09 April 2009 09:35 | 
Author: The Grouch | 
What is this old Punk doing with a review of Jim Croce's music? Who is Jim Croce? Is that an acoustic guitar in that picture?
Believe it or not, I'm a huge fan. Bad Bad Leroy Brown was the second single I ever bought. The first was The Candyman by Sammy Davis Jr. which I begged my mom to buy for me at age six. Way back when I was 19 I got my first CD player; the very first CD I bought was Jim Croce's Greatest Hits.
So who was Jim Croce? Let me borrow from the Wikipedia:
pronounced (CROW-chee) (January 10, 1943 – September 20, 1973), popularly known as Jim Croce, was an American singer-songwriter.
Croce scored a handful of hit songs in the early '70s, but died in an airplane crash just as he was beginning to capitalize on his success. He is probably best remembered for the songs "Time in a Bottle" and "Bad, Bad Leroy Brown," both #1 hits in 1973.
Basically Croce was a story teller who played guitar really well. His music was melodic and captivating. There was no feed back, no smashing up equipment, nothing shocking about his act - that is part of the charm actually. The man played very melodic music that also had a touch of R&B groove to it. Like Charlie Daniels all of Croce's songs tell a story. There are no cheesy "crowd gripper" moments in which he would walk back and forth across the stage pitting one part of the audience against the other in a competition to see who can laud and magnify him the most via screaming curse words at the tops of their voices. There are no songs about getting drunk or "doing some girl". What there is are melodic songs that strike a chord with "the common man" (I really hate that phrase and need to find another way to express myself.)
Some of his songs make me laugh (not at him as I laugh when I hear Poison, but with him because the story is funny) Some of the songs (Operator for example) cause me to choke up a bit - its just so sad. Any song that can cause my old black heart to feel an emotion as selfless as empathy is quite a song!
Listen to either one of these albums and you'll get an idea of what I mean.
The Grouch rating for this one is 6 scowls out of 5 - that's right six. I figure he gets a bonus scowl because he died in an airplane accident (like Buddy Holly) before he did anything that sucked or sold out. I'm happy that his music hasn't ended up as a prop to help sell tennis shoes. If you ever want to give your ears a break from the intense stuff - check out Jim Croce.