Photo: Jim Croce | By Paul Grein, Billboard | Fifty years ago (Sept. 20), Jim Croce was killed in a plane crash in Natchitoches, Louisiana, during a concert tour of southern colleges. In the previous 15 months, Croce had amassed four top 40 hits on the Billboard Hot 100: “You Don’t Mess Around With Jim,” “Operator (That’s Not the Way It Feels),” “One Less Set of Footsteps” and the sing-along smash “Bad, Bad Leroy Brown,” which spent the final two weeks of July 1973 at No. 1.
The sudden death of someone who was so new to the mainstream was of course a shock. But few would have expected what would happen next: Croce’s death triggered one of the biggest posthumous sales booms in history. “I Got a Name,” which was released the day after Croce’s death, reached the top 10 on the Hot 100 in November. The following month, the poignant “Time in a Bottle” (which had appeared on his 1972 album You Don’t Miss Around With Jim) became his second No. 1. It made Croce just the third artist in the history of the Hot 100 to top the chart posthumously, following Otis Redding (“(Sittin’ on) the Dock of the Bay,” 1968) and Janis Joplin (“Me and Bobby McGee,” 1971). Moreover, Croce became the first artist in Hot 100 history to top the chart both while living and after his death.
Croce had even bigger success on the Billboard 200, where You Don’t Mess Around With Jim reached No. 1 on Jan. 12, 1974. Croce was just the second artist in the history of the Billboard 200 to reach No. 1 posthumously, following Joplin (Pearl, 1971). You Don’t Mess Around With Jim stayed on top for five consecutive weeks. For two of those weeks, Croce also had the No. 2 album, I Got a Name. He was the first artist to hold down the top two spots the same week since The Beatles scored in March 1969 with The Beatles (better known as The White Album) and the Yellow Submarine soundtrack.
> > > > > > > > > >
Croce was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1990, alongside Smokey Robinson and Michel Legrand. In 2013, Garth Brooks included his version of “Operator (That’s Not the Way It Feels)” on his Billboard 200-topping box set, Blame It All on My Roots: Five Decades of Influences.
> > > > > > > > > >
Read the full article here:
https://www.billboard.com/music/features/jim-croce-death-plane-crash-50-years-ago-posthumous-sales-boom-1235414405/
Photo: Jim Croce | https://www.facebook.com/JimCroceofficial/photos
Jim Croce’s Death in a Plane Crash 50 Years Ago Sparked One of The Biggest Posthumous Sales Booms Ever
