"You Don't Mess Around With Jim"

(As recorded by Jim Croce)
JIM CROCE

Uptown got its hustlers
The bowery got its bums
Forty Second Street got Big Jim Walker
He a pool shootin' son of a gun
Yeah he big and dumb as a man can come
But he's stronger than a country hoss
And when the bad folks all get together at night
You know they all call Big Jim boss, just because

And they say you don't tug on Superman's cape
You don't spit into the wind
You don't pull the mask off an 'ole Lone Ranger
And you don't mess around with Jim

Well outa South Alabama come a country boy
He said I'm lookin' for a man named Jim
I am a pool shootin' boy, my name is Willie McCoy
But down home they call me Slim
Yeah I'm lookin' for the king of Forty Second Street
He drive an old drop-top Cadillac
And last week he took all my money, and it may sound funny
But I've come to get my money back
And everybody say Jack, ooh don't you know

That you don't tug on Superman's cape
You don't spit into the wind
You don't pull the mask off an 'ole Lone Ranger
And you don't mess around with Jim

Well a hush fell over the pool room
And Jimmy come boppin' in off the street
And when the cuttin' was done
The only part that wasn't bloody was the soles of
The big man's feet, woah
Yeah he were cut in 'bout a hundred places
And he was shot in a couple more
And you better believe they sung a different kind of story
When a Big Jim hit the floor, aw

Now they say you don't tug on Superman's cape
You don't spit into the wind
You don't pull the mask off an 'ole Lone Ranger
And you don't mess around with Slim

(Spoken)
Yeah Big Jim got his hat, find out where it's at
And it's not hustling people strange to you
Even if do got a two piece custom made pool cue...yea

Now they say you don't tug on Superman's cape
You don't spit into the wind
You don't pull the mask off an 'ole Lone Ranger
And you don't mess around with Slim.

(c) Copyright 1971, 1972 in U.S.A. and Canada by Blendingwell Music, Inc.
and Wingate Music Corp. c/o Publishers' Licensing Corporation, 40 W. 55th
Street, New York, New York. International Copyright Secured. All Rights
Reserved.

- HIT PARADER, December 1972.

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