Bad, Bad Leroy Brown Most Certainly Qualifies as a Favorite

Years ago, my family and I went to a performance by Christian performer Paul Hill, who performed a number of famous songs that he claimed to have written, at least in part. One of these was Bad, Bad Leroy Brown. He spoke of hanging a gold record on his wall and raking in the money for the hit song but said when his mother heard it, she was aghast at the violent lyrics and insisted he write new words, something nice that she could share with the ladies in her church quilting circle. So he did, and he sang us the result, which as I recall was a song about Noah.

I liked it, and I've tried to track it down since then, but there's virtually no reference to Hill online - and most of the references seem to indicate that he never had a hand in any of those songs he claimed he did. I find it hard to believe someone, especially a gospel singer, would be so dishonest and audacious as to take credit for songs he had nothing to do with, but I've scoured the credits of this song and several others and have never seen his name there, so I'm starting to think he made it up. I imagine he did write the Noah lyrics himself, but if the allegations against him are true, he has no more right to pen such words than I do to twist Jim Croce's tune into a song about curmudgeonly Dr. House.

That was a great concert, so it was disillusioning to find out that so much of it was most likely based on false pretenses. But it makes a lot more sense that Croce would have written this on his own. He was a master singer-songwriter who crafted most of the songs he performed, usually after being inspired by his own life or his keen observation of others. Leroy Brown was a devil-may-care fellow soldier around whom Croce created a scintillating scenario. The fictional Leroy is one mean dude, and he's used to getting his way all the time, but he gets knocked down a peg when he puts the moves on a woman who is spoken for by a pretty aggressive husband.

Croce had a really odd way of enunciating at times, and nowhere is it more pronounced than in this energetic number. The jazzy piano instrumentals fit well with his staccato delivery; he's always dropping articles or the first or last letter in words, which adds to the song's edge. I'm guessing he sang in this way to accentuate Leroy's tough-guy 'tude, and it's one of the song's most distinctive attributes.

It's probably just as well that he truncates his words, making the one dubious phrase in the chorus sound very much like "downtown" instead of the two words it actually is. "Baddest man in the whole downtown" isn't going to set off many alarms - though a tiny bit of bad language shouldn't really rankle that much in a song whose lyrics seem to almost revel in Leroy's bad deeds.

He carries around a gun and razor wherever he goes. He gambles excessively, and, to quote a rather naught John Denver song, he "likes to deal with the ladies." But Croce and his whooping back-up singers are having such a great time singing about him, he seems more hero than villain, and it's a little sad to think of this towering man as "a jigsaw puzzle with a couple of pieces gone."

In his sadly short career, Croce wrote and sang some of the most tender, sensitive songs ever recorded. Bad, Bad Leroy Brown isn't one of them. But it's absolutely one of the most fun.

*****

I could have sworn up and down that I found this as a single in the database, but when I went to post it, all I could find was Bad, Bad Leroy Brown and Other Favorites, a solid album containing several of Croce's best-known songs. I'm not sure I would quite agree they're all "favorites," but certainly that term applies to the bittersweet Time in a Bottle; the forlorn Operator (That's Not the Way It Feels); the tender I'll Have to Say I Love You in a Song; the nostalgic Photographs and Memories and the rollicking Roller Derby Queen, the only track that comes close to matching the pep of the title song.

Also included on the album are the socially conscious, Dylan-esque Which Way Are You Goin'? and Railroad and Riverboats; the self-examining, country-flavored Age and the pleading The Way We Used To Be. Considering the overall tone of the album, it might have made more sense to name it after one of the more introspective tunes, but you can't dispute Leroy's popularity. As a single song or the masthead of a great collection, Bad, Bad Leroy Brown is fantastic.