Ingrid Croce
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Carl Wiser (SF): I'm sure you've had plenty of people ask you about Jim's songs, and whatever interesting tidbits or stories, I'd love to hear them.
Ingrid Croce: First of all, you had written this morning that you wanted perhaps a story about "Operator" or "Bad Bad Leroy Brown." And "Operator" is one of my favorite songs. I think it's a pretty interesting song in the way in which it was composed. It's probably like a lot of songs of Jim's, but it's one that I think a lot of people relate to in a whole bunch of different ways. I just got an email from a young man – a young man, I say, under 30 – who said that it was his favorite song, and how people get to know about this music is also so interesting. But from the perspective of when it was written Jim and I had gotten married in 1966, and we had been waiting for him to go to... in the service. He was a National Guard, which he had joined with the hope that he would not be sent over, and he would be able to continue his education and his music career. So he signed up for the National Guard, and just as soon as we decided to get married – which was in August of 1966, the week before our little wedding, he got a letter that said that he would be leaving within two weeks, I think maybe less than two weeks, for his National Guard down in South or North Carolina. So he was leaving with a very heavy heart. My dad had been very ill and shortly after that passed away. And we had just waited... wanted to get married and have some time to be together after all those years of waiting. And all of the sudden here he is National Guard, where Jim is not very good with authority. And he's in the south, and they were not very good with making pasta. He was missing good food, he was missing me, he was missing life in general. And he's one of the few guys I think who went through basic training twice. He really couldn't follow the system. He'd always find things that were funny. In fact, he put together a little a handbook in dealing with the service with a whole bunch of quotes of how to deal with people in the Army. I mean, not that many of them have been in touch with me since. But anyway, he was standing there in the rain at a payphone. And he was listening to these stories of all these guys, the "Dear John" stories, that were standing in line waiting their turn in the rain, with rain ... these green rain jackets over their heads – I can just picture it, you know. And all of them in line waiting for their three-minute phone call. Some of them – most of them were getting on the phone and they were okay, but some of them were getting these "Dear John" letters, or phone calls. I think that between that and the stories that – that was one of the ... the most important, I think, aspects of the song, because it was just so desperate. You know, 'I only have a dime' and 'you can keep the dime' because money was very scarce and very precious, and I think if you look at the words to the song there are so many aspects of our generation that are in it. I'm going to pull out a songbook right now so that I have the words to the song. Hold on one sec ... here's The Compete Jim Croce, I should have pulled this out before our call. But I'm going to pull it out now and look up "Operator," because I think there's some words specifically ... here we go, 37 – lucky number. Okay ... you know, do you know, by the way, that they did put out a guitar, Martin guitar, with a dime in it?
SF: No, I didn't know that.
Ingrid: Okay, well that's another little tidbit. And I can... if you go to the Web site for Martin Guitars, you can see about it. When they decided to do a Jim Croce guitar, A.J. and I had talked to them and they said, 'You know, we want to do something really special in the guitar,' and they actually found mint dimes of the year that Jim had died – 1973 – it was one of those circumstances that ... happenstances that occur. And in the neck of the guitar, I think it's on the third fret but I'm not quite sure, there is a minted dime that had never been circulated, in the head of 73 of the Jim Croce guitars. So this "Operator" was a really important song for a lot of people, including Martin Guitar. They wanted to really memorialize it. So "Operator, could you help me place this call?" I mean, I'm picturing Jim out in the rain and this long line of guys where they're really trying to reach somebody and they can't get them because you can't get through on those kind... do you remember that? I don't know if you do...
SF: Oh, yeah.
Ingrid: But it was hard to get through, so you always had the operator do it for you. And it was one of those things where, also, we used to work at this place called The Riddle Paddock, which was a bar out in Lima, Pennsylvania, and it was absolutely the wildest most unusual bar in that it had everything ... the kind of people that would come there would be, like, sheepherders from the towns nearby that were from Australia, and then they'd have people that were from the mushroom paoli which was, I think it's the center of mushrooms in the United States. And then they'd have you know, your normal city folks that would come out to the Riddle Paddock. And all these people would hang there, and it was a real bar atmosphere, and people would come in every single night to hear Jim play. And ... because most of the time he wouldn't repeat a song. You know, he had a repertoire of over 3,000 songs. So they would come, I mean, many of them got to know Jim and me pretty well, and they'd come and tell stories about – or you'd know stories about who wasn't with someone that night, and so Jim would always sing a special song for them. And I think that part of that story is kind of engaged in "Operator," where people would kind of break the relationship up. And we never knew who would go into the Paddock that night, because if Jim was playing they wouldn't want to see each other. So that's one of those sad kind of stories. And I think that anybody can relate – everybody has to have their heart broken at least once or twice before they have a real relationship. And I think it kind of relates to that as well. So you can imagine how many operators over the years for the last 33 years – actually 35 years – have said to me, "Are you any relation?" Or "I will call," and you know, you don't get in touch with operators very much any more, but in the olden days when you'd call up and you'd say, "Can you help me?" "Oh, what's the name?" I said, "Well, my name is Croce." "Like in Jim? Like in Jim? Oh, we just love that 'Operator.' Hey Sadie, this is Ingrid Croce – you know, Jim Croce's widow. And oh, we just love that song so much. He wrote it for us, we know he did, so ..." I mean, from every aspect the song is truly Americana. And I think it really hits our gen ... well, all generations. But certainly that one, you know. So that's my story about "Operator."
SF: That's a great story.
Ingrid: There's lots of them. Was it "Bad Leroy Brown" you had asked me about...
SF: I would like to know about "Leroy Brown" certainly.
Ingrid: You may not know this – Jim 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 for a really... in a really kind of shady area down in south and west Philadelphia. And he used to go to some of these pool halls to sell the air time, because it wasn't a very good neighborhood. And I think Froofy was the name of the guy that he had tried to sell some air time to. But in the meantime 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, he was one of the guys who used to play pool there. And that's really the story behind it, is that he used to hang out at these bars, or not just bars, but 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. So that was really how he got to know it. And 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. And 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, again, that he kind of put the story together. I think that often in Jim's songs there's a composite situation. But when he sat down to write, which I think is really important for you, is that usually the song would come out altogether. I mean, 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 two 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. And 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. So this particular song, "You Don't Mess Around With Jim," "Time In A Bottle," let's see... most of the songs from the first album, probably about 1/3 to half the songs on the first album that Jim did came out as the result. It was 1971, and we had just moved back from New York, which was the song "New York's Not My Home," and we had moved into a little farmhouse. And we had really no money to live on, we'd left New York very discouraged that our music hadn't made it on our first album. And so Jim got a job driving truck and I was doing pottery in a little farmhouse. And so one day we found out that we were going to have a son. Well, we didn't know it was a son. And Jim's background was such that he had to be very responsible, a really strong Italian family with the eldest son to the eldest son had some responsibility to kind of be an example. So we found out that we were going to have a child, he realized it was his last chance to make it in the music business. And he sat down at the table and he wrote "Time In A Bottle," and "You Don't Mess Around With Jim," and at least two or three other songs from the first album. And put them all down on one little cassette and sent them out, and that was the beginning of his career, really, in terms of songwriting and acceptability and acknowledgement and celebrity. So songs can come - songs can change people's lives, whether they're writing them or they're listening to them.
SF: Are Leroy Brown and the Jim from "Don't Mess Around With Jim" the same guy?
Ingrid: No, no. Leroy Brown is a guy that he actually met. In fact, we've had many Leroy Browns come into... I mean, they were really Leroy Brown, which is quite funny. I have a lot of staff members that come up to me and say, "You know what, there's a guy named Leroy Brown, he kind of looks like the part. And he's sitting at our bar right now." I say, "Well, I'll be glad to come over and say hi." But there's so many Leroy Browns who have come up to me and said, "I'm sure I'm the one he was talking about." But he had met a guy when he was in the service – again, National Guard – and this guy had gone AWOL. He was a guy that Jim kind of related to, he liked to sing with him. But this guy had gone AWOL but he came back to get his paycheck.
SF: Oh my gosh.
Ingrid: And he got caught. And Jim just thought he was such a funny guy that he thought he'd include his name in the song, and it just worked.
SF: Was his name really Leroy Brown?
Ingrid: Yes, it was.
SF: Oh, wow.
Ingrid: Yeah, there really was a Leroy Brown. And, you know, sometimes having a name helps you to build a song around it, you know.
SF: So "Don't Mess Around With Jim" is Jim Walker?
Ingrid: Yep, Big Jim Walker.
SF: All right. One song that Jim didn't write, but I always wondered how he ended up recording it, was "I Got A Name."
Ingrid: Well, actually, it was for a movie. I think it was "The Last American Hero." It was written by Norman Gimbel and Charles Fox. And they were wonderful guys, really nice people. Jim had been selected to sing this song for this particular movie. I'm just thinking about it, and Beau Bridges was in it. And so Jim went into the studio, it was really unusual because he used to sing everybody's songs. He loved to sing everything from the Beatles to Bessie Smith, you name it. But he really enjoyed this opportunity, because he went into the recording studio and it was a little awkward for him not to hold his guitar – his guitar is kind of like a bar for the bartender, having that prop between him and the audience was just a real security. It made him feel very comfortable. So putting down the guitar to sing, just to sing the song in the studio, was a very unusual thing for Jim. And he thoroughly enjoyed it. It was a brand new start for him in some ways, you know, to use his vocals in a different way. And even for me, I think it's one of the most powerful songs he does on that album for sure. I loved it. And so he just really loved the song, they used it for the movie, and more people think he wrote that song. And you'd be surprised, most people don't separate - because Jim's music, his songs were so - he made them hits, whether he sang something from the '30s or '40s or he sang one of his own. First of all his voice was so unique - the timbre in his tone and his warmth and his generosity, everything came through that voice. So when he took a song, he'd make it his own, and I think he did a great job with "I've Got A Name." So many people like to think of Jim with that song that I hate to tell them it isn't his.
SF: Yeah, but somehow he got selected to sing it.
Ingrid: Exactly.
SF: Somebody decided...
Ingrid: Exactly... exactly.
SF: Ingrid, I really do appreciate your time. I told you I'd take about 20 minutes here, so I'm going to honor that because I know you're very busy.
Ingrid: Well, you know, it's wonderful, because people need to have these songs in their lives. And the younger generation – now it's three generations – are coming into Croce's and telling me how much Jim changed their life, or this song changed their life. Of course once they walk in and see the photos, it's kind of fun. It's a wonderful tribute, because Jim was just such a hospitable person, he loved to give to people. Very generous, so this is a great tribute. And I thank you so much for putting his music on your site.
Learn more about Jim, Ingrid and Croce's Restaurant & Jazz Bar at croces.com.
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