You Don't Mess Around with Jim

A classic Jim Croce story song, this one is about Big Jim Walker, a pool hustler who has built quite a reputation. Everyone knows there are certain things you just don't do: Tug on Superman's cape Spit into the wind Pull the mask off the Lone Ranger Mess around with Jim We'll one day a guy Jim hustled, Willie "Slim" McCoy, comes to town looking for revenge. By the time he's done, Jim is a bloody mess and the legend is now his: You don't mess around with Slim

The "Jim" in this song is not Croce. Ingrid Croce, who was married to Jim when he died in a 1973 plane crash at age 30, told Songfacts the story: "Jim [Croce] sold air time for a radio station. When he got out of college, his parents wanted him to get a good 9-to-5 job. We had always intended to do music, but he'd had a college education and the first to graduate from his family with a college education, they wanted him to become a professional, to really do something that would get pension, and good solid work. So Jim went out, because we were married, and he got a job helping me to get through school at the time, and he started selling air time in a really shady area down in south and west Philadelphia. He used to go to some of these pool halls to sell the air time, because it wasn't a very good neighborhood. He would sit there and watch the pool games and see what people were doing, and he ended up with a guy named Jim Walker, who was one of the guys who used to play pool there. And that's really the story behind it: he used to hang out at any of those little shops down on South Street and down in west Philly where it really was quite unacceptable for him to be trying to sell air time down there, but it was one of those things where he was hoping someday he could actually bring his music to the radio, so he thought it might be a good way to get going as a salesman. Then later he met a guy whose name was Melvin Goldfield, and Melvin was an artist, and he grew up in areas like that. Melvin used to take him down to the dumps down in south Philadelphia and tell him about all kinds of stories that went on down there, and introduced him to a lot of the guys. Jim actually did run into this guy, Big Jim Walker, pool-shootin' son of a gun. And so that story really comes out of an experience that he kind of put the story together."

Ingrid Croce added to Songfacts: "I think that often in Jim's songs there's a composite situation, but when he sat down to write, usually the song would come out altogether. There might be a verse that he'd add later, but usually he'd sit down and play. I've got hundreds of tapes of Jim performing - playing at home and the two of us singing, or just having friends over and singing, whether it was the Manhattan Transfer, James Taylor, Arlo Guthrie, Bonnie Raitt... people that just come over and we'd hang out and sing. It was very comfortable to just put everything down on tape back then. People weren't as worried about who wrote the song as they were about writing it."