The deep dives I’ve done so far have covered artists with long careers and extensive catalogs. This one is different.

Earlier this year, a Throwback Weekend post about Jim Croce’s ‘Time in a Bottle’ got me thinking that I’m not very familiar with the singer-songwriter’s footprint outside of a handful of hits. And given that his whole recording career spans just five albums, that’s easily remedied. So this week I’ll feature a song from each of those releases.

In the early 60s, Croce was a disc jockey and the leader of a vocal group at Villanova University in his native Pennsylvania. He met his future wife, Ingrid Jacobson, when she auditioned for a hootenanny he was judging. They married in 1966.

Croce’s parents gave the couple a $500 wedding gift, asking that it be used to record an album (Ingrid might have preferred a set of steak knives). Their hope, apparently, was that Croce would get the music thing out of his system once and for all and turn his attention to landing a legitimate job.

Instead, the modest collection of folk songs — titled Facets and recorded in a single three-hour session — was a minor hit among the fans who saw Croce perform at local dives. He sold every copy and turned a decent profit.

Facets is made up almost entirely of covers, with today’s track the only one Croce wrote himself. These lo-fi recordings aren’t very memorable, but they give a good early glimpse of the mellow performance style he would perfect on later albums.