'I’ve Got a Name'
By Ingrid Croce & Jimmy Rock
Hardcover, 307 pages ($25)
You know his songs: “Time in a Bottle,” “Bad, Bad Leroy Brown” and “I Got a Name.” But chances are you don’t know much about the singer-songwriter behind them, other than, perhaps, that Jim Croce was only 30 years old and at the top of his musical career when he died in a plane crash in 1973. This insightful biography, written by the woman who knew him best—the teenage sweetheart who later became his wife—shines a candid, illuminating spotlight on Croce’s childhood and upbringing in a hardworking Italian family; his stint in the Army National Guard (where he met the real-life Sgt. Leroy Brown); the various blue-collar characters who inspired many of his songs; and the highs and lows of his career—and a love story deep-rooted in togetherness but undermined by Croce’s temper, drug use and dalliance with groupies.
