I Got a Name

Description

'I Got a Name' is a 1973 album recorded by Jim Croce with lyrics by Norman Gimbel and music by Charles Fox. It was also the first single from his album and Croce's first posthumous single, released the day after his death in a plane crash on September 20. Relatively unknown in Europe, Jim Croce is an American singer-songwriter from the working-class suburbs of Philadelphia, and despite a brief career, he enjoys great popularity across the Atlantic. Jim Croce, an Italian-American, started playing music at the age of 5, learning to play 'Lady Of Spain' on the accordion, before switching to acoustic guitar in the early 60s at Villanova University. His repertoire ranges from blues to country, from rock'n roll to folk, with love songs and more or less "bawdy" traditional ballads, but always presented with humor and a mischievous smile. In 1970, he met Maury Muehleisen, a pianist/guitarist and, like him, a singer-songwriter. Jim Croce accompanied him on guitar during his concerts, but the two men realized the complementarity of their respective styles – which would lead them to success – Maury Muehleisen's ethereal and inspired guitars and Jim Croce's "down-to-earth" music. In 1972, they signed a contract with ABC Records, which hired them for three albums, two of which, 'You Don't Mess Around with Jim' and 'Life & Times', were released the same year. Jim Croce's biggest hit, "Bad, Bad Leroy Brown," topped the American charts in the summer of 1973 and sold two million copies. This success was abruptly interrupted in 1973 when Jim Croce, 30, and his friend Maury Muehleisen, 24, died in the crash of the commercial plane that was taking them to Texas for a concert shortly before the release of the third album, 'I Got a Name', on ABC Records.