JIM CROCE
PHOTOGRAPHS & MEMORIES – HIS GREATEST HITS
Original 1974 album liner notes
SIDE 1
AL 35010
(LS 5000 AS)
1. BAD, BAD LEROY BROWN 3:02
2. OPERATOR (That’s Not The Way It Feels) 3:45
3. PHOTOGRAPHS & MEMORIES 2:03
4. RAPID ROY (THE STOCK CAR BOY) 2:40
5. TIME IN A BOTTLE 2:24
6. NEW YORK’S NOT MY HOME 3:05
7. WORKIN’ AT THE CAR WASH BLUES 2:29
- Jim Croce -
SIDE 2
BL 35010
(LS 5000 BS)
1. I GOT A NAME 3:09
- C. Fox - N. Gimbel -
2. I’LL HAVE TO SAY I LOVE YOU IN A SONG 2:28
- Jim Croce -
3. YOU DON’T MESS AROUND WITH JIM 3:00
- Jim Croce -
4. LOVER’S CROSS 2:03
- Jim Croce -
5. ONE LESS SET OF FOOTSTEPS 2:46
- Jim Croce -
6. THESE DREAMS 3:12
- Jim Croce -
7. ROLLER DERBY QUEEN 3:28
- Jim Croce -
All songs written by JIM CROCE except “I Got A Name” written by CHARLES FOX and NORMAN GIMBEL
Music Publisher for JIM CROCE songs: Blendingwell Music, Inc. (ASCAP)
Music Publisher for “I Got A Name”: Fox Fanfare Music Inc. (BMI)
Strings arranged by PETE DINO on: “Photographs & Memories”, “New York’s Not My Home”, “These Dreams”
Strings arranged by TERENCE P. MINOGUE on: “I Got A Name”, “I’ll Have To Say I Love You In A Song”, “Workin’ At The Car Wash Blues”
Lead Guitar on all cuts by MAURY MUEHLEISEN except for “Roller Derby Queen” by DAVID SPINOZA
Produced by TERRY CASHMAN and TOMMY WEST for Cashwest Productions, Inc.
Recording Engineer: BRUCE TERGESEN
Recorded at THE HIT FACTORY, N.Y.C.
The acoustic guitar strings used by Jim Croce and Maury Muehleisen are LSR STRINGS
Jim Croce Photographs by BENNO FRIEDMAN
Adrian Croce Photograph by PAUL WILSON
Art Direction & Design by ROBERT L. HEIMALL
I once dared Jim Croce to sing “Okie from Muskogee” for me and he accepted, but put it off ‘til the next day. I never saw him again, and never heard him sing it.
And in wading through the all-too-few old tapes and film clips of Jim performing, no “Okie from Muskogee” appeared. With very few exceptions, Jim was a singer of his own songs. At least that’s the recorded record. Yet in time, I think he would have turned away from his own material – as he started to do on “I GOT A NAME” – and drawn more upon all the other music he knew so well.
There would have been “Okie from Muskogee,” which he loved, and joked about using to quell rowdies on the country circuit, and Fats Waller’s “You Ain’t the Only Oyster in the Stew,” and Jimmy Rodgers’ “California Blues” and George M. Cohan tunes and the pop hits of the 50s, like “Poison Ivy” and “Charlie Brown” – songs from which “Bad, Bad Leroy Brown” derives. But “Leroy Brown” also drew upon the classic blues “Stagalee,” and Jim knew those black blues, too.
That Jim was a warm, engaging singer is obvious. I think in time he would have emerged as a sensitive interpreter of other writers’ songs, as well. Jim was prouder of the songbook he kept at home than any of his other accomplishments. Jammed inside it were pages and pages of songs, and notes scribbled in the margins, material ranging from the early Appalachian and Childs ballads to jazz tunes he heard last year. That book wasn’t glamorous and it will never be a bestseller, but it says more about Jim Croce than anything else could.
He was an encyclopedist and a musical historian, and while his specialty was the broad spectrum of American music, his curiosity embraced Japanese haiku and African tribal chants.
Shortly after Jim’s death, one writer labeled him a “populist” songwriter. I like that; it fits. Jim had all the humanity, empathy, occasional self-indulgence and touches of impracticality that Populism once stood for. He wrote about the people he worked with, and his neighbors – and yours and mine – and he reported in song just what he saw. His observations took in isolation and loneliness in “Operator,” sentimentality and romance in “Time In A Bottle,” and rough-house camaraderie in “Rapid Roy” and “Leroy Brown.”
Jim was a wonderful storyteller, both in his songs and in his routines between them. He was charming, but I sometimes brood about what he was hiding behind those funny stories. I still feel the jolt I got a couple of months after his death, when I really listened for the first time to the lyrics of “The Hard Way Every Time,” which he wrote in the last year of his life:
And in chasin’ what I thought were moonbeams
I have run into a couple of walls…
But in looking back at the faces I’ve been
I would sure be the first one to say
When I look at myself today
Wouldn’ta done it any other way.*
The hard way every time: right up to Sept. 20, 1973. The music he created – these songs, for a sample – is absolutely honest, and that is the hardest way for any artist. I just wish Jim were here, chuckling over his success, telling new stories – or even those same old ones – and singing some of his favorite songs for us.
By JOSH MILLS
* Copyright © 1973, 1974 Blendingwell Music, Inc. (ASCAP)
USED BY PERMISSION
STEREO
Lifesong Records, Inc.
488 Madison Avenue
New York, N.Y. 10022
© 1974 Cashwest Productions, Inc./ (P) 1972, 1973, 1974 Cashwest Productions, Inc./ 488 Madison Avenue, New York City 10022/ Distributed by CBS Records/ CBS Inc./ 51 W. 52 Street, New York, N.Y. WARNING: All rights reserved. Unauthorized duplication is a violation of applicable laws.
JZ 35010
These selections have been previously issued.
