You Don't Tug on Superman's Cape
The muggy North Carolina air hangs heavy as I find my seat at the 400 seat Cary Arts Center. I'm just in time to hear AJ Croce finish his opening announcements,
"... and I'll try my best to project my voice for everyone there in the back.
I haven't done this since I was a kid, trying to sing loud enough to convince passersby on the street to duck into an empty barroom.
And if you know the words help me out and sing along!"
And with that, AJ Croce begins flawlessly mashing the flawless keys of a Steinway Model D grand piano. A virtuosic whirlwind of clattering ivory stands in place of the instantly recognizable opening bass line of You Don't Mess Around with Jim.
The bowery got its bums
42nd Street got Big Jim Walker
He's a pool-shootin' son of a gun
Tonight's show is going to be memorable.
Not just because AJ's father is one of my most beloved songwriters. I have all three of Jim Croce's studio albums on vinyl & I'm getting close to wearing the grooves off them.
No, tonight is going to be memorable because tonight's show is going to be a fully unplugged acoustic set.
But not by choice.
Just before showtime the theater lost electricity. No microphones. No amps. No air conditioning. The only illumination of the stage provided by the feeble glow of a handful of emergency lights.
Despite the spartan setting, AJ's treatment of You Don't Mess Around with Jim is a rollicking romp, supported by a few hundred mostly septuagenarian backup singers who know most of the verses and every word of the chorus. It feels like we're all sitting around a campfire, belting out singalongs. I'm just waiting for someone to pass me a bottle of whiskey.
Of the hundreds of shows I've attended in my 34 years I can honestly say this is among the most unique.
You don't spit into the wind
You don't pull the mask off the old Lone Ranger
And you don't mess around with Jim
From the sound of the crowd, a few of my fellow patrons were unawares of the cuttin' that was done on Big Jim by a South Alabama country boy named Willie McCoy. A man known to anybody who's darkened the door of a smoky pool hall simply as Slim.
After a (relatively) rowdy ovation, AJ steps up from the piano and begins regaling us with the backstory of the next song.
"Dad was in the Army before I was born and at base they
had a bank of pay phones so all the GIs could call their sweethearts.
Now the last booth in the row had a busted door, and dad, being a young aspiring songwriter, recognized this for the goldmine that it was. Because dad said that every songwriter knows that there's no better theme for a song... than another person's tragedy."
As the laughter subsides AJ steps back to the piano and cozies up to the opening chords of "Operator."
Oh, could you help me place this call?
You see the number on the matchbook
Is old and faded
She's livin' in LA
With my best old ex-friend Ray
A guy she said she knew well and sometimes hated
The crowd isn't as familiar with the verses as they were with Jim but as the first chorus comes around the entire audience swells in unison to meet AJ right outside that Army base phone booth.
Sometimes in life you have those moments that completely sweep you away and connect you to an emotion that you can't describe but don't want to end.
This is one of those moments.
It sounds dramatic but I absolutely adore Jim Croce. I can't think of any other way to describe this moment than magical.
But let's forget all that
And give me the number if you can find it
So I can call just to tell 'em I'm fine
And to show I've overcome the blow
I've learned to take it well
I only wish my words could just convince myself
That it just wasn't real
But that's not the way it feels
Oh Jim, I wish I had the words to express the way it feels. And I wish you could see the marvelous talent your sweet little boy has grown into.
Time in a Bottle
Adrian James Croce was born on the 28th of September, 1971, the son of Jim and Ingrid Croce. While his father is well known for his songs chronicling mid-century Americana via blue-collar eccentrics lurking in pool halls, truck stops, and the grittier fringes of society, his mother was no slouch in the musical department. Jim & Ingrid toured as a duo for a few years in the late '60s, releasing a record in 1969.
When news arrived that Ingrid was pregnant with AJ, she decided to settle down and Jim dedicated himself wholeheartedly to his musical career. Immediately after learning he was to be a father, Jim penned Time in a Bottle, a song about the unending love he felt for Ingrid & his son-to-be.
The first thing that I'd like to do
Is to save every day till eternity passes away
Just to spend them with you
Six months after AJ was born, Jim released his first solo record, You Don't Mess Around with Jim. His sophomore effort, Life & Times, released in the summer of 1973, earned him two nominations at the 1974 Grammys.
That summer, Bad, Bad Leroy Brown, the second single from Life & Times reached #1 on the American charts. With a European tour already under his belt, and appearances on American Bandstand, The Tonight Show, and The Dick Cavett Show to come later that summer, Jim Croce's star was beginning to rise.
Then on September 20, 1973, while touring the record and just 8 days shy of AJ's second birthday, the plane carrying Jim Croce and his band crashed shortly after taking off from Natichitoches, Louisiana. All on board were killed instantly. Jim Croce was just 30 years old.
That day the American songbook lost one of its greatest poets.
If words could make wishes come true
I'd save every day like a treasure and then
Again, I would spend them with you
Unfortunately this was just the first of many cruel blows life was to deal AJ. At the tender age of 4, his mother's new boyfriend beat him so horrifically that it left him blind. "It was a very dark and violent period in my life, and it was very traumatic." During those years he found solace and escape through music. "I sat at the piano, I played along to the radio, whatever was on my little transistor radio, whether it was ELO or McCartney or Stones or Elton John." Eventually regaining sight in his left eye at the age of ten, he never lost his passion for the piano and songwriting.
For the first few decades of his career AJ avoided his father's music, choosing to make his own way as a musician. "There were times when maybe as a teenager where it was a little bit hard to get around the shadow of my father. People had asked me to record my father's music since I was 16, 17 years old, and I really was not interested." Asked if having success on his own terms was liberating, AJ had a one word reply, "absolutely."
His relationship with the Jim Croce catalog began to change about a dozen years ago, when he began digitizing his father's recordings. One old casette contained a bar performance of his old man playing blues riffs by artists such as Mississippi John Hurt, Sonny Terry & Brownie McGhee, and Blind Blake. AJ was amazed because these were the same artists that he been playing since he was a youngster, completely unaware of the shared influence with his father.
Speaking of the sparse memories he has of his father, AJ says "You know, I have this memory of the warmth of embrace, you know? And while it’s not visual for me, it’s palpable." After 25 years of trying to escape his father's considerable musical shadow, AJ realized that it wasn't a shadow at all, but a warm, loving embrace. AJ has since begun to work his father's music into his performances, delighting in the joy it brings audiences. On this tour, Croce Plays Croce, AJ blends beloved Jim Croce classics and his own original songs with tunes that influenced both of them.
After decades of establishing himself as a musician and coming to grips as the son of a famous father he never knew, AJ endured yet another biblical-level tragedy. In 2018 he lost his beloved wife Marlo of 24 years suddenly & unexpectedly of a rare heart virus. Through this unimaginable heartache he displayed the remarkable stoicism that has helped him navigate life's tribulations and defined his approach to the human experience.
"When we lose someone we love, whether it was my father, my wife, my sight, we can decide how we want to bring it into our life. Do we want to dwell on it? Do we want to find the best part of that person, that experience, and keep it with us?"
And dreams that had never come true
The box would be empty
Except for the memory
Of how they were answered by you
By Request
After Operator AJ dives into a piano riff that's not quite ragtime, not quite funk, but undeniably raucous. We're lucky the fire department is in the building checking on the power because AJ's piano is liable to combust at any second.
After a good 5 minutes of grand piano gas that could make your shoulders bob in a straitjacket, AJ and the band slide into Billy Preston's Nothing From Nothing. AJ accompanies what Preston called "saloon piano" with a foot stomp that deftly substitutes for a bass drum all night. Fun fact: Nothing from Nothing was the first song ever played on SNL. Keep that in your mind palace for your next trivia night.
Before the next tune, a cover of Sam Cooke's Nothing Can Change This Love, AJ tells a story from the early days of his touring career. Floyd Dixon, an aficionado of a musical style called jump blues, tapped AJ to open for him at the youthful age of 16 (Before his 21st birthday AJ would have toured with the likes of Ray Charles, BB King, Taj Mahal, Aretha Franklin, the Neville Brothers, and Willie Nelson).
AJ recounts a story about an infamous night Floyd spent with Sam Cooke & Ray Charles. As Floyd told it, the three of them were out all night, burning the candle at both ends. Now, Floyd was the author of the booze-soaked blues classic Hey Bartender, so you ain't gotta be Hercule Poirot to deduce the condition they were in by the wee hours of the morning.
At this point I'm just going to recommend you see AJ in concert to hear the rest of the story. The way these three amigos got the car home is worth the price of admission.
AJ's performance of Cooke's soul ballad is unsurprisingly breathtaking. This song, along with many of the covers he plays tonight can be found on his 2021 album By Request. His first record after the tragic loss of his wife, it's a cathartic trip down memory lane. The title refers to songs that he's frequently played at the request of friends & family during late night soirées he & Marlo hosted. The twelve songs on the record are some of his favorite crowd pleasers. As a testament to his diverse musical interests and protean skill, the record is listed under the genres of Rock, Latin, Funk / Soul, Pop, Folk, World, & Country.
In his own words: "There are few parts of American music that haven’t influenced me at one time or another. Fats Waller, James P. Johnson, Ray Charles, Mose Allison, the Band, Woody Guthrie, Hank Williams, Memphis Slim, Tom Waits. I just like music in general."
Life & Times
The middle section of the show features a few hits from his father's anthology. The audience sings along to Roller Derby Queen and Workin' at the Carwash Blues, assisted by the booming voice of bassist David Barard. After the latter ditty, AJ regales the audience of his old man's penchant for lengthy song titles, nothing the original title was I Got Them Steadily Depressin', Low Down, Mind Messin', Workin' at the Carwash Blues. The executives at ABC Records decided that the abridged title would fit better on a record sleeve.
AJ then hops off the piano bench and grabs a guitar for an intimate rendition of One Last Set of Footsteps
That should have never gone this far
But after all it's what we've done
That makes us what we are
But tomorrow's a dream away
And today has turned to dust
Your silver tongue has turned to clay
And your golden rule to rust
If that's the way that you want it
Oh that's the way I want it more
Cause baby one less set of footsteps
On your floor in the mornin'
At the conclusion of this heartrending breakup song, AJ takes a moment to chronicle a bit of history about his dad's band. In the early days of his solo career, Jim Croce met a young musical virtuoso named Maury Muehelsen. Classically trained in piano, Maury picked up the guitar at the age of 17 and quickly became a sensation in the music world. Jim originally wanted Maury to back him up on guitar but soon promoted Maury to lead guitar despite his meager 22 trips around the sun.
While Maury was a world class talent, his reserved demeanor engendered a reluctance for the spotlight. Letting Jim assume the role of frontman was just fine by him. When their plane went down on that fateful day in September, Maury was just 24 years old. So every guitar lick - from the hard charging riffs of Rapid Roy (The Stock Car Boy), to the tender, lithesome finger picking of I'll Have to Say I Love You in a Song - was laid down by a man not yet old enough to rent a car.
AJ's denouement to the story reveals the mind bending fact that his dad's entire catalog was written, recorded, and toured in a span of 18 months.
Audible gasps are heard throughout the theater. Including one from yours truly.
Rapid Roy (The Stockcar Boy)
In a musical nod to Maury, AJ's lead guitarist James Pennebaker lays into the rock & roll riff from Rapid Roy that you'd assume sprang from the fretboard of Chuck Berry.
He's too much to believe
You know he always got an extra pack of cigarettes
Rolled up in his t-shirt sleeve
He got a tattoo on his arm that say "baby"
He got another one that just say "hey"
But every Sunday afternoon he is a dirt track demon
In a '57 chevrolet
Swap out the '57 Chevrolet for a '17 Nissan and you've got a pretty good idea what my drive to the show tonight was like. Unlike Rapid Roy, who drove so fast because he was runnin' 'shine outta Alabam', my white knuckle automotive demonry came down to a simple case of careless time management.
The day started on a snaky stretch of road near my office, collecting trash with some coworkers in honor of Earth Day (I'm still waiting on a call from the folks at the Goldman Environmental Prize). We gathered 4 vodka bottles, 2 tequila bottles, dozens of cans of malted beverages of questionable quality, a piece of a bumper, a metal chair, and piles of broken glass, potato chip bags, and various other pieces of general flotsam.
Workin' on the chain gang
All day long they work so hard
Till the sun is goin' down
Working on the highways and byways
And wearin', wearin' a frown
After sticking around for pizza, beer, and a few games of ping pong, my only pre-show errand was down the road a piece in Chapel Hill. There I would pick up my race packet for the Tar Heel 10 Miler tomorrow that I foolishly signed up for with some friends.
On the way I couldn't help but notice the climbing gym on my route so I ducked in for a few quick routes. A few quick routes turned into many after I bumped into a friend. One particularly precarious route almost ended my race before it began when my heel hook got a little too hooked and yanked my hip joint around in its socket as I ejected from the wall.
Limping out of the gym I offhandedly glance at the time. 5:57 PM. Some quick mental math reveals I've nonchalantly gotten myself in quite a pickle - half hour to Chapel Hill, another half hour home, then 30 more minutes to the 7:30 show. Not much wiggle room I've left myself.
To do the things you want to do
Once you find them
I step on it to Chapel Hill, grab my race packet, and zip home, scarfing down a couple slices of leftover pie and weaving through traffic like Speedball Tucker, terror of the highway & all them other truckers.
He said, "Driver, you been flyin'
And 95 is the route you was on
It was not the speed limit sign"
I pull up to my apartment and from the time I park, run inside, shower, change, and run back out to the car all of 10 minutes have passed. That's gotta be some sort of record.
My ETA to the Cary Arts Center is exactly 7:30. Anticipating the demographics of the audience, I imagine they'll start pretty much on time. Say what you will about the elderly but they are punctual.
Just as the clock strikes half past 7 I pull up to the Cary Arts Center to a throng of seniors gathered on the theater steps like high school hoodlums from a James Dean flick. Well at least I haven't missed the start of the show.
I have a hell of a time finding parking, finally finding a single vacant spot at the elementary school down the road. I wander up to the crowd and ask a group of folks what's going on.
"Power's out. No lights, no A/C."
"Oh dang, have they said what the plan is?"
"They got some generators running but they only power the emergency lights, still waiting to hear what they are going to do."
"Well hell."
As I begin to mull about, I notice a gathering of food trucks and tents a few blocks down the road. Since I have nothing better to do I set off to investigate.
As I'm waiting to cross the street I meet a friendly couple who assumes that nobody my age could possibly be going to the AJ Croce concert.
"Do you want a ticket to this show tonight?"
"Oh I already have a ticket. Two actually, I couldn't convince any of my friends to come."
"Oh ok, we think we might just head home, we saw him last fall and don't feel like sitting in a theater with no A/C. We're glad we got to see him last fall, he was fabulous!"
I was hoping to attend that show in Durham but was unfortunately out of town. But I don't care if they run the heat on full blast tonight I'm not missing this show. For now I stroll down to the Cary Night Market to find an assortment of food trucks and local artists vending their wares.
I wander 'round the market, then up to the old main street of Cary before making an about face back to the theater. As I get closer I see the gang of elderly miscreants has dispersed from the theater stairs. Either the show is going on or we've been postponed/canceled. Only one way to find out.
Rollin' On
About an hour into the show AJ shouts 9 words that engage a subconscious reflex deep within my soul that results in a primal yawp that some in the audience may have mistaken for a fire alarm.
"These next two songs I co-wrote with Leon Russell"
I almost leap out of my seat and hit the ceiling in a ferocious ball of excitement. I thought there was no way this night could have possibly gotten more magical and now we have a collaboration with Cousin AJ & Uncle Leon??
In the (approximate) words of AJ,
"After playing a few shows with Leon he asks me one night,
'Hey I hear your old man played music too'
'Yeah, he had some pretty big hits back in the early '70s, "Bad Bad LeRoy Brown, "You Don't Mess Around With Jim", "Operator"?'
'Ah ok'
...He had never heard any of them
But a few weeks later he calls me and says 'hey, I'd like to write some songs with you, send me some music and I'll write the lyrics'
"So that afternoon I put down a groove & send it to Leon and he comes back with about 15 verses, 3 or 4 options for the chorus, and a couple different choices for the bridge.
In about an hour.
So I talk with my producer and I say, 'how am I supposed to record this, it would be a 20 minute song!'
And he says, 'yeah that's just what Leon does, find the story and we'll record that'
So I picked out the parts of the song that spoke to me and this is what we ended up with. I wrote the music, Leon wrote the lyrics, except for the chorus, which is pretty simple, it's "just keep rollin' on", so when we get there I'll need your help singing it."
So we oblige, singin' along to the chorus while breaking open another pack of 'mallows 'round the fire.
The end of Rollin' On smoothly blends into another original tune. Judgement Day is a genre-bending cyclone, tossing turn of the century Gospel lyrics into a roiling stew of fast-paced Latin salsa piano. AJ is like a man possessed on the keys, his drummer Gary Mallaber keeping time on the snare and cymbal.
Oh Lord, can't you see the people
Oh Lord, can't you see the people
They standin' for their judgement
They gonna get tried
I Got A Name
With the show winding down AJ breaks into another original tune called The Time Is Up. After the first chorus he leans over from the piano for a quick aside, "don't worry, the time isn't up just yet, we have a few more songs left."
A few songs come and go and AJ has one more story to tell. Once again we're back at the home of AJ & Marlo Croce, late in the night at one of their famous fêtes.
"Marlo and I loved hosting our friends, it brought us so much joy to entertain the people we adored late into the night. Sometimes too late! But everyone here who's hosted a party knows there gets to be a point in the night when you just want to shout 'ok this has been fun, but can all of you get the hell out of my house!' This song, So Much Fun is about that point in the night."
Party favors passed around
I got a few friends
Who burn at both ends
Until they come crashing down
They ride rails til the wheels fall off
And everybody’s out of blow
It’s so much fun to see ‘em come
But man it’s good to see ‘em go
As the song wraps up the band takes a bow and ducks behind the curtain. Since we find ourselves in such a bizarre concert situation and the audience averaging twice my age I'm dubious of the prospects for an encore. But as much as I have been ribbing my more experienced concert comrades I have to respect their dedication. Despite the show starting an hour late and it likely being way past many of their bedtimes (sorry, I couldn't help myself) the crowd rises to their feet for a full standing ovation.
The band isn't behind the curtain long before emerging for one last song.
AJ thanks the audience and tells a quick story,
"Thank you all again for coming out tonight and bearing with us. I have to say this is one of the weirdest shows I've ever performed. Special. But weird.
This last song we'll play for you is actually the only song of my dad's that I've recorded myself. There's an interesting throughline that ties the two recordings. The original song was written by a guy by the name of Charlie Fox, who wrote it as the theme song for a stock car racing movie called The Last American Hero. The song that I recorded was used in a Goodyear commercial with a stock car racer some of you might have heard of, Dale Earnhardt Jr.
It's a song that reminds me, every time I think of it, every time I play it, that everything in this world is connected. And I think that's beautiful."
As James Pennebaker's pick strums once across the strings I instantly notice the tune. It's my Jim Croce gateway drug. The song that led me to superfandom. I Got A Name. The first time I heard this hypnotic melody was in a movie theater, during a screening of Django Unchained. About halfway through the flick Tarantino shoots a montage of Jamie Foxx and Christoph Waltz ahorseback, galloping in slow motion below snow capped peaks.
The needle dropped on the song (literally - Tarantino actually used a vinyl record from his collection for this scene) and I immediately thought to myself "holy shit, who the hell is belting out this angelic tune?"
I wasn't 2 steps out of the theater before I looked up the song. I Got A Name, Jim Croce. Oh, Jim Croce? Isn't he the LeRoy Brown guy? I should listen to more of his songs.
I've got a name, I've got a name
Like the singin bird and the croakin' toad
I've got a name, I've got a name
Ever since that day at the movies I've been enamored with Jim Croce. I started with the hits, your Don't Mess Around with Jims, your LeRoy Browns, and have since dug into the deep cuts. Do I have a favorite song? I wouldn't say so, it's more of how I'm feeling at the time. Right now, for whatever reason, I find myself in a Box #10 kind of mood.
AJ reaches the first chorus,
But I'm livin' the dream that he kept hid
Movin' me down the highway
Rollin' me down the highway
Movin' ahead so life won't pass me by
And the emotions return. This time mostly gratitude for the opportunity to spend a strange, intimate, magical evening with the son of one of my musical heroes.
In that moment I think to myself, AJ is absolutely right.
Everything is connected.
And it is beautiful.