Ask anyone to name a Jim Croce song, and most people will likely mention “Bad, Bad Leroy Brown”. The song, his first No. 1 single, came out in 1973. It is part of Life And Times, Croce’s fourth studio album.
The chorus of “Bad, Bad Leroy Brown” says, “And it’s bad, bad Leroy Brown / The baddest man in the whole damned town / Badder than old King Kong / And meaner than a junkyard dog.” While it may seem like the song is a fictitious tale, Croce later reveals that the story is based on someone’s own life, who really was named Leroy Brown.
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“I met him at Fort Dix, New Jersey,” Croce recalls. “We were in lineman school together. He stayed there about a week. And one evening, he turned around and said he was really fed up and tired. He went AWOL, and then came back at the end of the month to get his paycheck. They put handcuffs on him and took him away. Just to listen to him talk and see how ‘bad’ he was, I knew someday I was gonna write a song about him.”
The Story Behind “Bad, Bad Leroy Brown” by Jim Croce
In a separate interview, Croce’s wife, Ingrid Croce, shares more of the details of “Bad, Bad Leroy Brown.
“Leroy Brown is a guy that he actually met,” she tells Songfacts. “When he was in the service – The National Guard – this guy had gone AWOL. He was a guy that Jim kind of related to; he liked to sing with him. This guy had gone AWOL, but he came back to get his paycheck, and he got caught. Jim just thought he was such a funny guy that he thought he’d include his name in the song, and it just worked. There really was a Leroy Brown, and sometimes having a name helps you to build a song around it.”
“Bad, Bad Leroy Brown” gave Croce his only two Grammy nominations. Sadly, Croce didn’t get to see the massive success of “Bad, Bad Leroy Brown” or his other hit singles. Croce passed away on September 20, 1973, in an airplane crash.
Surprisingly, Croce went on to have several other posthumous hit singles. Shortly after Croce’s untimely death, “Time In A Bottle” was released. That song, from his 1972 You Don’t Mess Around With Jim album, became a two-week No. 1 single.
In 1973, Croce had his final posthumous chart-topping single, with “I’ll Have To Say I Love You In A Song”.
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