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Bad, Bad Leroy Brown





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  Name Bad, Bad Leroy Brown
  Artist Jim Croce
  From Album Life & Times
  B-side A Good Time Man Like Me Ain't Got No Business (Singin' The Blues)
  Released April 1973
  Format 45
  Recorded 1972
  Genre Folk
  Length 3:02
  Label ABC Records
  Writer Jim Croce


The song is about a bad man who keeps a .32 gun in his pocket and a razor in his shoe. He then flirts with the wife of a jealous man while at a bar. The two men fight and Leroy looks like a jigsaw puzzle with a couple of pieces gone.

His inspiration for the song was a friend he met in his brief time in the Army:

"I met him at Fort Dix , New Jersey . We were in Lineman (telephone) school together. He stayed there about a week, and one evening he turned around and said he was really fed up and tired. He went AWOL , and then came back at the end of the month to get his pay check. They put handcuffs on him and took him away. Just to listen to him talk and see how 'bad' he was, I knew someday I was gonna write a song about him."


Croce explained the chorus reference to Leroy Brown being "meaner than a junkyard dog":

"Yeah, I spent about a year and a half driving those $29 cars, so I drove around a lot looking for a Universal Joint for a '57 Chevy panel truck or a transmission for a '51 Dodge . I got to know many Junkyard s well, and they all have those dogs in them. They all have either an axle tied around their necks or an old lawnmower to keep 'em at least slowed down a bit, so you have a decent chance of getting away from them."



CHART HISTORY

"Bad, Bad Leroy Brown" was released in April 1973 and peaked at number one three months later. It was still on the charts on September 20 when Croce died in a plane crash in Natchitoches , Louisiana .

  Before " Will It Go Round In Circles " by Billy Preston
  Title Billboard Hot 100 Number One Single
  Years July 21 &mdash July 28 1973
  After " The Morning After " by Maureen McGovern



"BAD, BAD LEROY BROWN" IN POPULAR CULTURE



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