"Bad, Bad Leroy Brown" is an uptempo, strophic story song written by American folk rock singer Jim Croce. Released as part of his 1973 album Life and Times, the song was a No. 1 hit for him, spending two weeks at the top of the Billboard Hot 100 in July 1973. Billboard ranked it as the No. 2 song for 1973.[2]
Croce was nominated for two 1973 Grammy Awards in the Pop Male Vocalist and Record of the Year categories for "Bad, Bad Leroy Brown".[3] It was his only number-one single before his death on September 20 of that year.
Synopsis
The song's titular character is a 6-foot-4-inch (1.93 m) tall man from the South Side of Chicago whose size, attitude, and tendency to carry weapons have given him a reputation in which he is adored by women and feared by men. He is said to dress in fancy clothes and wear diamond rings, and to own a custom Lincoln Continental and a Cadillac Eldorado, implying he has a lot of money. He is also known to carry a .32 caliber handgun in his pocket and a razor in his shoe. One day in a bar he makes a pass at a pretty married woman named Doris, whose jealous husband engages Brown in a fight. Leroy loses badly, and is described as looking "like a jigsaw puzzle with a couple of pieces gone".
The story of a widely feared man being bested in a fight is similar to that of Croce's earlier song "You Don't Mess Around with Jim".[4]
According to Billboard, it is "filled with humorous lines and a catchy arrangement."[4]Cash Box described it as "a delightful new single in the same musical vein as his 'You Don't Mess Around with Jim' smash that started his career."[5]Record World called it "another story-song similar to the one that started it all for [Croce], 'You Don't Mess Around With Jim.'"[6]
Inspiration
Croce's inspiration for the song was a friend he met in his brief time in the US 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 paycheck. 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.[7]
This is a song about a guy I was in the army with... It was at Fort Dix, in New Jersey, that I met this guy. He was not made to climb the tree of knowledge, as they say, but he was strong, so nobody'd ever told him what to do, and after about a week down there he said "Later for this" and decided to go home. So he went AWOL—which means to take your own vacation—and he did. But he made the mistake of coming back at the end of the month to get his paycheck. I don't know if you've ever seen handcuffs put on anybody, but it was SNAP and that was the end of it for a good friend of mine, who I wrote this tune about, named Leroy Brown.[8]
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 junkyards 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.[7]
The recording session that produced the song was one of several for Croce which employed session drummer Gary Chester.[10]
Chart history
"Bad, Bad Leroy Brown" entered the charts in April 1973 and peaked at number one on the American charts three months later. It was still on the charts on September 20 when Croce died in a plane crash in Natchitoches, Louisiana. It was the second #1 song on the Billboard Hot 100 pop singles chart to include a curse word ("damn") in its lyrics, after the "Theme from Shaft".
In 1992, a memorable Chinese-language karaoke rendition of the song is heard in the restaurant scene of Phil Alden Robinson's film, Sneakers.
References
^Dolan, Jon; Menconi, David; Ryan, Linda; Harvilla, Rob; Aaron, Charles; Murray, Nick; Grow, Kory; Powell, Mike; Moss, Marissa R.; Fischer, Reed; Gehr, Richard; Eddy, Chuck. "50 Rock Albums Every Country Fan Should Own". Rolling Stone. Archived from the original on 2019-01-12. Retrieved 2019-01-11.((cite magazine)): CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link)
