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.

Jim Croce - KMET, Los Angeles, CA, 7-18-1972

Yesterday, while putting together a Jim Croce "Midnight Special" album (which should be coming soon), I stumbled upon this radio show Croce did. It's very nice, but seems to have been little noticed until now. So I'm posting it to give it more exposure.

This is one of Croce's earliest live recordings. His musical career got little notice until about April 1972, when he released his first major label album, "You Don't Mess Around with Jim." With record company promotion, momentum began to build. But this was right before he became a star. His first single, "You Don't Mess Around with Jim," was released in June 1972 and was starting to climb the charts when this radio show happened. He would have his first national TV appearances a month later.

Because this comes from a radio broadcast, the sound quality is excellent. As the DJ notes at the end of the recording, there were only seven people in the studio, providing a little bit of clapping at the ends of songs. Croce performed in solo acoustic, backed only by Maury Muehleisen on second guitar and backing vocals. The date for this isn't firm, but Muehleisen's wife later guessed it took place on this date, or at least within a couple of days of that, based on records of his travel schedule at the time. 

This recording features some rare songs, especially the cover "Ol' Man River." Also, it's interesting to note that some of his later big songs were already fully formed at this early date. "Bad, Bad Leroy Brown" didn't make his debut album that had been recently released at the time. I'll bet nobody, including Croce, had any idea it would be a massive Number One hit in 1973.

This album is 31 minutes long. 

01 Roller Derby Queen (Jim Croce)
02 talk (Jim Croce)
03 Next Time, This Time (Jim Croce)
04 talk (Jim Croce)
05 These Dreams (Jim Croce)
06 talk (Jim Croce)
07 Rapid Roy [The Stock Car Boy] (Jim Croce)
08 Careful Man (Jim Croce)
09 Ol' Man River (Jim Croce)
10 talk (Jim Croce)
11 Bad, Bad Leroy Brown (Jim Croce)
12 talk (Jim Croce)
13 Dreamin' Again (Jim Croce)
14 You Don't Mess Around with Jim (Jim Croce)
15 talk (Jim Croce)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/tXQsuRJq

alternate: 

https://bestfile.io/en/E0OxqVjiAXngUBv/file

The cover photo comes from an appearance on the TV show "Rollin' on the River" in January 1973. I chose this one because it shows Maury Muehleisen in the background. Muehleisen performed with Croce for nearly all of his concerts, including this radio show. 

Jim Croce - PBS Soundstage, WTTW Studios, Chicago, IL, 8-13-1973

I'm extra happy to be posting this, because excellent sounding Jim Croce concert recordings are very rare, due to him dying shortly after becoming famous. This is another "PBS Soundstage" concert. Note however, that technically the program at the time was called "Made in Chicago." It would change titles a year later and keep the new title until the apparent final cancellation in 2018.

Jim Croce died in a plane crash on September 20, 1973. This concert was recorded a month before his death. By the time it aired, he had already died. Due to his death, his music career got a sudden surge of attention. So PBS put together an hour long TV special about his life. The Soundstage episode about him was less than half an hour long. However, I noticed that there were scenes in the hour-long special that were outtakes from the Soundstage show. I could tell due to the same clothes for Croce and his lead guitarist Maury Muehleisen, as well as the same lighting and stage design. So I took those bits and added them in to the concert. It wasn't a whole lot. In fact, there was only one new song ("Speedball Tucker"). However, there was some interesting banter before other songs. All in all, it added about eight minutes to the length of this album.

This album is unreleased. The sound quality is excellent. I hope there's even more in the archives from this show and it'll all get released someday.

This album is 36 minutes long.

01 Rapid Roy [The Stock Car Boy] (Jim Croce)
02 talk (Jim Croce)
03 Working at the Car Wash Blues (Jim Croce)
04 Operator [That's Not The Way It Feels] (Jim Croce)
05 talk (Jim Croce)
06 Roller Derby Queen (Jim Croce)
07 talk (Jim Croce)
08 You Don't Mess Around with Jim (Jim Croce)
09 talk (Jim Croce)
10 Lover's Cross (Jim Croce)
11 Bad, Bad Leroy Brown (Jim Croce)
12 talk (Jim Croce)
13 Five Short Minutes (Jim Croce)
14 The Hard Way Every Time (Jim Croce)
15 talk (Jim Croce)
16 Speedball Tucker (Jim Croce)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/CYH8qPSf

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/Aa6FrY6koyQNuKe/file

The cover photo is from this exact concert. I used the Krea AI program to improve the image quality.

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

alternate:

https://pixeldrain.com/u/uhyQgXwe

second alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/c8e40sz7JuzH5dq/file

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

Jim & Ingrid Croce - Jim and Ingrid Too - Expanded Version (1967-1969)

I just posted the 1969 album "Croce," also known as "Jim and Ingrid Croce." It's the main product of a short period in Jim Croce's musical career when he was part of a musical duet with his wife Ingrid. This is basically an extension of that, gathering up some stray pieces of their musical output from 1967 and 1969.

The main portion of this album are seven songs known as "Jim and Ingrid Too." As far as I can tell, this was never released in Croce's lifetime. (He died in a plane crash in 1973.) Instead, when the "Jim and Ingrid Croce" was re-released in 2004 (yet again), that edition included this group of songs on a second record, called "Jim and Ingrid Too."

According to the liner notes for that album, around the time the "Croce" album was released in 1969, the duo had a chance to become hosts for a children's TV show in Boston. They recorded 21 songs as an audition tape that showed off their musical versatility. They didn't get the job, but the tape survived. Decades later, only seven of those 21 songs were chosen to be publicly released. I hope more of the rest will be made public someday.

Additionally, two more songs ("The Way We Used To" and "Country Girl") from around this time period were released on the archival album "The Faces I've Been" in 1975. So I've added those in.

Finally, the duo performed live in the studio on a radio show in Philadelphia in 1967. I'll bet that Croce made other such performances for radio stations during his career, but for whatever reason an excellent recording of this one appearance has survived while others have not (or at least haven't been made publicly available through bootlegs). Luckily, several of the songs played weren't otherwise recorded by Jim and/or Ingrid, so I've added them at the end.

This is a fairly good album in my opinion, about as good as the "Croce" album from the same time period. It helps that almost all the songs are written by Jim, or by Jim and Ingrid. The only ones that are covers are the last three songs from the 1967 radio show.

However, like the "Croce" album, it's rather short. Even with all the added songs, it's only 29 minutes long.

This is the last of Croce's early material that I plan on posting (unless something new emerges). But if you like this stuff, I strongly recommend the archival album "Home Recordings: Americana." It was recorded in 1967, with just Jim and his acoustic guitars, and it consists entirely of covers of classic songs. As I've mentioned elsewhere, I haven't posted that here because it seems to be widely available and well known.

01 Child of Midnight (Jim & Ingrid Croce)
02 Marianne (Jim & Ingrid Croce)
03 Railroads and Riverboats (Jim & Ingrid Croce)
04 Hard Times Are Over (Jim & Ingrid Croce)
05 The Railroad Song (Jim & Ingrid Croce)
06 Maybe Tomorrow (Jim & Ingrid Croce)
07 Pa [Song for a Grandfather] (Jim & Ingrid Croce)
08 The Way We Used to Be (Jim & Ingrid Croce)
09 Country Girl (Jim Croce)
10 Darcy Farrow (Jim & Ingrid Croce)
11 Coconut Grove (Jim & Ingrid Croce)
12 Bringin' Mary Home (Jim Croce)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/uGtkXvze

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/uhSDGGhFW2n1ewT/file

As far as I can tell, this album has never really existed per se. Instead, the first seven songs have been a bonus disc on a rerelease of a different album. Be that as it may, doing a Google search, I found some album covers for it. All of them used the photo and text in the version shown here, but the photo was either black and white or tinted. I decided to colorize it to give it some more zing.

In February 2025, I updated and improved the image with the Krea AI program.

Jim & Ingrid Croce - Croce (Jim and Ingrid Croce) (1969)

I just posted Jim Croce's debut album "Facets" from 1966. As I said with that post, I'm posting all of his recorded and available music prior to when he became famous in 1972. There isn't much of it, and it tends to get overlooked. (One exception is the archival release "Home Recordings - Americana" which dates to 1967 but seems widely available and well known, so I don't need to post it here.) Here's the next album in the series.

As I described in my write-up about Croce's 1966 album "Facets," that was an album he recorded and released all by himself, without any record company. Also in 1966, he married a woman named Ingrid who was a talented singer. They became a musical duo and performed in public frequently while they also had day jobs to pay the rent. By 1969, they were ready to record a record together, and this is it. Their profile grew enough by that time that it was released by a major label, Capitol Records. 

Ironically, the limited run of Croce's poorly produced 1966 album did well and sold out, while the much better 1969 album sold poorly, much below expectations. It did so badly that Jim and Ingrid basically dropped out of the music business for a while. (This was helped along by Ingrid getting pregnant and then having a baby, which kept both of them busy.) But in a way, the failure of this album was the key to Croce's later success. He decided to give it one more shot before leaving the music business for good, and he redoubled his songwriting efforts. Not having to tour gave him lots of time to write songs. In this burst of songwriting, he wrote most of the songs on his three hit albums released in 1972 and 1973,

In any case, this album shows his musical skills had drastically improved since his 1966 album. All but two of the songs were written by him either solo or with Ingrid. (The two covers are "the Next Man that I Marry" and "What the Hell.") Croce later realized that the first song here, "Age," was so good that it needed more exposure. So he redid it for his 1973 album "I Got a Name."

Jim Croce dominates this album, but it is a duet album and Ingrid has a prominent role too. She harmonizes with him on every song and occasionally sings lead, especially on the song "The Next Man that I Marry." Her vocals probably won't blow you away, but she certainly was a capable singer. However, for his later albums, Croce continued as a solo artist, even though he stayed happily married to Ingrid until his death in a plane crash in 1973. As far as I know, Ingrid never released any music on her own.

This album is quite short, at only 28 minutes long. Jim and Ingrid did record some other music together around the same time, but I'm saving that for a different album that I'll be posting here.

01 Age (Jim & Ingrid Croce)
02 Spin, Spin, Spin (Jim & Ingrid Croce)
03 I Am Who I Am (Jim & Ingrid Croce)
04 What Do People Do (Jim & Ingrid Croce)
05 Another Day, Another Town (Jim & Ingrid Croce)
06 Vespers (Jim & Ingrid Croce)
07 Big Wheel (Jim & Ingrid Croce)
08 Just Another Day (Jim & Ingrid Croce)
09 The Next Man that I Marry (Jim & Ingrid Croce)
10 What the Hell (Jim & Ingrid Croce)
11 The Man that Is Me (Jim & Ingrid Croce)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15106833/JimC_1969_Crce__JimandIngridCrce_.zip.html

This album languished in obscurity until Jim Croce became a big star in 1972 and 1973. Then it got rereleased multiple times, often with different names (including "Bombs Over Puerto Rico," bizarrely enough) and different album covers. I believe the original album cover was very similar to the one I've included above. It had the same photo in the middle, but the area outside that had a peach color and the only word on it was "Croce." I've chosen this version because it also says "Jim and Ingrid Croce" at the bottom. Technically, "Croce" was the original name of the album, but since that's so vague it's often known as "Jim and Ingrid Croce" instead.

Jim Croce - Facets (1966)

As I said in another Jim Croce post, Croce's music career goes much further back than most people realize. Croce emerged from obscurity to become a musical star in 1972. He had three hit albums that year and in 1973 before dying in a plane crash towards the end of 1973. His 1972 album "You Don't Mess Around with Jim" was commonly thought to be his debut album, but it wasn't. His real debut album is this one, released all the way back in 1966.

In my opinion, the music on this album is merely good. His musical talents weren't fully developed yet, and his 1972 and 1973 albums would be much better. But I've noticed that his pre-1972 output is little known and very hard to find (with the exception of one archival album, "Home Recordings - Americana"), so I've decided to post it all (except for the "Americana" album) to give it more exposure. 

There's an interesting story behind this album. Croce's parents loved music, and he built his musical knowledge off their record collection. But, like many parents, they wanted him to have a safe and dependable career so they were against him becoming a professional musician. In 1966, Jim Croce married Ingrid, who would remain his wife until his death. Apparently trying some reverse psychology, his parents gave them $500 as a wedding gift, with the stipulation that they had to use it to record an album. It seems they thought the album would fail to sell and Croce would be so discouraged that he would give up his plans for a music career. But what actually happened was he recorded the album presented here, printed up 500 copies, and then sold them for $5 each. The printing sold out due to him promoting it with concerts in clubs and he made a fair amount of money on it. So the wedding gift scheme backfired and only increased his desire to be a professional musician.

Unfortunately, this was a DIY (do it yourself) project recorded on the cheap without a proper producer, so the sound isn't great. It was officially rereleased many years after his death, but I guess there wasn't much they could do to improve the sound. It's not bad by any means, but don't expect the high fidelity typical of studio albums.

Croce began publicly performing music in the early 1960s while he was a college student. I'm not aware of any good publicly available live recordings of him prior to 1972... except for a short one all the way back in 1964! I have no idea how he was recorded well that far back, but one archival release does have a few songs from that 1964 concert. A couple of those songs didn't sound good to me, mainly because of too much audience noise drowning out the music, but I've added three of those 1964 songs to the end of this album.

Note that in these early years, Croce was only beginning to become a talented songwriter. Just two of the songs, "Texas Rodeo" and "Sun Came Up," are originals. Plus, for "The Ballad of Gunga Din," he took the lyrics from a poem by Rudyard Kipling and added his own music to it.

This is a short album. The actual album is only 27 minutes long. Since I added three songs at the end, the total is 33 minutes long.

01 Steel Rail Blues (Jim Croce)
02 Coal Tattoo (Jim Croce)
03 Texas Rodeo (Jim Croce)
04 Charley Green, Play That Slide Trombone (Jim Croce)
05 The Ballad of Gunga Din (Jim Croce)
06 Hard Hearted Hannah [The Vamp from Savannah] (Jim Croce)
07 Sun Come Up (Jim Croce)
08 The Blizzard (Jim Croce)
09 Running Maggie (Jim Croce)
10 Big Fat Woman (Jim Croce)
11 Until It's Time for Me to Go (Jim Croce)
12 San Francisco Bay Blues (Jim Croce)
13 Washington at Valley Forge (Jim Croce)
14 La Bamba (Jim Croce)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/vFiukgBd

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/goYo38tB4HOkXgu/file

The original album cover for this album is awful, quite possibly the worst I've ever seen! It basically looks like someone stuck a Post-It note to a plain background and called that the cover. No doubt that wasn't some ironically simple statement, but just a reflection of the cheap DIY way the album was made.

Rather than use that one, I decided to come up with one myself. I found a photo of Croce that looked to be from the late 1960s, though I don't know the year. It was of him and his wife Ingrid, and she had a hand on one of his shoulders. I cropped her out of the picture and removed the hand in Photoshop so the focus would be entirely on him. That's the album cover at the top.

After I did that, I found out that when the album was officially rereleased decades later, it was given a different cover that was much better than the original. I've included that mostly black one here too, for those who prefer that one.

In February 2025, I improved the original cover with the help of the Krea AI program.

Jim Croce - Which Way Are You Goin' - Non-Album Tracks (1970-1973)

Jim Croce became a big star in 1972 seemingly out of nowhere, with a hit "debut" album and a couple of hit singles. However, he spent years toiling in obscurity as a folk musician and songwriter before his success. Unfortunately, his time in the spotlight was short, because he died in a plane crash in 1973. This album gathers up all his stray tracks from 1970 until the end of his career to 1973. I will have more to post of his music before 1970, but that's for another time.

Croce put out an obscure album in 1969 that was performed as a duet with his wife Ingrid Croce. Then he didn't release any new music until the hit 1972 album mentioned above, "You Don't Mess Around with Jim." It turns out he had a bunch of songs that he wrote and recorded in 1970 and 1971 that didn't get released at the time. Those comprise the first eight songs. I think all of them are originals, and all of them were only released posthumously. 

The remainder of the songs are cover versions that he did in his years of fame, 1972 and 1973. Two of those, "Chain Gang Medley" and "Ol' Man River" were the A- and B-sides of a 1972 single. The rest were performed in concert. I did my best to strip those of audience noise to make them sound like the other studio tracks. Luckily, the sound quality is so high on these that I think they come fairly close to sounding as good, even though a couple of them are from bootlegs.

Note that if you're easily offended, the song "Ball of Kerrymuir" probably is not for you. This seems to be a traditional Irish song that Croce played in concert for laughs. The lyrics are wild and X-rated, with each verse describing an outrageous sex act. I didn't include the long introduction he always gave to explain this strange song, but you can hear that on his official live album "The Final Tour." This version is longer and has some extra verses.

The songs are in rough chronological order by the year they were recorded. But I put "Ol' Man River" at the end even though it's from 1972 instead of 1973 since I find it a fitting final song.

This album is 40 minutes long. I wouldn't say it's as good as the three hit albums from 1972 and 1973 that he's best known for, but if you like those you should like this, since it's very much in the same vein.

01 [And] I Remember Her (Jim Croce)
02 Cotton Mouth River (Jim Croce)
03 More than That Tomorrow (Jim Croce)
04 The Migrant Worker (Jim Croce)
05 Stone Walls (Jim Croce)
06 King's Song (Jim Croce)
07 Mississippi Lady (Jim Croce)
08 Which Way Are You Goin' (Jim Croce)
09 Chain Gang Medley [Chain Gang - He Don't Love You - Searchin' - Chain Gang] (Jim Croce)
10 Framed (Jim Croce)
11 He's Got a Way with Women (Jim Croce)
12 Ball of Kerrymuir [Edit] (Jim Croce)
13 Shopping for Clothes (Jim Croce)
14 Ol' Man River (Jim Croce)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/Ahp6T2BS

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/axc2ngOOr4hgQb8/file

PJ of his "Albums I Wish Existed" blog originally did the album cover. But then I realized I had to redo it after I discovered the exact version of the song I wanted as the title song was in fact on Croce's "Americana" album already. So I redid it with a new title. I'm not sure where or when the photo is from. I added the same record company logo that was on his 1972 and 1973 albums.

In February 2025, I sharpened the image with the Krea AI program.

Jim Croce - Acoustic Demos (1971)

This is my first Jim Croce post, but it won't be the last. I feel that his music is sadly overlooked in this era, in part due to his early death in a 1973 plane crash only about a year after he became a star. 

This collection is something I've never seen gathered together before, and frankly I don't know much about it. In short, these are many of his classic songs in demo form, stripped down to his lead vocals and acoustic guitar. Croce's songs are generally acoustic sounding, but the studio versions often had strings, drums, and other instruments added. I love acoustic versions, so I really enjoy these versions.

I only recently came across this material as I was digging deeper into his music. Most of these songs are officially released, but on rather obscure releases, and spread out here and there. What little I know about the backstory comes from the liner notes to one of his collections ("The Studio Album Collection"), and goes like this. In 1969, Croce released an album that was performed with his wife Ingrid, and is known as either "Croce" or "Jim and Ingrid Croce." It didn't sell well at all, and his record company dropped him. Around that time, Ingrid got pregnant. He and she stopped touring and focused on their new baby and making enough money to get by. But staying at home, Croce had lots of time to write new songs. 

In February 1971, he recorded acoustic demos for a bunch of new songs, and this new material was so strong that he got a new record contract. That resulted in the album "You Don't Mess Around with Jim," released in April 1972. It was a surprise hit, with two hit songs, "You Don't Mess Around with Jim" and "Operator (That's Not the Way It Feels)." Plus, after his death, the song "Time in a Bottle" was released from the album and went to number one.

I know that lots of these performances are from that demo, but I don't know which ones exactly. I realized that they include every single one of the 12 songs on the "You Don't Mess Around with Jim" album, so I've sorted the first 12 songs to duplicate that album order exactly. I'm guessing that February 1971 tape included most or all of those. But that still leaves another six songs. I've arranged it so the next four songs all come from his subsequent album "Life and Times." The penultimate song "Lover's Cross" comes from his last album, "I Got a Name." That just leaves the final song, "Mississippi Lady." It was first released on "The Faces I've Been," an album released in 1975 that gathered up some stray tracks. I'm pretty sure it was an outtake from the "You Don't Mess Around with Jim" album.

So that's all I know. I'm guessing these are from 1971, but it could well be that some are from 1972 or 1973. If anyone knows more, please let me know. 

Most of the songs here come from three different official collections. But I searched on YouTube and found four additional songs that apparently remain unreleased, or perhaps are from some other official source that I missed. In any case, these four sound just as good as the rest. All the performances are excellent, but note that "Speedball Tucker" is less than a minute long. Since that's one of the officially released ones, I surmise that he hadn't finished the song when he recorded the demo.

01 You Don't Mess Around with Jim (Jim Croce)
02 Tomorrow's Going to Be a Brighter Day (Jim Croce)
03 New York's Not My Home (Jim Croce)
04 Hard Time Losin' Man (Jim Croce)
05 Photographs and Memories (Jim Croce)
06 Walkin' Back to Georgia (Jim Croce)
07 Operator [That's Not the Way It Feels] (Jim Croce)
08 Time in a Bottle (Jim Croce)
09 Rapid Roy [The Stock Car Boy] (Jim Croce)
10 Box No. 10 (Jim Croce)
11 A Long Time Ago (Jim Croce)
12 Hey Tomorrow (Jim Croce)
13 A Good Time Man like Me Ain't Got No Business (Jim Croce)
14 Bad, Bad Leroy Brown (Jim Croce)
15 These Dreams (Jim Croce)
16 Speedball Tucker (Jim Croce)
17 Lover's Cross (Jim Croce)
18 Mississippi Lady (Jim Croce)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15102046/JimCr_1971_AcoustcDemos_atse.zip.html

Yet again, the album cover art was made by PJ of his "Albums I Wish Exist" blog.