You Don't Mess Around with Jim

Croce's debut ABC album was also his commercial breakthrough, topping the charts for five weeks, largely due to the comic, up-tempo title tune, a story song about competing pool hustlers, although Croce also reached the Top 20 with the change-of-pace ballad "Operator (That's Not the Way It Feels)." Just after his death, ABC issued the track "Time in a Bottle," and a newly ironic message propelled it to number one.