The Beanbag Chronicles

Welcome to the Beanbag Chronicles:

These were the songs that eased a pimply faced, greasy feathered haired, desert shoe wearing, freckled and bespectacled, hormone raging pre-teenager sitting in my bean bag chair, with my big clunky head phones on, basking in the glow of my lava lamp and multiple candles dripping on old Chianti bottles that my parents threw away.

As with most 7th and 8th graders just when you start to become sexually aware of "things", Mother Nature plays a nasty trick on you and decides to turn you into the most revolting creature on earth!

I turned to music and clung to the tunes that I thought must have been written by people who could have read my mind and knew exactly what kind of torment I was going through.

This week the song I’ve chosen is: Operator, by Jim Croce. He was like the original "sensitive guy" wasn't he?

The guitar in Jim Croce’s songs was what made me go out and take lessons when I was in 6th grade.

Oh….to play like that!

But it wasn’t Jim playing…it was a guy named Maury Muehleisen.

Muehleisen was a classically trained pianist who took up the guitar at age 17. His own career as a singer/songwriter didn’t go far, but he later paired up with Jim Croce and became his lead guitarist.

Unfortunately, both Jim Croce and Maury Muehleisen were killed in the same plane crash on September 20th, 1973.

That was a very sad day.

I remember sitting in my friend Sue’s house playing his album over and over again…I think we nearly wore it out.

Here is an interesting tid-bit from Song Facts: In 2000, the Martin guitar company produced 73 guitars in honor of Jim Croce. In each of these guitars, an uncirculated 1973 dime was inserted in the third fret fingerboard in honor of this song and the final line, "You can keep the dime."