Music: Epitaph for Jim

For Pop Singer Jim Croce, the touring life meant mostly one small college campus after another. When he was killed at age 30 last September in Natchitoches, La., he was doing what he had done many times before—taking off at night in a light plane from a small airstrip. Croce then was regarded as just another pop singer with a couple of hits to his credit, notably Bad, Bad Leroy Brown ("Badder than old King Kong And meaner than a junkyard dog"). But the pop woods are full of singer-composers who have momentary...