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Jim Croce music biography continued...

on January 10, 1943, Croce played the accordion as a child and would eventually teach himself the guitar. He didn't start to take music seriously until he was in college, when he began to play at local bars. In 1969, he moved with his wife to New York City to record an album. Though not commercially successful, the album eventually caught the eye of executives at ABC/Dunhill, who signed him and released his second album, You Don't Mess Around with Jim, in 1972. The record yielded three hits: "You Don't Mess Around With Jim," "Operator (That's Not the Way It Feels)," and "Time in a Bottle." The latter would become Croce's breakthrough hit, zooming all the way to number one on the Billboard charts. Croce quickly followed with Life and Times in early 1973 and gained his first number one hit with "Bad, Bad Leroy Brown." Two months later, while on tour, Croce's plane crashed in Natchitoches, LA, killing the singer and the four other passengers.



Ironically, Croce became a superstar after his death. In December of 1973, "Time in a Bottle," from 1972's You Don't Mess Around with Jim became his second number one single. Shortly afterwards, "I'll Have to Say I Love You in a Song" reached the Top Ten. Several albums were released posthumously, most notably the greatest hits collection, Photographs and Memories, which became a best-seller. Several other compilations have since been issued, such as the 1992 release The 50th Anniversary Collection and the 2000 compilation Time in a Bottle: The Definitive Collection, leaving fans that discovered Croce after his death to wonder about what could have been if not for his tragic fate.