Jim Croce – Operator (That’s Not The Way It Feels) | Have You Heard: Jim Croce Live
CR’s Take
OVERALL SCORE
73
CR RECOMMENDED
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Jim Croce’s operator is a novel with four verses. So much human frailty in this richly textured song. The starkly upbeat chords contrast a lyric replete with love, loss, and heartbreak. Some of the references to phone booths, operator assistance, and the cost of each call being only 0.10 are specific to the song’s period. Yet, the song’s primary story structure transcends time and period.
Jim Croce’s quote about Operator
“I got the idea for writing “Operator” by standing outside the PX waiting to use one of the outdoor phones. There wasn’t a phone booth; it was just stuck up on the side of the building, and there were about 200 guys in each line waiting to make a phone call back home to see if their Dear John’s letter was true and with their raincoat over their heads covering the telephone and everything. It seemed that so many people were going through the same experience, going through the same kind of change, and to see this happen, especially on the telephone and talking to a long-distance operator- this kind of registered. And when I got out of the army, I was working in a bar where there was a telephone directly behind where I was playing, and I couldn’t help but be disturbed by it all the time, and I noticed that the same kind of thing was going on. People checkin’ up on somebody or finding out who was Ð what was goin’ on, but always talking to the operator. And I decided that I would write a song about it. But I didn’t start getting the idea for the song itself, the real outline of it, until I was doing the construction work after I got out of the music business the first time, and I started carrying a cassette machine in the truck. One afternoon, I started Operator’ on the way back, just singin’ into a cassette machine. But it’s-it’s one of those songs that kinda comes out of experiences you watch for a long time, just to see if they’re valid. I kinda like to write songs about things that many people have experience with because it makes the songs communicate.”
Last-Image-of-Jim-Croce and Maury Muehleisen taken-on-the-runway-after-last-show-prior-to-crash.
On September 20, 1973, at the height of his popularity and the day before the lead single to his fifth album, I Got a Name, was released, Croce and five others died in a plane crash. His music continued to chart throughout the 1970s following his death. Croce’s wife, Ingrid, was his early songwriting partner. She continued to write and record after his death, and their son A. J. Croce became a singer-songwriter in the 1990s.
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