La Voce Del Silenzio: 2014

Jim Croce

(10 January, 1943 - 20 September 1973)

Time In A Bottle

If I could save time in a bottle

the first thing that I'd like to do

is to save everyday till eternity passes away

just to spend them with you.

If I could make days last forever

if words could make wishes come true

I'd save everyday like a treasure and then

again I would spend them with you.

But there never seems to be enough time

to do the things you wanna do once you find them

I looked around enough to know

That you're the one I wanna go through time with.

If I had a box just for wishes

and dreams that had never come true

the box would be empty except for the memory of how

they were answered by you.

But there never seems to be enough time

to do the things you wanna do once you find them

I looked around enough to know

that your the one I wanna go thru time with.

James Joseph Croce, pronounced (CROW-chee) (January 10, 1943 – September 20, 1973), popularly known as Jim Croce, was an American singer-songwriter.

Croce scored a handful of hit songs in the early '70s, but died in an airplane crash just as he was beginning to capitalize on his success. He is probably best remembered for the songs "Time In A Bottle" and "Bad, Bad Leroy Brown," both #1 hits in 1973.

Early life

Croce was born in South Philadelphia. He graduated from Upper Darby High School in Drexel Hill, Pennsylvania in 1960. In 1976, he was the first former student to be added to the Upper Darby High School Wall of Fame. While attending Villanova University, from which he graduated in 1965, Croce was a member of the Villanova Singers and Villanova Spires and was a student disc jockey at WXVU. He also met his future wife, Ingrid Jacobson, at a hootenanny at Convention Hall in Philadelphia, where he was a judge for a contest. When they married, he converted to Judaism. Their son Adrian James is a singer-songwriter in his own right, performing under the name A. J. Croce.

Early career

During the early 1960s, Croce formed a number of college bands, performed at coffee houses and universities, and later performed with his wife as a duo in the mid-1960s to early 1970s. At first, their performances included songs by Ian and Sylvia, Gordon Lightfoot, Joan Baez, and Woody Guthrie, but in time they began writing their own music, such as "Age," "Hey Tomorrow," and "Spin Spin Spin," which later led to Croce's hit songs in the early 1970s.

At the same time, Croce got his first long-term gig at a rural bar and steak house in Lima, Pennsylvania, called the Riddle Paddock. There, over the next few years, Croce developed a very engaging rapport with tough audiences and built his musical repertoire to more than 3,000 songs. His set list included every genre from blues to country to rock 'n roll to folk, with tender love songs and traditional bawdy ballads, always introduced with a story and an impish grin.

In 1968, Jim and Ingrid Croce were encouraged to move to New York City to record their first album with Capitol Records. For the next two years, they drove more than 300,000 miles playing small clubs and concerts on the college concert circuit promoting their album Jim & Ingrid Croce.

Then, disillusioned by the music business and New York City, Croce sold all but one guitar to pay the rent, and they returned to the Pennsylvania countryside where Croce got a job driving trucks and doing construction to pay the bills. He called this his "character development period" and spent a lot of his time sitting in the cab of a truck, composing songs about his buddies and the folks he enjoyed meeting at the local bars and truck stops.

Success

In 1970, Croce met classically trained pianist/guitarist, singer-songwriter Maury Muehleisen from Trenton, New Jersey through Joe Salviuolo (aka Sal Joseph). Salviuolo was best friends with Jim when they attended Villanova University together, and Salviuolo later discovered Maury when he was teaching at Glassboro State College in New Jersey. Sal, along with Tommy West and Terry Cashman, brought this duo together in the Cashman and West production office in New York City. Initially, Croce backed Muehleisen on guitar at his gigs. But in time, their musical strengths led them each to new heights. Muehleisen's ethereal and inspired guitar leads became the perfect accompaniment to Croce's down-to-earth music.

In 1972, Croce signed to a three-record deal with ABC Records releasing You Don't Mess Around with Jim and Life & Times in the same year. The singles "You Don't Mess Around with Jim," "Operator (That's Not The Way It Feels)," and "Time in a Bottle" (written for his newborn son, A. J. Croce) helped the former album reach #1 on the charts in 1974. Croce's biggest single, "Bad, Bad Leroy Brown," hit #1 on the U.S. charts in the summer of 1973, selling two million copies.

Sudden death

Croce, 30, and Muehleisen, 24, died in a small commercial plane crash on September 20, 1973, one day before his third ABC album, I Got a Name was to be released. The posthumous release included three hits, "I Got A Name," "Workin' At The Car Wash Blues," and "I'll Have to Say I Love You in a Song". Three months after his death, the song "Time in a Bottle," originally released on Croce's first album the year before, became a #1 hit single (the third posthumous chart-topping song of the Rock Era following Otis Redding's "Sittin' On (The Dock of the Bay)" and "Me and Bobby McGee" by Janis Joplin).

Croce had just completed a concert in Natchitoches, Louisiana, and was flying to Sherman, Texas. The pilot and all passengers (Croce, Muehleisen, and George Stevens, the comic who was the show's warm up act) were killed instantly at 10:45 PM EDT on September 20, 1973, less than an hour after the end of their last concert. Upon takeoff, the plane did not gain enough altitude to clear an area of large pecan trees at the end of the runway. The official report from the NTSB hints that the charter pilot, Robert Newton Elliott, who had severe coronary artery disease and had run a portion of the 3 miles to the airport from a motel, may have suffered a heart attack, causing him to crash into the trees on a clear runway with excellent visibility. A later investigation placed sole blame for the accident on pilot error.

Croce was laid to rest in the Philadelphia area, even though he had recently relocated to San Diego. Family, friends, and fans were stunned to learn of the premature death of the two musicians.

News of the premature deaths of the duo sparked a massive interest in Jim’s first two albums – You Don’t Mess Around With Jim and Life and Times - as well as the “I Got A Name” single, which was released later that same week. This was followed closely by the release of the album of the same title. Sales soared and resulted in three gold records. A “Greatest Hits” package released in 1974 also proved to be extraordinarily popular. The catalogue became a staple of radio play, turntables, cassettes, and CDs for years, and is still receiving significant airplay in the first decade of the 21st century.

Albums

Facets (1966) (re-released with additional tracks, 2003)
Jim & Ingrid Croce (with Ingrid Croce) (1969)
You Don't Mess Around with Jim (1972)
Life and Times (1973)

I Got a Name (1973)
Photographs & Memories: His Greatest Hits (1974)
Down the Highway (1975)
The Faces I've Been (1975)
Time in a Bottle: Jim Croce's Greatest Love Songs (1976)
Bad, Bad Leroy Brown: Jim Croce's Greatest Character Songs (1978)
Jim Croce Live: The Final Tour (1989)
The 50th Anniversary Collection (1992) - 2 CDs
24 Karat Gold in a Bottle (1994)
The Definitive Collection: "Time in a Bottle" (1999) - 2 CDs
Words and Music (1999)
Home Recordings: Americana (2003)
Classic Hits (2004)
Have You Heard (2006)

Singles(Number is Billboard peak)

1 - Bad, Bad Leroy Brown (1973)
1 - Time in a Bottle (1973)
8 - You Don't Mess Around With Jim (1972)
9 - I'll Have to Say I Love You in a Song (1974)
10 - I Got a Name (1973)
17 - Operator (That's Not the Way It Feels) (1972)
32 - Workin' At The Car Wash Blues (1974)
37 - One Less Set Of Footsteps (1973)
63 - Chain Gang Medley (1973)
64 - It Doesn't Have To Be That Way (1976)
110 - Mississippi Lady (1976)

La Voce Del Silenzio

THE VOICE OF SILENCE

(LA VO CE DEL SILENZIO)

I wanted to be alone a while

to think, as you know,......

and in the silence I heard a voice inside myself

and many things that I thought were

dead now came back to life,

and the person I loved so much

returned from the sea of silence

like tears flooding my eyes,

and the one I’m missing

in the sea of silence.

You know I miss you very much!

There are things in silence

that I never expected

.…I want a voice…

and suddenly you realize that the silence

has the appearance of things you lost,

and I hear you love,

I feel you in my heart,

you’re reclaiming the place that

you hadn’t ever lost

that you hadn’t ever lost

that you hadn’t ever lost.

I wanted to be alone a while

to think, as you know,

but there are things in silence

that I never expected,

…I want a voice…

and suddenly you realize that the silence

has the appearance of things you lost,

and I hear you love,

I feel you in my heart,

you’re reclaiming the place that

you hadn’t ever lost

you hadn’t lost

you hadn’t ever lost.

Luciano Pavarotti

The Life And Times Of Pope John Paul II

Early Life

Karol Józef Wojtyła was born on 18 May 1920 in the Polish town of Wadowice and was the youngest of three children of Karol Wojtyła, an ethnic Pole and Emilia Kaczorowska; who was of Lithuanian ancestry. Yaakov Wise, Jewish historian, chazzan and scientist from Manchester, holds that Karol's mother was of Jewish ancestry and originally named Emilia Katz, but later polonized her last name.

At 8

At 12 years of age

His mother died on April 13, 1929, when he was just nine years old, and his father supported him so that he could study. His brother, who worked as a doctor, died when Wojtyła was twelve. He lost everyone in his family - a sister, brother, mother, and father - before he became a priest. His youth was marked by extensive contacts with the then thriving Jewish community of Wadowice. He played sports during his youth, and was particularly interested in football (soccer)[6] as a goalkeeper.[7]

After completing his studies at the Marcin Wadowita high school in Wadowice, in 1938 Wojtyła enrolled at the Jagiellonian University in Kraków, and in a school for drama.[3] He worked as a volunteer librarian and did compulsory military training in the Academic Legion, but refused to hold or fire a weapon. In his youth he was an athlete, actor and playwright and he learned as many as ten languages during his lifetime, including Latin, Ukrainian, Croatian, Greek, Dutch, Spanish, Portuguese, French, Italian, German, English, Yiddish, Hebrew as well as his native Polish. He also had some facility with Russian.

In 1939, Nazi German occupation forces closed the Jagiellonian University. All able-bodied males had to have a job. From 1940 to 1944 Wojtyła variously worked as a messenger for a restaurant and a manual labourer in a limestone quarry, and then as a salesman for the Solvay chemical factory to avoid being deported to Germany.[3] His father died of a heart attack in 1941. B'nai B'rith and other authorities have said he helped Jews find refuge from the Nazis.

On 29 February 1944, Wojtyła was knocked down by a German truck. In sharp contrast to the harshness normally expected from the occupiers and especially from the racialist officials among them, the German Wehrmacht officers and driver tended him and commandeered a passing truck to get him to a hospital. He spent two weeks there with a severe concussion and a shoulder injury. This accident and his survival seemed to Wojtyła a confirmation of his priestly vocation. On 6 August 1944, "Black Sunday", just after the Warsaw uprising began, the Gestapo rounded up young men in Kraków to avoid a similar uprising. Wojtyła escaped by hiding in the basement of his home as it was searched, then escaped to the Kraków Archbishop's residence, where he stayed until after the war.

On the night of 17 January 1945, the Germans quit the city, and the seminarians reclaimed the ruined seminary. Wojtyła and another seminarian volunteered for the odious task of chopping up and carting away piles of frozen excrement from the lavatories. That month, Wojtyła personally helped a 14-year-old Jewish refugee girl named Edith Zierer[8] who had run away from a Nazi labor camp in Częstochowa. Zierer was attempting to reach her family in Kraków but had collapsed from cold and exhaustion on a train platform in Jędrzejów. No one helped but Wojtyła, who gave her some hot tea and food, personally carried her to a train and accompanied her to Kraków. Zierer credits Wojtyła for saving her life that day. She would not hear of her benefactor again until she read that he was elected as the Pope in 1978.

A Pope From Poland

(16th October 1978)

In August 1978 following Paul's death, he voted in the Papal conclave that elected Pope John Paul I, who at 65 was considered young by papal standards. However, John Paul I died after only 33 days as pope, thereby precipitating another conclave.

Voting in the second conclave was divided between two particularly strong candidates: Giuseppe Siri, the Archbishop of Genoa; and Giovanni Benelli, the Archbishop of Florence and a close associate of Pope John Paul I. In early ballots, Benelli came within nine votes of victory. However, Wojtyła secured election as a compromise candidate, in part through the support of Franz Cardinal König and others who had previously supported Cardinal Siri.

He became the 264th Pope according to the chronological List of popes. At only 58 years of age, he was the youngest pope elected since Pope Pius IX in 1846. Like his immediate predecessor, Pope John Paul II dispensed with the traditional Papal coronation and instead received ecclesiastical investiture with the simplified Papal inauguration on 22 October 1978. During his inauguration, when the cardinals were to kneel before him to take their vows and kiss his ring, he stood up as the Polish prelate Stefan Cardinal Wyszynski knelt down, stopped him from kissing the ring and hugged him (SABC2 "The Greatest souls" documentary 2005). As Bishop of Rome he took possession of his Cathedral Church, the Basilica of St. John Lateran, on 12 November 1978.

Coat of Arms of Pope John Paul II with the Marian Cross. The Letter M is for Mary, the mother of Jesus, to whom he held strong devotion.

Assassination Attempt

On 13 May 1981 John Paul II was shot and critically wounded by Mehmet Ali Ağca, an expert and trained Turkish gunman who was a member of the militant group Grey Wolves, as he entered St. Peter's Square to address an audience. He was rushed into the Vatican complex, then to the Gemelli Hospital, where Dr. Francesco Crucitti, a noted gastroenterological surgeon, had just arrived by police escort after hearing of the incident. The Pope had lost almost three-quarters of his blood, a near-exsanguination, despite the fact that the bullets missed his mesenteric artery and abdominal aorta. He underwent five hours of surgery to treat his massive blood loss and abdominal wounds. En route to the hospital, he lost consciousness. Ağca was caught and restrained by a nun and other bystanders until police arrived. He was sentenced to life imprisonment. Two days after Christmas 1983, John Paul II visited the prison where his would-be assassin was being held. The two spoke privately for 20 minutes. John Paul II said, "What we talked about will have to remain a secret between him and me. I spoke to him as a brother whom I have pardoned and who has my complete trust." The pope also stated that Our Lady of Fatima helped keep him alive throughout his ordeal.

“Could I forget that the event [Ali Ağca's assassination attempt] in St. Peter’s Square took place on the day and at the hour when the first appearance of the Mother of Christ to the poor little peasants has been remembered for over sixty years at Fátima, Portugal? For in everything that happened to me on that very day, I felt that extraordinary motherly protection and care, which turned out to be stronger than the deadly bullet.”

—Pope John Paul II -Memory & Identity, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2005, p.184

Pastoral Trips

During his pontificate, Pope John Paul II made trips to 117 countries, 104 foreign trips, more than all previous popes put together. In total he logged more than 1,167,000 km (725,000 miles). He consistently attracted large crowds on his travels, some amongst the largest ever assembled in human history. While some of his trips (such as to the United States and the Holy Land) were to places previously visited by Pope Paul VI (the first pope to travel widely), many others were to places that no pope had ever visited before. All these travels were paid by the money of the countries he visited and not by the Vatican.

Death

On 31 March 2005 the Pope developed septic shock, a widespread form of infection with a very high fever and profoundly low blood pressure, but was not taken to the hospital. Instead, he was offered medical monitoring by a team of consultants at his private residence. This was taken as an indication that the pope and those close to him believed that he was nearing death; it would have been in accordance with his wishes to die in the Vatican. Later that day Vatican sources announced that John Paul II had been given the Anointing of the Sick by his friend and secretary Stanisław Dziwisz. During the final days of the Pope's life, the lights were kept burning through the night where he lay in the Papal apartment on the top floor of the Apostolic Palace.

Tens of thousands of people rushed to the Vatican, filling St. Peter's Square and beyond with a vast multitude, and held vigil for two days. Upon hearing of this, the dying pope was said to have stated: "I have searched for you, and now you have come to me, and I thank you."

On Saturday 2 April, at about 15:30 CEST, John Paul II spoke his final words, "Let me go to the house of the Father," to his aides in his native Polish and fell into a coma about four hours later.[15] He died in his private apartment, at 21:37 CEST (19:37 UTC), 46 days short of his 85th birthday.