You Don't Mess Around With Jim

by

Jim Croce

Album: You Don't Mess Around With Jim      Released: 1972

US Chart: 8     

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Songfacts:  You can leave comments about the song at the bottom of the page.

The "Jim" in this song is not Croce. Ingrid Croce, who was married to Jim at the time of his death in 1973, explains: "Jim (Croce) sold air time for a radio station. When he got out of college, his parents wanted him to get a good 9-to-5 job. We had always intended to do music, but he'd had a college education and the first to graduate from his family with a college education, they wanted him to become a professional, to really do something that would get pension, and good solid work. So Jim went out, because we were married, and he got a job helping me to get through school at the time, and he started selling air time in a really shady area down in south and west Philadelphia. He used to go to some of these pool halls to sell the air time, because it wasn't a very good neighborhood. He would sit there and watch the pool games and see what people were doing, and he ended up with a guy named Jim Walker, who was one of the guys who used to play pool there. And that's really the story behind it, he used to hang out at any of those little shops down on South Street and down in west Philly where it really was quite unacceptable for him to be trying to sell air time down there, but it was one of those things where he was hoping someday he could actually bring his music to the radio, so he thought it might be a good way to get going as a salesman. Then later he met a guy whose name was Melvin Goldfield, and Melvin was an artist, and he grew up in areas like that, and Melvin used to take him down to the dumps down in south Philadelphia and tell him about all kinds of stories that went on down there, and introduced him to a lot of the guys. Jim actually did run into this guy, Big Jim Walker, pool-shootin' son of a gun. And so that story really comes out of an experience that he kind of put the story together."

Croce: "I think that often in Jim's songs there's a composite situation, but when he sat down to write, usually the song would come out altogether. There might be a verse that he'd add later, but usually he'd sit down and play. I've got hundreds of tapes of Jim performing - playing at home and the 2 of us singing, or just having friends over and singing, whether it was the Manhattan Transfer, James Taylor, Arlo Guthrie, Bonnie Raitt... people that just come over and we'd hang out and sing. It was very comfortable to just put everything down on tape back then. People weren't as worried about who wrote the song as they were about writing it."

Ingrid has some serious cooking skills, and in 1985 she opened Croce's Restaurant & Jazz Bar. We thank her for speaking with us about this song and encourage you to learn more in her Songfacts interview, and at Croces.com.

The You Don't Mess Around With Jim album was produced by Terry Cashman and Tommy West. At first, no record company was interested, but when Cashman and West recorded an album for ABC/Dunhill called A Song or Two, they were able to pitch the label on Croce and got him signed to a deal.

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Comments:

Amazing... a country boy can shoot pool with good enough aim & strong enough to wound Big Jim, draw blood & send him to the floor. Did Jim hafta pay back those he hustled? Could he still afford to pay all those hospital bills? One could only wonder.... Same for Leroy Brown, except that Leroy didn't hustle everyone.
- Drew, B'ham, AL

I never did agree with what most people say about the spoken lyrics near the end of the song. The words never did make sense to me. But of late I've listened to them more closely; and right now this is what I think Croce is saying: "Yeah, Big Jim got it bad.. Find out where it's at; and tonight I'm hustling people's dreams to you, even if you DO got a two-piece custom made pool cue."
- Michael, New Lebanon, OH

There never was before, and there never will be again, another Jim Croce.
- Thomas, Somerville, AL

Great musician wonderful storyteller
- Anthony, Houston, TX

I believe Ingrid once said in an interview on television that the picture of Jim that was on the Album cover of him looking out a small window of a white building was actually an outhouse on Jim's farm and it was still standing at the time of the interview and they (The camera crew) took some video of it
- KARL, AKRON, , OH

I am so surprised how similar this song is to Leroy Brown. A tough guy who meets his match at the end of the song. "Big Jim hit the floor" "Leroy Looked like a jigsaw puzzle with a couple of pieces gone"
- jamie, Bethesda, MD

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