Single Awareness: Jim Croce – “Workin’ at the Car Wash Blues” (1974)

For National Novel Writers Month (NaNoWriMo), I’ve decided to focus on natural-born storytellers. While Single Awareness is not a column that appeals to novel writing, there’s reason to argue that wordsmiths have stories that they want to share with the world. The best of these artists are able to turn stories into an enjoyable journey over three or four minutes, using the pop structure to satisfy some deeper commentary on life. While it may be difficult to find a lot of major hits that fulfill this category, there is one artist who I think did it among the very best: Jim Croce.

Like most people, my first real exposure to him involved a song about Big Bad Leroy Brown. It’s one of those folk-rock songs that captures the imagination, making you want to hear what happens next. While I wouldn’t call myself an expert on his career, I liked it enough to explore other songs in his career. Sure, there were songs that have become more en vogue in recent hears like “I Got a Name,” but one that stood out in my mind was a title that explored the misery of being a genius when nobody believes you. It could just be that I love the premise, especially when paired with Rose Royce’s “Car Wash” (itself from a fun movie starring Richard Pryor and George Carlin).

“Working at the Car Wash Blues” is one of those numbers that I never tire of listening to, if just because it has one of the most enjoyably sad pre-choruses in “Don’t ‘spect to see me/With no double martini.” To me, it sounds like a perfect working-class song about feeling trampled on by the upper class, unable to be taken seriously despite being the next Howard Hughes. The whole thing is a journey and my favorite part is that you are convinced that Jim Croce is telling you the truth. He really is that resourceful.

Though one has to ask themselves if he’s really the genius he claims to be. I can’t speak to how the opening passage reads to a 1973 audience, but there’s a good chance that it’s designed to be misleading. After all, he begins by saying that he’s getting out of jail for “non-support.” While there have always been white-collar criminals, there’s little to suggest whether or not Croce is one of those wealthy men who can weasel his way out of trouble. Either that, or he’s full of himself, a victim of circumstance as he’s been blacklisted because of his criminal record. So much can be read into that one detail that it already finds everything that follows being questioned. If you’re sympathetic, you’re likely to side with Croce. Otherwise, you’d think he’s setting his sights a little too high.

It explains why he’s immediately unable to get work. Still, he can’t help but give in to the fantasy of what life would be. He’d have it all with an air conditioner, a swivel chair, and “talking some trash to the secretary.” His view of white-collar work sounds glorious like he doesn’t have to do a whole lot. He has power. It’s such a delight to imagine wearing a suit and just leaning back. And yet, he’s stuck at the door, smooth-talking his way to a rejection. It’s how he comes to the revelation that:

You know a man of my ability

He should be smokin' on a big cigar

But till I get myself straight

I guess I'll just have to wait

In my rubber suit rubbin' these cars

Again, Croce has this gift for creating a satisfying vision only to contradict it. He can’t work a glamorous job and feels some anger towards having to wash cars. It feels like a waste of his talents, and it becomes clear in the details. Who wants to wear a rubber suit? Even rubbing cars sounds submissive, that he’s working for those wealthy enough to afford their car washed. The dirt of the wealthy falls onto him, leaving him in a metaphorical gutter as he waits to have any piece of glory.

The fun hypothetical about this song is whether Croce is as great as he claims. He goes to jail for “non-support” and ends up having to support everyone else. He broke the system and failed. It’s a cautionary tale, but also one that prophesizes the idea that the working class deserves a lot more respect than they get. Maybe he was in jail for totally innocent reasons and had to put up with a sentence because of his low-class stature. It’s imprisoned him in life, unable to work a white-collar job. Maybe the whole song is a deeper commentary on how people perceive each other, and that certain things can keep others from excelling. Meanwhile, what do they do but harass others by “talking some trash.”  There’s clearly an order of demeaning somewhere in subliminal details.

Which raises the question of what would happen if the working class got the chance to express themselves and be as accepted as the white-collar workers? Would they just put some other lowlifes on car washing, losing their own empathy? The fact that Croce claims that he’s a Howard Hughes hidden underneath Niagara Falls (another symbol of water pouring on him) only adds. What if this man is a genius? How would he change the world? Would he change the world, or would he just be harassing that secretary and having another guy in a rubber suit wash his car?

There is a bitterness in Croce’s tone, but there’s also this false sense of confidence that is interpretive. Is this all a fantasy, or some richer commentary on how people with a prison record can never succeed? Whatever the case may be, his view of himself definitely shines through in a delightful upbeat melody that should be much more glamorous than it is. The whole chorus plays a bit ironic, reminiscent of his own frustration with his own outcome:

So baby, don't 'spect to see me

With no double martini

In any high-brow society news

Cause I got them

Steadily depressin', low down mind-messin'

Workin' at the carwash blues

At the end of the day, the best way to read this is one of hopefulness. Croce was no different than the common man. He was someone working low-level work just to get by. Deep down, he had an incredible amount of talent that allowed him to become one of the most acclaimed singers of his generation. In just seven years, he produced one of the greatest collections of storytelling music in the medium, and he did so with all of this small entendre in a song that suggests that artists will keep struggling, but they still need to create. There is some catharsis in what they do, and it’s partially what makes this simple song something more complex and exciting.

It’s a hopeful symbol of a career that maybe never got the respect it deserved during his lifetime. In my imagination, Croce was a prolific artist who released dozens upon dozens of albums, making a daunting body of work that featured so many stories that overlapped with each other. He felt like someone who was going to always be there. You don’t write a song like “Big Bad Leroy Brown” and then disappear. 

And yet, the heartbreaking discovery I found was that he was only 30 when he died in a horrific crash. Personally, I almost admire how impressive his career was in light of that scenario. For me personally, my 20s were a time of self-discovery and were wildly uneven in terms of talent. And yet you get someone like Croce, who sounds wise beyond his years, managing to create music that was timeless, capturing the frustration of the common man in these small and clever ways. Part of it was just where the culture was in the early 70s, entering a period of revolution from the counterculture, but it was also just a passion that he reflected in his songwriting.

It makes sense to also read this as his personal frustration with record labels. As mentioned, he didn’t have the most successful career during his life, and there were some rifts with his label. As a result, his independent streak allowed him to reflect his bitterness in these clever ways. After all, couldn’t a contract be a prison for “non-support”? There are endless details to this song that on one level read as amusing, others scathing. Still, he sounded like someone who was going to make it out alive. By some tragic irony, this was his fourth posthumous single, creating the sense that he was continuing to work at the proverbial car wash in the sky. Still, he went out and never had a secretary to boss around. Is that a good thing? Honestly, Croce comes across as the guy who would say yes.

Maybe one day I’ll cover more of his music, but for now, I wanted to start with a song that is one of his most aspirational and ironic. Nobody wants to be stuck in a mind-numbing job, and yet most of us are. It’s a relatable message that makes the Rose Royce song sound even grosser. Why would you celebrate this? Then again, there’s some compassion for those working these jobs, that they’re worthy of more respect than what we give them. 

It also has an early candidate in Single Awareness’ history for best covers. While most would likely shift styles to rock or blues, Jim Hensen did something even more exciting. He brought the song to his subversive hit The Muppet Show to have Gonzo sing about his own struggles with working at a car wash. Surrounded by chickens, he’s loathing his experience before cutting to a vaguely-sexual sequence where he does more than talk some trash with a chicken secretary. It’s absurd, but it only helps to reflect the humor underneath the frown. Not only that, but an underrated detail of the video is how Gonzo washes a car by dumping a pail on his red car… whose roof is down. There’s no further comment on it, but it feels like another part of his life that he just deals with.

This song is another standard in the storytelling genre, and Croce has more where that came from. Whereas I recently listened to Clipping’s new album and felt underwhelmed by their approach to narrative, Croce has this way of packing so much substance into the song that you’re left discovering new perspectives and details on multiple listens. For a man who works at a car wash, he sure lives a meaningful and interesting life. It’s both a sad story about being submissive to the man and an optimistic one that finds Croce nodding, saying that he sees you. He may not say it, but he appreciates you continuing to be a Howard Hughes in disguise. They don’t always need an office to prove that. Sometimes all it takes is a good work ethic.