I Got A Name

It's taken way, way too long for this album to appear on CD in the U.S. That changes now. Rhino has brought one of the best albums of the 70's back into the light, finally. "I Got a Name" is by far Jim Croce's best album. Alternately triumphant, wandering, heartbreaking, and humorous, the entire record begs the question, "How could Rolling Stone leave this off their 500 greatest albums list?!".

Some of Croce's best known songs are here: The incredible title track (which should be familiar to even the most casual fan or classic rock listeners in general), the heartbreaking "Lover's Cross", the beautiful "I'll Have to Say I Love You in a Song" (another one that, odds are, you've heard) and the fun "Workin' at the Car Wash Blues", as well as the 'familiar but not THAT well-known' "Salon and Saloon" and "Thursday". These songs alone are worth the price of the disc, but it's the less famous songs here that elevate this album from "great" to "masterpiece".

Given Croce's death in a plane crash so close to the album's release, an eerie air hangs over some of the tracks here: The title track, sure, but also "Age", which details roads not taken and love ignored in favor of material pursuits, is simply outstanding, easily my favorite Croce song. That eerie air hangs even heavier over the closing track, "The Hard Way Every Time", a song that details roads that ARE traveled, and how those life experiences shape us. In light of the events that transpired right before it's release, the final line, in which Croce concludes that "I wouldn't have done it any other way" is simply incredible.

The humourous songs are here, too. The aforementioned "...Blues", but also "Top Hat Bar and Grille" and the surprisingly dark "Five Short Minutes", which, despite it's boppy tune, is about an older man taking an underage girl to bed and subsequently being arrested and imprisoned for 20 years.

There's not a bad track here, every song is just superb, and it all flows wonderfully. Sure, many of the songs are available in various compilations, but there's nothing quite like hearing the album the way it was meant to be heard. And that album art, classic. That sepia-tinted shot of Croce smoking with that all-too-1973 font the title is printed in, just great.

Not much left to say, this is one that's well worth the purchase!

Not long ago, i was on a dollar grab--scooping up tons of cheap vynal. I came across this.

Say what you want about Jim Croce's music-it's great and we'll get right to that--but what made me buy this was something very different: being four years old in 1973, singing "I Got A Name" with my mom in one of those big Ford Country Squires--you know, the fake wood sides--as it played on the radio; only AM came in cars in those days. Seeing this album in front of the big-wood-cabinet General Electric stereo. Sticking my little head in to watch that black and rainbow ABC label spin; I am still transfixed by that graphic art now, and I finally get why.

I am not sure, but this may have been, technically, the first album I owned.

But sweeping ALL that away, this is great music. Croce just had it all over his folk contemperaries. He does not have the preaching of Cat Stevens, the sensitivo whining of James Taylor, the archness of Joan Baez.

Croce had sensitivity, humor, polish, and a band that just KICKED. Listening now, I hear Croce's great playing, but more than that, the tight, fluid, almost funky bass, the musically played drums. This may be folk, but it is folk played by the best musicians. With the best arrangements.

Croce may have involved us with his folksy little stories, but this guy was smart--real smart.

It's a good thing my parents were not Monovani fans.

I had this as an LP and wanted the CD. Favorite song "Age". Would have purchased it just for that song.