re: For those around during the time, How sad was Jim Croce’s death?

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"Photographs & Memories” was my first cassette tape purchase

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We had it on 8-Track.
I was only 10 y/o. My older sister was really upset.

Might have become the greatest song writer EVER had he not died young.

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“Photographs & Memories” was my first cassette tape purchase. I absolutely love that man’s music and I’m interested in the replies

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Same here. I was a kid in about the 3rd or 4th grade when this happened. I got my first real record player the first Christmas after that with a couple of new LP's. "Photographs and Memories" was one of them. I just about wore his LP out and I still have it. I've always loved those songs. Bad Bad Leroy Brown was one my dad and I would sing when it came on the radio. Great memories. Sad of what could have been for Jim Croce.

FROM WIKIPEDIA ON HIS DEATH

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On the night of Thursday, September 20, 1973, during Croce's Life and Times tour which had been scheduled for 45 dates, and the day before his ABC single "I Got a Name" was released, Croce and five others were killed when their chartered Beechcraft E18S crashed into a tree during takeoff from the Natchitoches Regional Airport in Natchitoches, Louisiana.[24] Croce was 30 years old. Others killed in the crash were pilot Robert N. Elliott, Croce's bandmate Maury Muehleisen, comedian George Stevens, manager and booking agent Kenneth D. Cortese, and road manager Dennis Rast.[25][26][27] An hour before the crash, Croce had completed a concert at Northwestern State University's Prather Coliseum in Natchitoches; he was flying to Sherman, Texas, for a concert at Austin College.

An investigation by the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) named the probable cause as the pilot's failure to see the obstruction due to physical impairment and because fog reduced his vision. The 57-year-old Elliott suffered from severe coronary artery disease and had run three miles to the airport from a motel. He had an ATP certificate, 14,290 hours total flight time, and 2,190 hours in the Beech 18 type airplane.[28] A later investigation placed the sole blame on pilot error because of his downwind takeoff into a "black hole" of severe darkness, limiting his use of visual references.[29]

Croce was buried at Haym Salomon Memorial Park in Frazer, Pennsylvania.

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Jim Croce and Gordon Lightfoot stations on I Heart Radio is good stuff

Having a tree at the end of a runway unfortunately for Jim is the most Louisiana thing ever.

After my time, but I do remember an incessant infomercial about his music, so I heard snippets of him over and over as a kid.

"I've got a name" has to be my favorite. Tarantino used it brilliantly in Django, in one of the best feel good moments of the movie.

I was 10 years old when that happened. It was really sad. Exacerbated by the fact that he had a 2-year-old son. He was an everyman sort of guy with a wife and baby who seemed to be the center of his life. I think for that reason it resonated in a way that even 10-year-old me felt. I love his music.

I was a student at Nicholls State University in the fall of 1973. We were awaiting Jim's concert in Thibodaux, and got word that his plane had crashed in Natchitoches.
Was looking forward to attending;so sorry that we never got to see him!

My dad turned me on to him. Terrible loss.