Jim Croce - The Midnight Special, NBC Studios, Burbank, CA, 6-15-1973

Here's the last of the "Midnight Special" albums I put together before posting a poll about posting music from that TV show. From now on, future posts from the show will be from the poll choices list. This is a live album from Jim Croce.

Croce's time as a star was very short. His first major label album was released in April 1972, and he died in a plane crash on September 20, 1973. We're fortunate that, during that brief time, he appeared on the Midnight Special twice. The first time was on June 15, 1973, when he was the host. In case you're curious, the other musical acts for that episode were Little Anthony and the Imperials, Savoy Brown, Bobby Womack, Shawn Phillips, Barbara Fairchild, and Wishbone Ash. (I saw a mention that the show was actually recorded on June 8th, but I'm not completely sure about that.)

His second appearance was on the September 15, 1973 episode. He only performed one song, "I Got a Name." That's because that performance was meant to merely be teaser, in order to promote the fact that he would be hosting the show again for an upcoming episode. Sadly, he died in a plane crash before that episode was recorded.

This album starts with the June episode he hosted. That's followed by the "I Got a Name" performance from the September episode. That had a nice introduction by soul music legend Curtis Mayfield, so I decided to include that. But after all that, the album was still fairly short, at only 27 minutes. So I decided to draw on another TV appearance to beef things up a bit. I found an unreleased concert from July 1973 broadcast on Irish TV, called "Music Matters." A few songs were performed, but I only included the two that weren't repeats of other songs on this album. Those are the last two songs here.

This album is 33 minutes long.

01 Operator [That's Not the Way It Feels] (Jim Croce)
02 talk (Jim Croce)
03 talk (Jim Croce)
04 Roller Derby Queen (Jim Croce)
05 talk (Jim Croce)
06 You Don't Mess with Jim (Jim Croce)
07 talk (Jim Croce)
08 Speedball Tucker (Jim Croce)
09 Bad, Bad Leroy Brown (Jim Croce)
10 talk (Jim Croce)
11 Careful Man [Edit] (Jim Croce)
12 talk by Curtis Mayfield (Jim Croce)
13 I Got a Name (Jim Croce)
14 Rapid Roy [The Stock Car Boy] (Jim Croce)
15 talk (Jim Croce)
16 These Dreams (Jim Croce)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/TqTRysdg

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/ijAEgJPYVyPurjm/file

The cover photo is from the June 1973 concert. I had several to choose from, so I picked one that also showed his trusty musical companion, Maury Muehleisen.