by Ingrid Croce
Tommy finally called in August.
“I’ve got some good news,” he said, “not quite the response on the songs I had hoped for. But Phillips, a record company out of Holland, wants to record an album.”
“Great!” Jim said. “What’s that mean in dollars?”
“Well, we don’t have a distribution deal in the States yet, but they did put up some ‘good faith’ money. I’m sending you an advance that should tide you over until you can get here to record. Then you can get on the road and earn more.”
“Okay,” Jim said. “But I can’t go anywhere until Ingrid has the baby. It’s due the sixteenth.”
“All right, Jimmy. Let’s plan for the end of the month.”
When Jim received the check for $500, he quit his job at Sweeney Construction. Carefully, he listed monthly expenses in his notebook.
“The way I figure it,” he told me, “we can live off this money for a little more than two months if we have to. By then, I’ll be on the road.”
“How much did Tommy get for the advance?” I asked.
Jim shrugged. “I have no idea. He didn’t say.”
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August 16 came and went, and the baby showed no sign of appearing. The recording session was postponed to early September. Everyone grew impatient. The pressure was on.
“The baby’s never coming out,” I told Judy. “I guess he just wants to keep his dad at home.”
“Come on,” Judy replied. “I’m going to take you on a long jeep ride over some bumpy back roads. Maybe that will move the process along.”
Finally in late September, on a rainy Sunday night, I was lying in bed wondering if the baby would ever arrive, when my water broke.
“Sweet thing, it’s time,” I whispered to Jim. He leaped out of bed.
“Start breathing! Start singing!” he coached. Stark naked he ran to the bathroom, stepped into the tub, and turned on the water. While it filled, he stood motionless and in a state of shock. “Ingrid,” he shouted in panic, “run next door and ask George what to do!”
“Don’t you think you should go?” I told him.
“Oh, yeah. Yeah, of course I should,” he said, and dashed toward the stairs.
“But you’re naked!” I laughed, holding my stomach. “Take your time, and put your clothes on.” He ran back into the bathroom, wrapped a towel around his waist, and hurried outside to knock on the neighbor’s door.
“How far apart are the contractions?” George asked calmly.
“The water just broke,” Jim gasped.
“Well, relax. The blessed event probably won’t take place for a few hours. Call the doctor.” Jim raced back.
“Call Dr. Carpenter, Ing,” he said breathlessly. I dialed while he sat on the couch, his eyes wide as saucers. I put down the phone.
“The doctor said to leave for the hospital when the contractions are five minutes apart.” Two hours later, at 5 AM, Jim helped me into the car. By then he had calmed down enough to grab his guitar and drive me to the emergency room.
Inside Bryn Mawr Hospital, he turned pale.
“I hope this isn’t one of those hospitals that believes in human sacrifice,” he nervously joked. A nurse led me to my room, leaving him behind to fill out the hospital forms. He was sweating through his clothes. With his guitar, ragged jeans, and long curly hair, he looked like the disheveled folk singer he was.
“How do you intend to pay for the delivery?” the hospital admissions clerk asked.
“We have insurance!” he said defensively.
“What religion will the child be?” Jim threw both hands into the air.
“A Roman Catholic Russian Jew. Or maybe he’ll be a Hindu. I have no idea. It’s his choice,” he blurted out.
Jim took his guitar into my room and began to play for me. Soon several nurses were at my bedside listening to Jim’s beautiful voice. Between songs, he rubbed oil on my back and my belly. We spent the whole day and night in the hospital, but the baby still didn’t come.
By the next morning, when I still hadn’t dilated, the doctor decided to induce labor. I readily agreed. Jim looked concerned. One hour later labor began.
“Start the breathing exercises,” the doctor ordered. Jim looked sheepishly at me, and his expression said he was not about to start singing “Yankee Doodle.” “We haven’t really practiced any Lamaze methods,” he admitted. The doctor looked at him disapprovingly and started giving me a crash course.
Less than an hour later, the baby arrived. Jim saw a shock of black hair appear and leaped up shouting, “It’s a girl! It’s a girl!” But when the rest of the baby emerged into the doctor’s hands, it was evident Jim’s judgment had been too quick. He looked down, leaped up again, and shouted, “It’s a boy! It’s a boy!”
On September 28, 1971, at 8:45 AM Adrian James Croce was born with a bright blue birthmark on his buttocks. Jim ran into the hall to call my stepmom and his parents.
“Ingrid’s fine,” he shouted. “We have a healthy, seven-pound baby boy, born with a blue ass!” He returned to the room, held the baby awkwardly, and took a good, long look. “He’s so handsome, Ing,” he said, his voice breaking with emotion. “We sure made a beautiful baby.” He kissed us both and hurried out of the hospital.
It was past ten in the morning, and he had a concert and lecture to do at Delaware Community College in just an hour. It was the last of four small gigs our neighbors Carole and George had arranged. Jim’s nerves were jangled, and he sped to the college, tired and disoriented. “I’m a father,” he thought. “A father!” He was exhausted from sharing in the birthing experience for the last two days and didn’t feel up to performing, but he couldn’t let a friend down. More importantly, he needed the money. Afterwards he called Tommy in New York and said proudly, “We can start the album now. Adrian James Croce has finally arrived.”
YOU DON’T MESS AROUND WITH JIM
AFTER TWO DAYS IN THE HOSPITAL, Adrian James and I were ready to go home. Jim picked up his new family, bringing Bill Reid along for the ride. On the way, we stopped on the Main Line to celebrate at the Beef and Ale House. Over a roast beef sandwich and a cold brew, we toasted our son.
“Here’s to the best-looking, smartest kid in town,” Jim said, holding his beer in the air.
Adrian James was born a Libra and was named with the guidance of numerology and the Kabala.
“Well, he may be smart,” Bill allowed, “but no kid’s tougher than my Greg.”
Not to be outdone, Jim put a tiny bit of horseradish on the tip of Adrian’s little pink tongue.
“What are you doing? He’s only two days old!” I yelled. Adrian’s eyes grew as big as saucers, his face scrunched together, and he turned bright red. It took him a moment to catch his breath before he let out an enormous squeal.
“Now he’s officially baptized,” Jim proclaimed over the shrieking. Pissed off, I tried to wash the horseradish off Adrian James’s tiny tongue. “Don’t worry, Ing, my little old man loves it.”
Bill laughed and bought another round of beers.
_____
The week Adrian James was born, Paul Wilson, a Philadelphia photographer and friend, was scheduled to come to the farmhouse to take promo shots of Jim and his family for the forthcoming album. Jim had already played a tape of the songs for Paul.
“What am I going to wear in the pictures?” Jim asked me the morning of the shoot. “I have a choice between the three-piece suit I wore for our wedding or work clothes.”
“Wear your work shirt and jeans, of course,” I shot back quickly.
He pulled on his jeans, a dark blue T-shirt, and his Levi jacket with a CAT patch on the pocket.
“Yeah, that works great,” I said, kissing him and ruffling up his dark, thick, curly hair. “You look very handsome, sweetie. The girls are gonna love you.”
“Oh, Ing, I’m so ugly. I hate having my picture taken. It makes me so self-conscious.”
“I wish you could stop thinking of yourself that way, Ji
m. You’re rugged looking and sensitive at the same time. You look like your songs sound: sexy and terrific!”
“You’re just saying that because you love me,” he said in a sad voice.
“Of course I love you. And your fans will too!”
“Thanks. I don’t know what I’d do without you.”
“And I don’t want you to find out,” I joked.
Paul Wilson arrived at 10 AM, and Jim offered him a toke of his joint before he started work. I made eggs, bacon, and popovers for breakfast and after a cup of Jim’s strong Italian espresso with lemon zest, Paul took a walk around the property and decided to start the shoot outside the house.
“Let’s use that antique wooden chair you’re sitting in for one of the props,” he said. “We’ll take some pictures of you with Ing and the baby first. Then we’ll go out back to the old outhouse. We’ll get some out by the road too. Sit right there,” Paul directed, “and we’ll get started.”
“What do you want me to do?” Jim asked uncomfortably.
“Just relax and play your guitar. And here, hold this cigar in your teeth while you strum. Give me a mean look, like “You Don’t Dare Mess Around with Jim.” Paul stepped back to get a sense of the picture, and started shooting. He took hundreds of photos and finished in the late afternoon. “I’d like you to come down to my place in West Philly on Thursday to finish the session,” he requested. “We need some isolated shots of you, Jim, with a solid background. It will be better to do that at my studio, where I have the right lighting.”
_____
On October 5, 1971, one week after Adrian James was born, Jim and Maury drove to New York to meet Tommy at the Hit Factory, the studio Cashman & West had booked to record Jim’s album. Jim and Maury were well rehearsed, and together with Tommy they sat in the control booth and went over the final list of songs Jim wanted to record. Joining them in the studio were two renowned studio musicians who had recorded previously with Jim and me and with Maury on his Gingerbread album: Joe Macho on bass and Gary Chester on drums. Gary and his wife were good friends of ours. Tommy told Jim that Gary was writing the quintessential book on drumming.
“That’s nice,” Jim nodded. But what was really important to Jim was that he and Gary had a great rapport, and they had built a close friendship that went beyond music. Tommy played keyboards on several tracks and did some background vocals with our good friend Ellie Greenwich, the successful singer-songwriter with hits in the ‘60s like “Da Do Ron Ron,” “Then He Kissed Me,” “Leader of the Pack,” and “Doo Wah Diddy Diddy.” Tasha Thomas, a rhythm and blues artist who did commercial work on the side, added some backup vocals. Maury sang the parts he always sang when they performed live, and Bruce Tergersen was the recording and mixing engineer.
During the twenty-day recording process, Jim made it home only once, but he called every day.
“The album’s going great, Ing,” he told me during one phone conversation. “So much better than last time. The boys have it down now, and the songs really feel good. They’ve decided to put ‘Hey Tomorrow’ on the record, so your name will be on it too,” Jim said, feeling bad that I was left out of the new album. “We should be finished in another week or so, and then I’ll be home to spend some time with you and my little man.”
Tommy and Terry produced the album for Interrobang Productions Inc., one of their new companies. Their publishing, producing, and recording empire was growing larger and more sophisticated, but Jim never understood why they needed so many corporations. Besides Cashman & West Productions Inc., they published Jim’s and my songs under Blendingwell Music Inc. and Wingate Music Inc., both with ASCAP. When the album was mixed, the Dutch record company Phillips applauded the final production. Sadly, however, they admitted that as much as they liked it, their budget for the release was slim, and they could only offer limited PR and foreign distribution.
The Boys started shopping the record to major US labels to get national distribution, but everyone they approached turned them down, some saying Jim sounded too much like James Taylor or Ricky Nelson. Columbia Records rejected the album three times: once at the demo stage, another time after three tracks were mixed, and finally when the album was completed.
Before Jim left New York, Tommy gave Jim a cassette of the final mix, and when he came home to Lyndell, he proudly handed it to me.
“I think you’ll like this, Ing,” he told me with a confidence he’d never shown before. While I nursed Adrian James, I listened to the songs over and over again, and I was thrilled with what they had achieved.
To me, the album was more than just songs strung together to sound good. It told Jim’s personal story and our story. “You Don’t Mess Around with Jim,” the title song, evoked the characters Jim encountered in high school listening to R&B; it was about Frankie and Johnny and Stagger Lee, the “bad dudes” he’d met selling airtime in West Philadelphia, and the guys he ran into with Melvyn Goldfield in the streets of South Philly while they were out doing their early produce runs for the Kimberton Co-op.
“Operator” was born out of the “Dear John” experiences Jim had witnessed in basic training at Fort Jackson, South Carolina, listening to the soldiers in line at the pay phones, as well as some of the cowboy conversations he overheard near the stage at the Riddle Paddock.
“Rapid Roy (the Stock Car Boy)” came from Jim’s association with Ronnie Miller; his friend the tattoo artist, Billy Blue, from Southwest Philly; and Roy Harris from Drexel Hill and Upper Darby. “New York’s Not My Home” was about our less-than-idyllic experience in New York. “Hard Time Losin’ Man” gave a glimpse of Jim’s street wisdom and alluded to the notorious Croce car curse. “Photographs and Memories” came after the rape, the end of our innocence. And “Time in a Bottle,” the most prophetic song of all, was written when Jim found out that I was pregnant with Adrian James. Others included “Tomorrow’s Gonna Be a Brighter Day,” “Walkin’ Back to Georgia,” and “Hey Tomorrow,” a song we had cowritten in the Bronx, a celebration of our partnership and the love that kept us going.
“I love this album,” I called out to Jim. “Finally, there’s a record that sounds like you.” Now all they have to do is get you out there and promote it like crazy!” Before I’d finished my sentence, it hit me that Jim was going to have to leave really soon. He had to get out and perform everywhere he could if he wanted to make the record successful. My best friend was leaving me and our new son, and the music that had once brought us together was going to take us apart.
Suddenly, I felt incredibly sad and frightened about being left behind. I didn’t want to raise Adrian by myself. I had no experience around infants or even small children.
“This album can do it, Jim,” I said with tears in my eyes. “But I’m not sure I know how to be without you or how to take care of our little guy all by myself. I’ve never done this before.”
Jim put his arms around me, and I buried my head in his chest.
“I know you’re gonna be a great mom. I just hope this time around I can make this work. I want my dad to know I can earn a living making music.”
Through the fall and winter of 1971–1972, Jim waited at home in Lyndell for Tommy and the Boys to interest a major label in the album. He played at colleges and coffeehouses, and Sal booked some gigs for Jim and Maury together too.
“These clubs and colleges don’t pay much,” Sal acknowledged, “but at least it’s something.”
“I appreciate your helping us out, Sal. Man, the bread’s been tight. I just put an ad in the local paper for the Martin D28-S with the hard-shell case for $400. I hate to sell it, but what choice do I have? Ya gotta do what you gotta do.”
Though the small gigs paid little, Jim loved the opportunity to be in front of an audience. With the album completed, he was anxious to try out the new material and practice his raps. From West Virginia to Niagara Falls, Jim went out to test the new songs. At Glassboro State, Bonnie Raitt opened the show for Jim. She was a friend and fellow troubadour who
had played the Main Point, the Second Fret, and the Philadelphia Folk Festival with us. That night she played a half-hour set of blues to an excited crowd, and over the applause she introduced her friend, Jim Croce. Adrian, Bonnie, and I watched from the wings of the stage as Jim and “his one-man band,” Maury, entertained the audience with songs from the new album. The crowd sat in rapt attention while Jim told anecdotes before each song. Maury, a former student at Glassboro, played a couple of his songs and got enthusiastic applause and cheers from his fellow students and fans. When Jim closed the concert with “You Don’t Mess Around with Jim,” the crowd cheered and insisted on an encore.
The next day, Bonnie, Maury, Jim, and I, with Adrian in tow, decided to give an impromptu concert on a knoll near the student union. Many of the students, who had appreciated the concert the evening before, sat around between classes to enjoy the free concert on the grass.
_____
In early November 1971, Gene Pistilli surprised Jim and me with a phone call.
“Jim, it’s Gene. I’m here with the Manhattan Transfer and Pat. We’re opening for James Taylor at the Main Point next weekend. Do you think you guys can come to the show?”
“What day will you be there?” Jim asked.
“Friday and Saturday night. Can you make it?”
“Yeah, I think we can. We’ve got no gigs this weekend,” Jim admitted. “So, yeah, we’ll be there.”
Gene paused.
“And I was wondering . . . could we all stay at your place?”
“Of course, man, we wouldn’t have it any other way.”