♫ Time In A Bottle ♫ (Redux)

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Tonight I am … oh hell, I don’t know what I am.  I am worried about a dear friend, I am worried about the state of the country I’ve called ‘home’ for 69 years, and I needed a song … Jim Croce seemed like he could fill the bill.  I played this one back in 2018, so you should be ready for it again, yes?

Jim Croce wrote this song the night that he found out his wife, Ingrid, was pregnant. The couple had been married for five years, and Ingrid found out she was pregnant when she went to a fertility specialist. She recalls a mix of terror and delight in Jim’s reaction when she told him the news. The child was a boy named Adrian, who grew up to become the singer-songwriter A.J. Croce.

Croce wrote the lyrics after his wife Ingrid told him she was pregnant, in December 1970. It appeared on his 1972 ABC debut album You Don’t Mess Around with Jim. ABC originally did not intend to release the song as a single; but when Croce was killed in a plane crash in September 1973, the song’s lyrics, dealing with mortality and the wish to have more time, had additional resonance.

On September 30, 1973 a plane carrying Croce and five other people crashed upon takeoff as he was leaving one college venue to another 70 miles away. No one survived the accident, and among those killed was Maury Muehleisen, who played guitar on Croce’s albums.

The song, released as a single in December 1973, hit the #1 spot just 14 weeks after Croce’s death.

Time in a Bottle
Jim Croce

If I could save time in a bottle
The first thing that I’d like to do
Is to save every day
‘Til 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 every day 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 want to do
Once you find them
I’ve looked around enough to know
That you’re the one I want to 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 want to do
Once you find them
I’ve looked around enough to know
That you’re the one I want to go
Through time with

Songwriters: Jim Croce
Time in a Bottle lyrics © BMG Rights Management

35 thoughts on “♫ Time In A Bottle ♫ (Redux)”

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  7. Jill, we both are huge Croce fans. This is a great example of a deep catalog of work, for a life shortened. I am also glad you mentioned his guitarist Maury, as there are some clever guitar riffs on Croce’s songs. My wife and I have an anthology of his that adds about a half dozen songs to his more recognizable ones. It was like discovering new songs. Keith

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    • I do love Croce … last night, I debated between this one and “Photographs and Memories”, another favourite. I think I am stuck in the past when it comes to music, for today’s music does nothing but give me a headache!

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      • Jill, that would have been another good choice. Yet, picking one of more than several songs would have been a good choice. “Lover’s Cross”, “One less set of footsteps”, “Operator”…. Keith

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  8. Ah, memories.

    I may have mentioned this one before, as this is a redux. My wife and I (she was my girlfriend then) were in high school. I was driving her home in my dark green 1965 Mercury Comet. She lived out in the country. I’d just turned off the highway onto the country road that leads to her house by way of five winding miles through woods and fields. We’d just come up a hill into a left turn (on the right was the tiny old white church, surrounded by pines) when this song began on the radio. It’s a poignant song to hear when you’re young and in love and thinking about life, the universe, and everything, and Croce’s death was still sharp to us. As you can tell, it was a sharp moment that found purchase in me forever: the idea of time in a bottle.

    Cheers

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    • I went back to check, but no, you didn’t comment on this last time I played it. That is a really neat memory … and it reminds me of another Croce song, “Photographs and Memories”. Thanks for sharing, Michael!

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