Today’s classic song of the day is “Operator (That’s Not the Way It Feels)” by Jim Croce. I bet you didn’t know the whole title, including the parentheses, did you? In any case, “Operator” was released in August of 1972 and peaked at #17 on the Billboard Hot 100 and #11 on Billboard’s Easy Listening chart. Based on its lasting popularity, you probably thought it charted higher, didn’t you.
“Operator” was written by Mr. Croce and produced by Terry Cashman and Tommy West, who as performers had their own hit the same year with “American City Suite,” a previous classic song of the day. (Terry, Tommy, and Jim were all pals, apparently, and Cashman and West produced most of Croce’s big hits.) The song’s about a guy trying to track down an old lover with the help of a telephone operator, back when we still had telephone operators. The lyrics tell the story:
Operator, well could you help me place this call?
See, the number on the match book is old and faded
She’s living in L.A. with my best old ex-friend Ray
A guy she said she knew well and sometimes hated
But isn’t that the way they say it goes?
Well let’s forget all that
And give me the number if you can find it
So I can call just to tell ’em I’m fine, and to show
I’ve overcome the blow
I’ve learned to take it well
I only wish my words could just convince myself
That it just wasn’t real
In my opinion, “Operator” was one of Mr. Croce’s best songs, although it wasn’t his most popular. In descending order of Billboard rankings, his top songs were “Big Bad Leroy Brown” (#1 in 1973), “Time in a Bottle” (#1 in 1973), “You Don’t Mess Around with Jim” (#8 in 1972), “I’ll Have to Say I Love You in a Song” (#9 in 1974), “I Got a Name” (#10 in 1973), and then “Operator” (#17 in 1972). I have to admit my extreme dislike of his brainless shuffles (“Big Bad Leroy Brown” and “You Don’t Mess Around with Jim”) even as I admire his sensitive love songs. How could the same guy write both?
Jim Croce started performing in the early ’60s when he was in college at Villanova, which is also where he met his wife Ingrid. He performed, both solo and as a duo with Ingrid, in coffeehouses and other small venues throughout the mid- to late-1960s. He got a contract with Capitol Records in 1968 but that didn’t amount to much. It wasn’t until he signed a three-record deal with ABC Records in 1972 that his career took off, resulting in all those Top Ten hits and lots of TV appearances.
Unfortunately, Jim Croce and five others passed away on September 20, 1973, when their Beechcraft E18S crashed during takeoff from Natchitoches Regional Airport in Louisiana. He was just 30 years old. He died one day before his single, “I Got a Name,” was released.
Croce’s widow Ingrid kept her late husband’s name alive by opening Croce’s Restaurant & Jazz Bar in San Diego’s Gaslight district. Croce’s was a hip and happening place and hosted all manner of musical acts. Here’s Ingrid’s final message, when the restaurant closed in 2016:
Do you know the story about when Jim Croce and I first moved to San Diego in 1973? We were so surprised when we went to the Gaslamp and saw our new downtown in such disrepair. There were no restaurants or music venues anywhere and we were hungry for both.
So Jim joked that we should open a restaurant and bar and have our friends like James Taylor, Jimmy Buffet, Arlo Guthrie, Bonnie Raitt, The Manhattan Transfer and more, come to play at our bar.
But a week later, Jim’s plane crashed and that dream was gone.
Then after 10 years of litigation, I wanted to recreate the warmth and energy of my time with Jim Croce, and those early days of entertaining together. So I built Croce’s Restaurant and Jazz Bar, right on the corner of Fifth and F, just where Jim and I had talked about it.
Ingrid Croce opened Croce’s in 1985 and closed it in 2016. That was a pretty good run.
