Traveling songs are always a theme in songwriting. Sometimes when I feel like I need to get a little jump start on writing, I’ll start writing when I’m moving. My take is that, even if I feel like I haven’t gotten anywhere lyrically, at least I’m getting somewhere traveling instead.
As I was sifting through records at Lucky Cat a couple of weeks ago, I came across this one and knew I could put it on a couple of times a year, morning or evening or noon and enjoy it. Hearing it always brings me back to car rides and cozy times. Little did I know that Ollie would take an extreme liking to Big Bad Leroy Brown, so we have been giving it lots of play currently dancing around the dining room. He loves the intro.
Digging into this song I found out the lyrics weren’t written by Croce, but rather Norman Gimbel. And the music was written by Charles Fox. I would read more through the links to Wikipedia about Gimbel and Fox. There’s quite a bit of interesting information about their lives.
As I’ve played more and more guitar over the years, listening to Maury Muehleisen’s playing in any Croce song is a treat. It all sounds good, but the way he blends in the licks with the lyrics and the rest of the music is just great. Pile on with the fact that Maury was only 24 and had started playing the guitar at 17. Here’s a link to his own album Gingerbreadd which is worth a listen.
Here’s what I think is the record version of the song I’ve been listening to, but I also want to leave you all with this version of the song. Here’s Jim, Maury, and (I think) Tommy West playing it on Midnight Special back on September 14th, 1973, only six days before Jim and Maury were both killed in a plane crash.
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