Jim Croce - Harper College, Palantine, IL, 2-2-1973

In my opinion, there isn't enough live Jim Croce music out there. There's only been one official live album, "The Final Tour," and very few concert bootlegs. But he was a very engaging live performer. He seems to have nearly always performed his songs in an acoustic format, and that's the case here. Also, he tended to talk a lot between songs, sometimes telling long stories.

So I set about trying to create the ultimate Jim Croce concert recording, without including any of the exact performances on "The Final Tour" album. The basis for this is a concert he did at Harper College in Illinois in 1973, since there's an excellent soundboard bootleg for that one. But there were some key songs that weren't included there, so I found some more and added them in at the beginning and the end. 

Also, it seems some of the talking between songs at the Harper College concert didn't get recorded. (Back in those days especially, sometimes bootleggers turned their tape recorders off and on between songs in order to make sure they have enough tape to finish recording the show.) So, where it was relevant, I took some of his banter from another concert and added it in before the Harper College songs. But I only did that three times, so it isn't that big of a change.

All together, the concert is an hour and a half long, nearly to the second. An hour and five minutes of that actually comes from the Harper College show, and the remaining 25 minutes comes from four other sources. Occasionally there's a dip in the sound quality due to the differing sources, but it's generally excellent.

01 talk (Jim Croce)
02 Rapid Roy [The Stock Car Boy] (Jim Croce)
03 talk (Jim Croce)
04 Working at the Car Wash Blues (Jim Croce)
05 talk (Jim Croce)
06 He's Got a Way with Women (Jim Croce)
07 talk (Jim Croce)
08 Lovers Cross (Jim Croce)
09 I'll Have to Say I Love You in a Song (Jim Croce)
10 talk (Jim Croce)
11 Careful Man (Jim Croce)
12 talk (Jim Croce)
13 Operator [That's Not the Way It Feels] (Jim Croce)
14 talk (Jim Croce)
15 Box No. 10 (Jim Croce)
16 talk (Jim Croce)
17 A Good Time Man like Me Ain't Got No Business [Singin' the Blues] (Jim Croce)
18 talk (Jim Croce)
19 It Doesn't Have to Be That Way (Jim Croce)
20 Next Time, This Time (Jim Croce)
21 talk (Jim Croce)
22 Speedball Tucker (Jim Croce)
23 talk (Jim Croce)
24 Framed (Jim Croce)
25 talk (Jim Croce)
26 Roller Derby Queen (Jim Croce)
27 talk (Jim Croce)
28 New York's Not My Home (Jim Croce)
29 Dreamin' Again (Jim Croce)
30 One Less Set of Footsteps (Jim Croce)
31 talk (Jim Croce)
32 Ball of Kerrymuir (Jim Croce)
33 You Don't Mess Around with Jim (Jim Croce)
34 I Got a Name (Jim Croce)
35 Bad Bad Leroy Brown (Jim Croce)

https://www.imagenetz.de/cUDK7

The cover art photo comes from an appearance on a 1973 TV show called "In Concert."