Tommy
West: On the evening of Sept.
19th, 1973 I was in New York City where I lived and I was doing a
recording session at Electric Lady down in Greenwich Village. I was
doing a back up session for a friend of mine named John Hill and it was
a very nice night out in New York, so I walked from Greenwich Village all
the way up to 51st and 2nd in Mid town Manhattan on the East Side where
I lived, and I went to bed - I think I watched a ballgame, if there was
a ballgame to watch. And I went to sleep and about 5 o'clock in the
morning the phone rang which is always odd, and so my first conscious thought
was "who died?" I ran to get the phone before the 5th ring because at the
5th ring my answering service would have picked up and I got the phone.
And on the phone was Elliott Abbott who was one of Jim's managers, actually
most responsible for his day to day activity on the road and just a terrific
guy. And Elliott said "This is Elliot, are you awake?" and I said
"Well I am now" and he said "Well, Jim and Maury were killed
in a plane crash." And I said "You're not joking are you?" and he
said "no". And that was about it. I hung up the phone, I went back
to bed. And I didn't believe it because Jim had always kidded
around about that stuff. And put the radio on, and that's when I found
out that he had indeed died, and I just was frozen. And then about
10 minutes later I got up and decided to go to my office because I knew
I'd be doing press conferences for the next few days. And that's
where I was and what I was doing. I don't know who the back-up session
was for, I forgot that. But that's how I learned about Jim's death.
Tom Orecchio:
So Tommy, what have you been up to these days? Are there any new
projects you're currently working on?
Tommy
West: Well,
what I've been doing since 1989 is I'm sort of in the middle of what I
call the third creative arc of my career. The first one was from
roughly '66 when I got into the business professionally through 1976 which
encapsulates all the Jim stuff. From about 77 thru 1989 I did almost
everything in Nashville. That was my country phase, that 2nd creative
arc, that's an arc with a lot of southern humidity. And then
we came back to New Jersey, my family and I, we had always had a place
here in New Jersey, Pottersville, which is about 50 miles west of Manhattan.
And we came back home and I started what I think is the last creative arc
in my career, and that entails having my own recording studio which is
called "Somewhere In New Jersey". And I kind of dropped out of the
"big time" business, even though my last major recording was by Anne Murray
in 1993 an album called "Croonin'" which won a Juno which is like our Grammy
award for best engineered recording. I may do another one with her
next year. I have my own label called "Brave New Records" and I have
another label called "High Harmony". On the "High Harmony"
label there are about 8 or 9 harmonica records that I've done with Robert
Bonfiglio who is the best harmonica player in the world - he's classically
trained. And right now I'm in the middle of doing 2 great singer/songwriters.
One is a female duo called "Blonde on Blonde" from Nashville, they're not
country. And the other act is called Bob Hillman who is one of the
better new rising folk singers in the New York area. But I'm always
busy just doing stuff. I've learned how to engineer because I'm out
here in the woods and Elliot Shiner is not going to come out here and Clear
Mountain doesn't know where this is and I'm no threat to them either.
That's sort of my office and it's in my home. We have a 5000 square foot
barn which houses the studio which is a few feet from my house which is
an old house and my family lives here and I have 2 stepsons, one of whom
has his own sound company in Atlanta, and the other is married and living
in Cleveland. And my daughter is a freshman at Columbia University
and I've also done a CD with her and 2 other girls called "Earth Angel
- Hold Tight" which is a vocal group record. So that's sort of what
I'm doing.
Tom
Orecchio: For
some time now people have been wondering just who actually owned the rights
to Jim's songs. Is there any chance of the old material being re-released.
Tommy
West: The
Jim Croce 3 albums that were done - the "You Don't Mess Around With Jim",
"Life and Times" and "I Got A Name" - those 3 albums were the only 3 that
Jim did as a soloist. He did some demos that are out on a Readers
Digest compilation that we had recorded with just Jim and his wife Ingrid
and bass player John Stockfish back in 70 and 71 before we did what I call
the "real albums". We owned, when I say "we" my partner Terry Cashman
and Phil Kurnit who is an attorney and another partner owned the Croce
masters from the time they were recorded in 71, 72 and 73. We owned
them up until 1985 or 1986 when we sold them. We sold the master
recordings to a company called "Lefrak" - they own the masters - they also
own the 50% of Jim's publishing that we owned - the other half is owned
by MCA, which bought out the ABC interests. So I have no ownership
and I have no say in how that music is used. Usually the way it comes
out is in compilation form, like on "greatest hits" packages. The
3 albums individually have not been released yet and I hope they come out
at some point. That also is not up to me. Cashman and I still
get paid royalties - production royalties on Jim's music, and we do very
well with that which indicates to me - I guess after 24 almost 25 years
I think now the stuff is pretty good - it's sort of held up. But
I don't think there's anything left to put out as far as I know. I have
some archival stuff which is not of great quality. And there is one
other tape that we have in our vault in New York City, but that's not available
either.
Tom Orecchio: For
the album "I Got A Name", was the artwork determined before or after Jim
passed away?
Tommy
West: I
think the cover was probably in the works before Jim died. Certainly
the pictures were taken before Jim died. What happened after that
is hard to remember. I think we decided to hand tint the album, that's
why that album looks differently. And the album on the insert which
I think is Jim lying on the bed and Maury above him on the wall, that was
obviously a tribute to Maury. And I would imagine that everything
that happened after Jim died from the mixing of the album, because the
album wasn't mixed until after Jim died, to the label design or the album
design and the liner notes and all that - I'm sure at least on an unconscious
level we had that in mind and we probably wanted to treat the album with
as much dignity as you can in a pretty undignified business.
Tom
Orecchio: In
Maury's songs "Salon and Saloon" and "I Remember Mary" who actually was
"Mary"?
Tommy
West: In
those songs, no I don't. I would take a guess it was probably somebody
Maury had big eyes for - he was a romantic little cat, Maury - a lot of
women loved Maury. He could seduce a flea, just by being quiet.
Maury Muehleisen was a genius. People used to say "wasn't Jim great?"
I 'd say "Yeah, Jim was great, but Maury was a genius". We did an
album with Maury called "Gingerbreadd" that Capitol released and
is probably long out of print, but it's a wonderful album. He kind
of sounded like an un-whiney Neil Young and he wrote songs that Joni Mitchell
would have loved.
Tom Orecchio: Speaking
of Salon & Saloon, Tommy, was Maury ever considered to play piano on
that song?
Tommy
West: No.
Maury did play piano - but I had worked the song out with Jim - and that
was an important day because Jim and I, from day one - when I say day one
I mean 1961 - had always played together. By the time we got to do the
3 albums, playing was like second nature to us - we were like the Everly
Brothers. We sounded great together, we played great together.
Sometimes for fun in the studio I would play the piano and sort of yell
out "Over The Rainbow" and we'd start doing "Over The Rainbow". So
we hatched the idea, at least in my mind, that we had already done 3 albums
of guitar oriented acoustic music. And this would have kind of been
- not like Springsteen and "Nebraska" - but it would have been a
real departure because what I wanted to do was take - it would have been
like Willie Nelson's "Stardust" album where we would take standards like
"Over the Rainbow" "Blue Moon" - whatever he wanted to do and the idea
would be to cut the record with just him and piano - Jim singing and a
piano player. 3 or 4 cuts I would do - then I figured maybe we could
get Randy Newman to do some because he was a big fan and they were
friends - and Richard Carpenter, and maybe Leon Russell or Dr. John - who
knows - Just great keyboard guys playing behind Jim - but - it never happened.
Tom
Orecchio: Tommy,
being so close to Jim and Maury, would you say their personalities were
more similar or different? And it what way?
Tommy
West: The
only similarity between the two of them would be the love of music.
Jim was Mediterranean, Italian, temperamental, very ethnic, very on the
surface with his feelings, but at the same time somewhat afraid of conflict.
He was older than Maury. Maury I think was 24 when he died.
Maury was right in the throws of "hippie-dom" and was kind of "oh wow"
and he could have been a "Haight-Ashbury" poster child at his peak.
Maury was gentle with a capital "G" - he was intelligent. They were
both very passive kind of people in the sense of they didn't initiate a
lot of argument. Jim had a tendency to flare up when he was pushed
into a corner. And really avoided conflict at all costs, which later
proved to be somewhat of his un-doing and sort of related to the plane
accident, but that's another question. But the similarities
were mainly that they both loved music - Maury was classically trained,
Jim was self-taught. Jim was more pragmatic than Maury was - but
if there were no Maury there never would have been a Croce record of that
type because he was like - while he didn't co-write the songs per se, as
Jim wrote the songs or finished up, Maury was right there doodling with
that style and musicians later would come to me in Nashville - they knew
the records were good but they'd say "hey who was that guy who played the
guitar?" - I mean they could really hear that. He never got a chance
to fulfill his dream.