On September 20, 1973, the music world lost one of its greatest voices in folk music. Folk and soft rock musician Jim Croce was tragically killed on this very day in a plane crash at the age of only 30 years old.
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Earlier that fateful night, the “Bad, Bad Leroy Brown” singer had performed at Northwest College. The concert was infamously sparse and didn’t attract a big crowd. Bobby Riggs and Billie Jean King were performing a highly anticipated show during the same timeslot. Few got to witness Croce’s final performance as a result.
After wrapping up the concert, Jim Croce and some of his fellow musicians boarded a plane. That plane soon crashed into a runway after clipping a nearby tree. The accident claimed the lives of six people, including Croce and his guitarist and close friend, Maury Muehleisen.
Croce was already on the up-and-up as a musician and had enjoyed a number of charting hits in the US. Several months after his death, his posthumous song “Time In A Bottle” hit No. 1. And his posthumous album I Got A Name hit No. 2 on the Billboard 200.
Jim Croce’s Legacy as One of the Finest Acts of the 1970s Lives On
Jim Croce’s popularity didn’t cease for some time after his untimely death. After I Got A Name, the live album Jim Croce Live: The Final Tour was released in 1989, following years of demand from fans for unreleased music. That particular album was recorded mere months before Croce passed, specifically during the summer of 1973.
Additional recordings, namely demos, were released on the 2003 effort Home Recordings: Americana, along with a DVD full of live footage of Croce’s performances titled Have You Heard: Jim Croce Live. The Lost Recordings was later released in 2013, along with a laundry list of compilation albums from the mid-70s through the 2010s that feature Croce. Croce’s widow, Ingrid, wrote a book about him as well.
Jim Croce was beloved by many for his impeccable songwriting. And, ironically or possibly through some sort of cosmic knowingness, “Time In A Bottle” focused on themes of mortality and wishing to have more time. Croce is still missed to this day, and I can only imagine how far he could have gone as a musician if he had not passed on so young.
Photo by Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images
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