Have You Heard Jim Croce Live

Album Review

Shout! Factory's 2006 CD release of Have You Heard: Jim Croce Live is a companion piece to their 2003 DVD of the same name. That DVD collected 13 live television performances, taken from shows like The Old Grey Whistle Test, and Underground, all of which were quite rare, since there isn't much footage of Jim Croce live on television. Not only was the music rare, but it was also quite good, some of the best live material he recorded, so it made sense that Shout! Factory would spin it off into an audio-only release. And that's exactly what this CD is — the audio portion of those 13 TV performances. The two photo-collage montages on the DVD — set to "I'll Have to Say I Love You in a Song" and "Time in a Bottle" — have been cut, since they weren't live concert performances to begin with, and a version of "Hard Time Losing Man" recorded live at Harper College in Palatine, IL, is the one exclusive cut on this collection. None of these performances loses anything heard as a mere audio track, and the collection is sequenced nicely, flowing as if it were an actual concert. That said, this doesn't offer anything new: if you have the DVD, you have this music, so this may not be a necessary purchase. But for dedicated Croce fans looking to enjoy these performances as music only, this is a welcome release.