Jim Croce Lives On 38 Years After A Plane Crash Took His Life [VIDEO]

The year was 1973, and one of the most popular musicians at the time was a man by the name of Jim Croce. Just one year earlier Croce had signed a  deal with ABC Records which featured his most popular songs  "You Don't Mess Around with Jim", "Operator (That's Not the Way It Feels)",  "Time in a Bottle" and his biggest single, "Bad, Bad Leroy Brown." Unfortunately it all came crashing down when Croce and five others were killed in a plane crash on September 20th, 1973. Croce had just completed a concert at Northwestern State University's Prather Coliseum in Natchitoches, Louisiana, and was flying to Sherman, Texas, for a concert at Austin College. The pilot and all passengers (Croce; Muehleisen; Croce's booking agent Kenneth D. Cortose; George Stevens, the comic who was the show's warm-up act; and Croce's road manager Dennis Rast) were killed when the plane crashed at around 10:45 pm EDT on September 20, 1973, about an hour after the end of the concert.

The album I Got a Name was released on December 1, 1973. Croce had just finished recording the album barely over a week before his death. The posthumous release 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 which was released two months prior his death. The album reached No.2 in the US Pop Albums chart, and "I'll Have to Say I Love You in a Song" reached No.9 in the U.S. singles chart.

The song "Time in a Bottle" had been featured over the opening and closing credits and during a scene in which Desi Arnez Jr. is opening the 'Don't Mess Around With Jim' album of the ABC made-for-television movie She Lives!, which aired in April 1973, That appearance had generated significant interest in Croce and his music in the week just prior to the plane crash. That, combined with the news of the death of the singer, sparked a renewed interest in Croce's previous albums as well. Consequently, three months later, "Time in a Bottle", originally released on Croce's first album the year before, hit number-one on December 29, 1973, the third posthumous chart-topping song of the rock era following Otis Redding's "(Sittin' On) The Dock of the Bay" and Janis Joplin's recording of "Me and Bobby McGee".

A greatest hits package entitled Photographs & Memories, released in 1974, proved to be extraordinarily popular. Later posthumous releases have included Home Recordings: Americana, Facets, Jim Croce: Classic Hits, Down the Highway, and DVD and CD releases of Croce's television performances, Have You Heard: Jim Croce Live.

Croce's catalog became a staple of radio play for years, and still receives significant airplay on a variety of radio formats in to the second decade of the 21st century. In 1990, Croce was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame.

Jim and Ingrid Croce's son Adrian James Croce was born September 28, 1971, and is now an accomplished singer-songwriter, musician, and pianist, performing under the name A.J. Croce. He has released seven CDs of original music, beginning with a self-titled CD in 1993, and one best-of CD (Early On: The American Recordings 1993–1998). A.J. Croce is also the owner/operator of his own record label, Seedling Records.

Croce's widow owns and manages Croce's Restaurant & Jazz Bar, a project she and Jim had jokingly discussed a decade earlier, located in the historic Gaslamp Quarter in downtown San Diego, California. She opened the business in 1985.