Today is Jim Croce’s birthday. He would have turned 68, had he not died in a plane crash at the age of 30. His most famous songs are “Bad Bad Leroy Brown” and “Time in a Bottle” – both of them were hits and are still heard occasionally today.

There are others that are not quite as famous, including this nice You Tube video version of “New York’s Not My Home”.

Croce is another in what seems to be a long line of musicians who perished in airplane crashes. He and his guitar accompanist Maury Muehleisen and four others died when an air taxi taking them from Nachitoches, Louisiana to Dallas, Texas hit a pecan tree past the end of the runway. The weather conditions weren’t extreme or threatening. The NTSB report said the pilot had severe coronary artery disease and had run part of the way from his motel to the airport. On such mundane things tragedies pivot.

It’s hard to say if we’d be thinking about Jim Croce today had he not died so young, in 1973. We are often more impressed with musicians who live a short life of unrealized potential than we are with those who are blessed with a long life full of false starts and wrong turns. After all, the disco era was just beginning. There were plenty of chances throughout the ’70’s for everyone to make tasteless mistakes.

Name your favorite 1970’s cultural touchstone.