Jim Croce

Jim Croce paid his dues the long way round. The Philadelphia songwriter, born in 1943, put out records from 1966 to 1973, five studio albums in all, while grinding through a string of odd jobs to cover the rent and playing gigs wherever they'd have him. What finally changed his luck was a partner: guitarist and songwriter Maury Muehleisen, who teamed up with him in the early '70s.

The payoff came in 1972 with his third album, You Don't Mess Around with Jim, which threw off three charting singles, "Time in a Bottle" among them. It's folk and blues filtered through soft-rock warmth, songs that sound like a guy telling you about his week at the end of the bar. The next record, Life and Times, carried "Bad, Bad Leroy Brown", the one chart-topper he got to see in his own lifetime.

On September 20, 1973, Croce, Muehleisen and four other people were killed in a plane crash, a day before the lead single from his fifth album, I Got a Name, was due out. He was riding his biggest wave when it happened. "Time in a Bottle" went to number one after he was gone, and his songs kept landing on the charts for the rest of the decade. His widow Ingrid Jacobson, who'd written songs with him early on, kept writing and recording, and their son A.J. Croce grew up to become a singer-songwriter himself in the '90s.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.