He had several albums that I played regularly, but five got more play than any of the others. They were James Taylor's Sweet Baby James, Neil Young's Harvest, Uriah Heep's Demons and Wizards, Jim Croce's You Don't Mess Around with Jim, and Jim Croce's Life and Times. Of all these, it was Jim's albums that I loved the most. So today, let's take a look at the title track from You Don't Mess Around with Jim.
"Uptown got it's hustlers,
the Bowery got it's bums,
Forty-second street got Big Jim Walker,
he's a pool shooting son of a gun."
Atypical of the songs I generally heard on the radio, whether my parent's Country and Western or my sibling's Pop/Rock, the song wasn't about love celebrated, lost, or sought. It was a story song and stories, of whatever variety and complexity, have always been a joy for me.
The first verse introduces us to Big Jim Walker, the Jim in the title, though there's an obvious double meaning in the album title with Mr. Croce. Big Jim is not smart ("he's big and dumb as a man can come") but he's powerful enough that even the other rogues yield to him. The chorus then tells us a smart person doesn't do four things. Three of these are obvious no-no's and serve to tell us that messing with Big Jim Walker is something you just do not want to do.
The second verse sets up the conflict by introducing Willie McCoy, aka Slim. Slim isn't from these parts and apparently doesn't understand that Big Jim is not a person you want to cross. Slim has, apparently, lost money to Big Jim in a pool game that, perhaps - pure conjecture here, otherwise Slim would seem to be just a sore loser - was not on the up and up. The crowd reacts to the news that Slim is looking to get his money back by warning him about the four things you just don't do if you have any wits about you.
The third verse tells us what we may have already surmised. It is common plot in stories, be it in a book, a movie, or, in this case, in a song, for the city big shot to underestimate someone from a small town, thinking them an easy mark. By the end of the fight, Jim wasn't so big anymore and the crowd's tune had changed. Now, instead of not messing with Jim, a smart man would not mess with Slim. As the song ends, we are reminded the the bully, when taken down, frequently then just fades away to obscurity.
The song did will for Jim Croce, and so a similar formula would follow on the next album (Life and Times) with what is probably Jim's best known song, "Bad, Bad, Leroy Brown." The city changes from New York to Chicago and Leroy takes Jim's role as the person that most people did not want to confront. The fight there isn't over money, but love, and Slim is replaced by "a jealous man." The comparisons are not Superman and the Lone Ranger, but King Kong and a junkyard dog. Musically, the songs are different though. "Jim" has a more serious tone, while the music for "Leroy Brown" makes it clear the song is not serious, but playful (though, if you watch the video above, you can see from Jim's expression that even "Jim" should not be taken too seriously).
On the 22nd of this month it will forty-one years since the plane Jim Croce was in crashed, killing everyone on board. The album I Got a Name would be released posthumously, but all the other songs and stories Jim might have shared are lost to us. But the songs we do have from Jim are a remainder of the impact that folk music had on rock and roll, particularly in the '60s and '70s. From Dylan to The Band to many other great singer-songwriters, among whom I'm confident Jim would still be remembered had he lived longer, our musical lives are enriched by their contributions.
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