C R O C E!
James Joseph Croce (January 10, 1943 – September 20, 1973), popularly known as Jim Croce (pronounced CRO-chee), was an American singer-songwriter.
Croce got his first long-term gig at a rural bar and steak house in Lima, Pennsylvania, called the Riddle Paddock.
There, over the next few years, Croce developed a very engaging rapport with tough audiences and built his musical repertoire to over 3,000 songs. His set list included every genre from blues to country, rock 'n roll to folk, with tender love songs and traditional Bawdy Ballads, always introduced with a story and an impish grin.
In 1968, Jim and Ingrid Croce were encouraged to move to New York City to record their first album with Capitol Records.
For the next two years, they drove over 300,000 miles playing small clubs and concerts on the college concert circuit promoting their album Jim Ingrid Croce.
Then, disillusioned by the music business and New York City, Croce sold all but one guitar to pay the rent, and they returned to the Pennsylvania countryside where Croce got a job driving trucks and doing construction to pay the bills. He called this his "Character Development Period" and spent a lot of his time sitting in the cab of a truck, composing songs about his buddies and the folks he enjoyed meeting at the local bars and truck stops.
In 1972, Croce signed to a three record deal with ABC Records releasing You Don't Mess Around with Jim and Life Times in the same year. The singles "You Don't Mess Around with Jim", "Operator (That's Not The Way It Feels)" and "Time In A Bottle" (written for his newborn son, A. J.
Croce) helped the former album reach #1 on the charts in 1974. Croce's biggest single "Bad, Bad Leroy Brown", hit number 1 on the US charts in the summer of 1973, selling two million copies.
Croce, 30, died in a small commercial plane crash on September 20, 1973 in Natchitoches, Louisiana, one day before releasing his third ABC album, I Got a Name.
The posthumous release included three hits, "I Got A Name", "Workin' At The Car Wash Blues" and "I'll Have To Say I Love You In A Song."
From about.com:
Thomas Edison's greatest challenge was the development of a practical incandescent, electric light.
Contrary to popular belief, he didn't "invent" the lightbulb, but rather he improved upon a 50-year-old idea. In 1879, using lower current electricity, a small carbonized filament, and an improved vacuum inside the globe, he was able to produce a reliable, long-lasting source of light.
Edison's eventual achievement was inventing not just an incandescent electric light, but also an electric lighting system.
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