Today in Music History: December 29
Welcome into the Spotlight...
Jim Croce in 1972, photographed by Ingrid Croce.
Between 1966 and 1973, Croce released five studio albums and 11 singles. His singles "Bad, Bad Leroy Brown" and "Time in a Bottle" were both number one hits on the US Billboard Hot 100 chart. The album I Got a Name released on December 1, 1973 included three hits: "Workin' at the Car Wash Blues", "I'll Have to Say I Love You in a Song", and the title song, which had been used as the theme to the film The Last American Hero released two months prior to his death. Jim Croce did not take music seriously until he studied at Villanova University, where he majored in psychology and minored in German. He graduated with a Bachelor degree in 1965. Croce was a member of the Villanova Singers and the Villanova Spires. When the Spires performed off-campus or made recordings, they were known as The Coventry Lads. Croce was also a student disc jockey at WKVU (which has since become WXVU). [Source: wikipedia.com]
Songfacts: Jim Croce wrote this song the night that he found out his wife, Ingrid, was pregnant. The couple had been married for five years, and Ingrid found out she was pregnant when she went to a fertility specialist. She recalls a mix of terror and delight in Jim's reaction when she told him the news. The child was a boy named Adrian, who grew up to become the singer-songwriter A.J. Croce.
The song was never intended to be a single - it was released on Croce's first major-label solo LP You Don't Mess Around With Jim in 1972. The album had already yielded the #8 title track and #17 "Operator (That's Not the Way It Feels)." His second LP, Life And Times, had given Croce his first #1 single, "Bad, Bad Leroy Brown." "Time In A Bottle" became a hit over a year after it was first released when it was used in the ABC made-for-TV movie She Lives, about a woman dying of cancer.
On this day in 1973 Jim Croce scored his second No.1 US single of the year when "Time In A Bottle" went to the top of the charts 14 weeks after he was killed in a plane crash. On September 30, 1973 a plane carrying Croce and five other people crashed upon takeoff as he was leaving one college venue to travel to another 70 miles away. He was 30 years old.No.1 singles on this day...
No. 1 Albums on This Day...
1999 UK music paper The Melody Maker published it's Music of the Millennium Poll of albums placing The Smiths 'The Queen Is Dead' at No.1.
2012 According to sales data, Adele’s 21 had overtaken Oasis’ (What’s The Story) Morning Glory? to become the UK’s fourth biggest selling album of all-time. Latest data confirmed that, Oasis’ 1995 second album had sold 4,555,000 copies to date, while Adele’s 21 has surged ahead with sales of over 4,562,000 copies. The news came just over a year since 21 overtook Amy Winehouse’s Back To Black to become the UK's biggest selling album of the 21st Century.
1999 Three ferrets named Beckham, Posh Spice and Baby Spice were used to lay power cables for a rock concert being held in Greenwich, London, England, (workers were not allowed to dig up the turf at the Royal Park). Organizers found that rods could not push the cables through the tiny tunnels, which frequently bend and dog-leg. The ferrets were eased into tiny nylon harnesses with wires which where then attached to a rope, the animals ran into a series of ducts which were under the stage like rabbit runs, leading the cables with them. The ferrets instinctively make for any hole in the ground and are enticed to the end of the duct by a slab of smelly meat. The New Years Eve concert featured Simply Red, Eurythmics and Bryan Ferry.
And the music goes on beating to the rhythm of the changing times...
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