Jim Croce was born on Sunday, January 10th, 1943 in a working-class section of Philadelphia, in an Italian-American family. While a teenager, he began playing the accordion, and then learning to play an acoustic guitar when he was 18. After a short stint in the U.S. Army, where he supposedly met the character who inspired the song "Bad Bad Leroy Brown," Jim entered Villanova University for a degree in psychology, but he spent a lot of time working with bands, playing musical instruments and performing musical solos, more than 90% of the time.
Jim worked as a construction worker after graduation, after surviving a diesel accident, he then worked temporarily as a school teacher of a Junior High school in South Philadelphia. On Sunday, August 28th, 1966, Jim Croce married his wife, Ingrid Jacobson. Then in 1967, they moved to New York City where they performed together, as a folk duo performed in city nightclubs and coffeehouses and recorded an album, that's titled "Another Day, Another Town".
Jim and Ingrid moved back to Pennsylvania where they bought a farmhouse and became parents to their only son, A.J. Croce. A.J.'s name at birth was Adrian James Croce. Adrian was born on Tuesday, September 28th, 1971, in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, while Jim worked as a truck driver to pay the daily food and monthly utility bills. A year later, one of Jim's long time college friends encouraged him to record some of his newer songs and send them to ABC Records where they signed Jim up and his first solo album, "You Don't Mess Around With Jim" was released in 1972 and it was one of the top 20 best sellers, of 1972, in the United States of America.
Combined, in 1972 to 1973, Jim Croce performed in more than 250 concerts, he appeared as a guest on numerous TV programs and released his second album in mid 1973 titled "Life and Times." This album, featured his all time and most popular hit song, (solo 45 RPM, or album), "Bad, Bad Leroy Brown".
He also recorded his third album, "I've Got a Name" and the title song was used in the soundtrack of The Last American Hero (1973). It starred 'Jeff Bridges (I)', and the complete album which was released on Monday, July 23rd, 1973.
The song, "Time in a Bottle" from his first solo album, received sudden national sales after being featured in "She Lives" a made for ABC-TV movie which aired on Wednesday, September 12th, 1973.
Eight days later, Thursday, September 20th, 1973, Jim Croce's life and career came to a sudden end when he and his musical partner Maury Muehleisen and others boarded a private airplane in Natchitoches, Louisiana to travel to a gig in Texas when the plane crashed shortly after takeoff killing everyone on board.
His third album includes the songs "I Got a Name," and "I'll Have to Say I Love You in a Song" which were posthumous hits. In all, Jim Croce had eight top-10 singles and three top-10 albums between 1972 and 1974.
In the lyrics to the hauntingly wistful "Time in a Bottle", Jim left his own best epitaph as if he was foreseeing his own death: "There never seems to be enough time to do the things you want to do once you find them".
