Earlier this week, longtime ND magazine senior editor Bill Friskics-Warren contributed a Monday guest-column about Midwest Farm Disaster, a 1972 album by the largely forgotten singer-songwriter Bob Martin. As fate would have it, columnist Lloyd Sachs followed on Wednesday with a remembrance of the 1972 debut album by another largely forgotten singer-songwriter, Danny Epps. Within Lloyd’s piece was a statement that struck me as a kind of doctrine about the value of such obscurities: “It’s the personal, offbeat choices that define us as listeners more than the easy consensus picks.”
OK, then, I’ll play.
It was when I was digging through the LP shelves for my copy of Epps’ record (which, as I recall, Epps sent to me a few years back, rightly assuming the Mickey Newbury liner notes would intrigue me) that I stumbled upon a record by another largely forgotten songwriter from that same era. This one came out just a tad earlier: Gingerbreadd, released in 1970, was the solo debut and, as it turned out, only album ever released by a New Jersey singer-songwriter and guitarist named Maury Muehleisen.
But even if you’ve never heard his name, you’ve almost assuredly heard his playing, and know something of his story. Shortly after he made Gingerbreadd, Muehleisen spent a couple years recording and touring as backing guitarist and vocalist with Jim Croce. Both artists were killed in a plane crash in Louisiana on September 20, 1973. Muehleisen was just 24 years old.
Croce and Muehleisen peforming Jim’s song “Operator” live
I bought my first copy of a Maury Muehleisen song when I was probably 9 years old, though I didn’t realize this until just a couple days ago. “Salon And Saloon” was a B-side to the posthumously-released 1974 Croce single “I’ll Have To Say I Love You In A Song”; that 45rpm 7-inch presumably still resides somewhere in my closet. All I really remember about it from way back then is that it was an unusual song, different from anything else Croce had recorded. Now I know why.
Fast-forward a couple decades later for my next encounter with Muehleisen’s music. We’d recently begun publishing No Depression, and a U.K. label sent along a compilation they wanted us to review called Fallen Angels. It was noteworthy largely for the inclusion of two previously unreleased tracks by Gram Parsons (who, as it happens, died in the Joshua Tree desert the day before Croce and Muehleisen’s plane crashed in ’73). But it also featured two songs by the late-’60s/early-’70s country-rock band Swampwater, and one of them was “A Song I Heard”, written by Maury Muehleisen.
That’s the song I fixated on when I listened to Fallen Angels. There was something…everlasting about it, as if its lyrics were destined to be a self-fulfilling prophecy about the song itself: “When I was young I heard a song Ive never heard again/It haunts me every night just like it haunted me back then/It stays just inside the edge of my soul, and just outside my mind/And so I go on searching for a song I heard one time.”
(I recall having an uncanny “song I heard” experience one weekend in Portland, Oregon, when I couldn’t get J.D. Souther’s “You’re Only Lonely” out of my head and essentially lived out the third verse of Muehleisen’s song as I searched the bins of various used CD and vinyl stores in vain for a copy of that 1979 hit. Eventually I memorialized the experience by creating my own medley of the two tunes.)
Muehleisen’s own version of “A Song I Heard” was the first track on Gingerbreadd, and probably the best song on the record, but it’s just the entryway into a fascinatingly singular artist. He reminds me slightly of Austin folk/pop craftsman Michael Fracasso, in that he has an unusually high voice, and isn’t afraid to work in and out of standard keys with his melodies. And then there’s his guitar playing, which clearly is a far cut above that of the usual singer-songwriter; thus his sideman role with Croce. Though it’s worth noting, per the recollections of Maury’s sister Mary on a website she maintains in his memory, that Croce actually served as accompanist to Muehleisen on some of the shows Maury played to support Gingerbreadd in 1971, before the two recorded Croce’s 1972 ABC Records debut LP You Don’t Mess Around With Jim.
That website, by the way, is a treasure-trove of information about Muehleisen, with biographical and family information, photos, song samples, and a page for ordering not only the recent CD-reissue of Gingerbreadd but also a disc of demos that features two tracks which didn’t make it onto the album (including Marty’s own version of “Salon and Saloon”).
Because of his sister’s efforts, as well as the high profile that Croce achieved in his brief window of pop stardom, it’s a fair bit easier to find Muehleisen-related information and multimedia content on the web than it is for, say, Danny Epps. Which means that even if, as is likely to be the case, you’ve never heard Maury Muehleisen’s name previously, it’s relatively easy to learn a fair bit about the music he made in his all-too-short life.
Apparently there are at least a few others who share this particular “personal, offbeat choice” (to revisit the Sachs doctrine) with me. Among the things I stumbled upon while rooting around YouTube researching this piece was a lip-synch video of two guys role-playing Croce and Muehleisen performing “New York’s Not My Home”. Though some viewers who left comments seemed to think they were poking fun, a tag at the end identifies the clip as being made by “We Recreate Jim Croce Songs In Our Spare Time Because We Love It Productions”.
Regardless, there’s no doubting the reverence of Muehleisen accorded in another YouTube clip, made by a fellow who uses the handle “CrisCroce” but appears simply to be a fan rather than a Croce relative. He lives in Santiago, Chile, and his version of Muehleisen’s “A Song I Heard” with footage that includes photos of his own pilgrimage to the U.S.A. to meet Maury’s family is the ultimate testament that the song, and its writer, will not be forgotten:
