| Home Recordings: Americana - Jim Croce | |
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Reviewed by Kathy Coleman
My very earliest memory of hearing Jim Croce's name was watching some awards show with my parents in early 1974, where Ingrid Croce came on to accept an award for her late husband, and my parents commenting that he'd only won because he died. Croce wasn't an artist played in my house because we listened pretty much only to country music, and at that time, I didn't know about the tight connection between rock, folk, and country. I did know the song "Bad Bad Leroy Brown," but didn't know who the singer was.
I discovered Croce's music in high school, when a friend of mine lent me Photographs and Memories. By that time I already knew the song "Time in a Bottle," and I fell in love with Croce's liquid-gold voice and warm lyrics. I still didn't think of him as a country singer. Folk-pop, at best, but as music has evolved, "folk pop" of Croce's style has become pure Americana, music which is so closely folk-blues-country-rock that you can't really tell where it belongs.
Croce's wife and son, A.J., have unearthed and packaged up some reel-to-reel tapes he left behind. Home Recordings: Americana is 15 of those songs, the very first unreleased Croce material to surface in 30 years. The sound isn't perfect. Some of the tunes have a scratchy, old-timey feel to them. It's not polished and produced. It's a man sitting at his kitchen table with his guitar just singing songs he likes. And as I listened, I discovered to my surprise that Jim Croce was, indeed, a country music singer.
Hearing Jim's voice sing country classics like "Cigarettes, Whiskey, and Wild Wild Women" and "In The Jailhouse Now" is a treat. His take on the Harlan Howard-penned/Johnny Cash classic "The Wall" is remarkable. He sings Lefty Frizzell's "Mom And Dad's Waltz," Dave Dudley's "Six Days on the Road" (with original, non-P.C. lyrics) and Haggard's "Mama Tried." Along with these are old-time blues numbers "Nobody Loves A Fat Girl," "You Oughta See Pickles Now" and "Who Will Buy The Wine."
It's always been a tremendous tragedy that the music world lost Jim Croce just as he was about to break out as a true superstar. I look back and realize my parents were wrong, he didn't win that award just because of his passing. This man was a true genius, and it's impossible to say where he would have gone with his style and his music as the 70's and 80's moved along. Into rock? Or further country? As is, he is, of course, an artist preserved in amber; the artist who gave us "Time in a Bottle" has been saved that way himself, forever 30 years old and on the brink of stardom, but legendary because of an untimely plane crash and a "might have been." But his talent is unmistakable and the power of these recordings are not diminished by the years nor old recording media.
For lovers of pure roots music at its best, this is a must-have album. It's beautiful, timeless,
and as pure as music can get.
Song List:
Album cover, used with permission of Shout Entertainment.
Sound clips courtesy of Barnes & Noble
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