Searching for Sugar Man and finding Jim Croce

Probably one of the most important early music memories I have is of Jim Croce’s death. In 1973, just as his career was taking off, he died in a plane crash in Louisiana. I was nine years old, and my father had his records and played them after dinner. We loved “Bad, Bad, Leroy Brown” (being from a south suburb of Chicago) and the equally jammin’ “Don’t Mess Around with Jim.” When I heard about the plane crash, I remember sitting on a swing in the back yard and thinking about how sad it was that he would never make any more records.

But also, his songs were sad. The song “Operator” was one of the saddest songs I’d ever heard in my short life. The picture on that last album, Life and Times, issued just two months before his death, now looked so tragic.

Jim Croce was my closest reference for the music of Rodriguez, the subject of the documentary Searching for Sugar Man. His career was even more brief– two critically acclaimed records produced in 1968 and 1970 that didn’t sell in the United States. Croce’s first two records also didn’t take off, and both men, when the road to fame ended, worked construction. Unlike Croce, Rodriguez didn’t keep coming back to music and so there was no later success.

We’ll never know if his music would have appealed later, because Rodriguez disappeared into the streets of Detroit. In the documentary he actually only perks up when talking about construction, saying that he liked the work, that it kept him fit and was satisfying. His coworkers are among the most interesting characters in the film, talking about the poet in a tuxedo who worked alongside them demolishing buildings.

However, in that strange place that was Apartheid South Africa, a bootleg of Rodriguez’s album made its way into the hands of some Afrikaaner teens. The record took off, and it’s a true sign of how isolated South Africa was for these decades that the record was made and sold by the tens of thousands and this subculture fully embraced Rodriguez, but he never knew it, nor did the owner of his first label (which had gone defunct by 1975) or, seemingly, anyone else in the U.S. Over the years, the legend of his death– shooting himself in the head onstage or setting himself on fire on stage at the end of a show– became his official story. In any other place but South Africa in the 1980s, it seems like it would have been easy, and imperative, to confirm this story. In a place where music was censored and musicians could not travel in or out of the country because of the embargo, it was not part of the equation.

Perhaps what is most amazing is the way, once found, Rodriguez is able to walk easily onto a stage in South Africa in front of 5,000 people and perform as though he’d been a major rock star all along. Rodriguez in the film is pretty inarticulate about the whole story, and the filmmakers were lucky to have his daughters to help tell the tale, as well as the South African musicians, music store owner and journalists whose lives were affected by the music and who did the search.

I knew the story going into the film, but I was still not prepared for how gripping a story this is about South Africa and about art. As you know if you read this blog, I struggle with questions about art and how to define success. Rodriguez is another person who was not defined by art or success, seems to have a real detachment from ego that allows him to enjoy the experience of making his music, enjoy his simple life in a small house with a wood stove, and enjoy physical labor many would find unpleasant. And that, more than any of the rest of the story, in enviable.

The final part of the Jim Croce story, for me, was watching what I think was the Grammy Awards that year. I believe there was a tribute and they may have given an award to Croce’s widow, Ingrid, but I’m not sure. What I remember is that she came to the microphone and very bitterly scolded the music industry for their bad treatment of her husband, and they way no one spoke highly of him and his music until after his death. I was shocked. I felt scolded. And I felt even more sad. I can’t find confirmation of this event, but I know it happened. By all accounts, Ingrid Croce seems like a wonderful, accomplished woman who did many interesting things. Their son is a singer songwriter with some success. Ingrid, now remarried, runs Croce’s Restaurant and Jazz Bar in San Diego. She continues to quietly promote Jim Croce’s music and legacy. And as with Rodriguez, we can wonder what might have been.