I'll Have To Say I Love You
In A Song

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Jim Croce is one of my favorite singer songwriters. He wrote brash, boisterous story songs like Bad Bad Leroy Brown, which I enjoyed. But my personal favorites were his exquisitely crafted, gentle love songs that touch the heart deeply, like I'll Have To Say I Love You In A Song. He died too soon in a plane crash in September, 1973. I'll Have To Say I Love You In A Song was released posthumously in 1974. It's very short (with no chorus or bridge), and, like his life, over all too soon. And it is perhaps his sweetest song. I love the intricate, very pretty, two-guitar, finger-picking arrangement created by Jim Croce and his musical partner, Maury Muehleisen.

This is an unusual song, in that the words were being written to describe the actual circumstance with his wife as he was writing the song. His wife is asleep upstairs, as he writes at the table. I can see him writing the opening verse to her, with the thought that he'll finish the song and sing it to his wife sometime later in the night, most likely having to wake her up while she was still sleeping:

Well, I know it's kinda late.
I hope I didn't wake you.
But what I gotta say can't wait.
I know you'd understand.

But the song ends up taking longer to finish than he thought — all night, in fact — and so he doesn't have to wake her up, after all, because morning has arrived. But the words to the first verse have already been written, so he leaves them as is.

A musical clock. To my ear, one of the most distinctive and striking things about this song is an observation about rhythm that I've never heard anyone else point out: the song moves along like a musical clock ticking away. Between the guitar plucks, drum beats, and voices every beat is hit, and nothing but the beats (there is no off-beat syncopation). This is tough to describe in words, so maybe the best way to communicate what I'm getting at is to actually let you hear a stopwatch (ticking at roughly the same speed of the song), and then listen to the song for a while, with the stopwatch going, and see if you can hear what I'm talking about:

The song starts with just the guitars, where the "tick tick tick" of the guitar plucks is very clear. Then when the drums start, they are not a normal drum pattern. Instead, they are what sounds like bongo drums, clearly intended to allow the drummer to continue (and reinforce) that "tick tick tick" on the drums. I've picked out a section of the first verse accompaniment where you can here that most clearly:

Its only when that drum "tick tick tick" has been established that a conventional drum pattern is introduced (even as, I think if you listen closely, the bongos are continuing to play the "tick tick tick").

Once this song starts, the "musical clock" never pauses or "takes a breath" anywhere until the end if the song — there is a constant, flowing feeling of motion, drive, and delightful busy-ness. This is very distinctive, and very uncommon in a pop song! It reminds me more of some of Bach's works, like his "Two-part Invention in F major":

That "tick tick tick" (starting with the finger-picking of the two guitars playing in counterpoint) is the primary thing I hear when I listen to the song, and that steady, rhythmic bombardment of the ear is even sensual in its pleasure. It also requires very precise singing to maintain the effect: if a note is sung even a fraction of a beat off, the effect is ruined.

It's an amazing combination: a deeply feeling song floating on top of a machine-like arrangement. . .it almost sounds like it shouldn't work, and yet somehow the clocklike precision actually supports and magnifies the feeling of the song.

One further thought on choosing a "clock" arrangement for a musical piece, whether it's a pop song like I'll Have To Say I Love You In A Song or a classical piece like Bach's 2-Part Invention. . . I note that neither piece is very long. I'll Have To Say I Love You In A Song is a relatively short song, at two and a half minutes in length. And Bach's piece is only a minute in length. Normally, music is allowed to "breathe", in having an alternation between movement and pause. These "clock" pieces have no pause whatsoever! They are delightful because of that, but I can imagine that if they went on much longer, they'd become either boring or painful to the ear because the ear gets no break, or both. Bach's piece is faster than Croce's, so the barrage of "tick tick tick" is faster and more intense, so the piece is even shorter. Perhaps the lesson here, then, is to end such "clock" pieces before they cease to be enjoyable. In other words: quit while you're ahead!

I'm guessing this "musical clock" song arrangement was largely Maury Muehleisen's contribution. He was a classically trained musical powerhouse who created beautiful vocal and guitar harmonies that perfectly complemented Jim Croce's melodies.

A beautiful, unexpected violin chord. The song also ends on an odd violin note:

Ending on the home note or the third would be natural. But here the ending is on the second, which leaves the song with an unresolved feeling. The second is "unresolved" in that it is just one note away from the home note, but it stops short and doesn't deliver the home note itself.

I'm guessing the violin parts were probably written by the song's producer, Tommy West.

"Yuh" vs. "you". When I do a cover of a song I really do a deep dive into that song, combine myself with it in all kinds of ways, and notice all kinds of things a casual listener would not. Here's one of those odd little things.

I noticed that, most of the time when a line ended with the word "you", Croce would sing it as "yuh", which is pretty common among singers, especially folk singers. But I also noticed one oddity: whenever he'd sing the line, "Every time I tried to tell you", he'd pronounce the last word as "you" rather than "yuh". A very curious thing, because most people who sing "you" as "yuh" do it consistently. Who can say why he said "you". . . Perhaps it was psychological: "every time I'd tried to tell you" is exactly the situation he was awkward in, and maybe the formal pronunciation of "you" mirrored the self-consciousness he felt in that situation, whereas in "I'll have to say I love you in a song", he's doing what he does best and is least self-conscious at — singing — so it comes out as "yuh".

Whatever the explanation in Croce's case, I chose to sing it consistently as "yuh" throughout the song.