“…even if you do got a two-piece custom made pool cue.”
— Jim Croce
The day the music died is commonly known as the day Buddy Holly and his musical friends perished in a shocking 1959 plane crash in rural Iowa. I must have been too young to have personal memories of this awful accident. It is indeed sad, but I have no personal stake here.
For me, the day the music died was Sept. 20, 1973. This is the day Jim Croce died at the age of 30 in yet another tragic plane crash.
At the age of 12, I can recall where I was when I heard that JFK had been shot. I recall where I was when I heard the news of MLK’s assassination, and exactly where I stood when the awful news of Robert Kennedy’s senseless killing interrupted the normal radio broadcast. All these memories from my formative youth still carry a weighty sadness.
And although Jim Croce was simply a musician, his death is seared in the same account in my memory bank of sad events as these men of great political and social consequence.
I was a first-year teacher driving to school. I heard the news account on the radio as I was making a left-hand turn on to Bluffton Road from the Baer Field Thruway in Fort Wayne, and I was instantly sad, as if I had driven directly into a cloud of melancholy.
Today, nearly 50 years later, I still find myself in the diffused light of that cloud. Croce was a new prominent and folksy voice on the radio who wrote lyrics that knocked me over. They were hilarious, sad, and often redemptive. He told stories of folks who had lost loves and found troubles. Lyrics dripping with sadness and glowing with joy. He spoke to the common man in all of us.
One of my favorites and one of Croce’s most recognizable hits was “You Don’t Mess Around With Jim.” This story’s main character is a country boy from South Alabama named Slim who was wronged by a much-feared New York, 42nd Street, city slicker named Jim. As the story goes, everyone lived in fear of Big Jim, except for Slim. Like David against Goliath, he walked unafraid into Jim’s lair, the pool room, where an eerie hush fell before the legendary fight began that left Jim in an awful state. According to Croce’s lyrics, “…when the cuttin’ was done/The only part that wasn’t bloody/Was the soles of the big man’s feet/Yeah he were cut in ‘bout a hundred places/And he were shot in a couple more.” And, to the delight of the listener and everyone who values justice, the people, “… sung a different kind of story/When Big Jim hit the floor.”
The King is dead. Long live the King!
Here is my favorite part of the song. It is not even sung, but only spoken at the end and nearly inaudible. It is the moral of the story and only heard by those who listen intently. Almost everyone knows the admonitions of the chorus against tugging on Superman’s cape, spitting into the wind, and pulling on the mask of the Lone Ranger. Those are funny, but the weightiest Croceism is left as a mere footnote to the three-verse story. It is “… not hustling people strange to you/Even if you do got a two-piece custom-made pool cue, yeah.”
The phrasing is biblical.
Jim Croce’s legacy has the advantages offered by his sad death at such a young age. No gray hair. No divisive or embarrassing political statements or family squabbles. He is still that mustachioed smarmy poet and crooner who made us laugh and cry in equal measures. His messages and music are timeless.
Did Jim Croce have any lasting value or impact? All I know is that over the years my Jim Croce’s Greatest Hits CD was frequently missing. I would recover it when I searched the CD collections of my five children. And on those occasions when the radio chanced to play “Bad, Bad, Leroy Brown” or “I Got a Name,” they all smiled and sang loud and clear. And when the first notes of “Photographs and Memories” wafted from the radio speakers, there was an appreciative silence as the mournful chords of Jim’s acoustic guitar lead us all on a sad walk.
So, here is to the music of Jim Croce and a moment of silence for the day the music died and for the music of Croce’s that we never got the chance to hear.
Here’s the thing: I want to thank my father. As a teenager it was maddening to me that he controlled the radio in the car. I yearned for WOWO where I could hear the top 40 and hip chortling disc jockeys. He insisted on listening to his music from the ’30s and ’40s; the big bands and singers he heard during his formative years. This matter was not up for discussion. Now, clearly, I appreciate the gift he gave his kids by exposing us to music of Glenn Miller and Nelson Eddy and countless others we otherwise may not have heard or learned to appreciate.
I heard the same protests from my own kids and now from grandkids to their parents. My advice to young parents: Hold the line. Don’t give in. Give your kids a future gift. Give them what they need, not necessarily what they want. Make them listen to your own Jim Croce.
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Editor’s Note: This is one of a series of articles written by a group of retired and current teachers — Ken Ballinger, Billy Kreigh, Marianne Darr-Norman, and Anna Spalding. Their intent is to spur discussions at the dinner table and elsewhere. You may also voice your thoughts and reactions via The News-Banner’s letters to editor.
