In 1973, after years of working odd jobs to keep the lights on, folksinger Jim Croce was finally becoming a star. He’d recorded a trio of chart-topping hits that were getting heavy airplay: “Bad, Bad Leroy Brown,” “You Don’t Mess Around With Jim,” and “Time in A Bottle.” But then, tragedy struck. The day before he was scheduled to release his next record, Croce was killed in a plane crash. He was just 30 years old. His son, A.J., was only 2.
The younger Croce went on to become a successful musician in his own right, mastering boogie-woogie piano as a teenager. A.J. toured with artists like B.B. King, Ray Charles, and Willie Nelson, and then launched a solo career. But as the 50th anniversary of Jim’s death approached, A.J. felt an urge to do something he’d spent much of his life resisting: perform his father’s songs.
For the last several years, A.J.’s been on tour with a show called “Croce Plays Croce,” where he plays covers of his dad’s music and tells stories about the family’s unique journey through the music world. He joined The Show to talk about how it’s a way for him to connect with the man he never really got to know in real life.
Full conversation
A.J. CROCE: My father was a prolific home recorder. Every time he practiced for a new show that might be coming up, you know, he, he, he only, he had a very brief professional career. It was 18 months. But before, before that 18 months, he'd play whenever he could on the weekends or whatever.
So he would play a set according to what he thought that audience would want, whether it was a roadhouse or whether it was a, a, you know, coffee house, you know, he, he tailored the set and so I had probably over 100 reel to reels and cassettes of him at different times from probably ’66 on of him hanging out with friends and playing songs and trying new things and writing new pieces of music.
And so I got a sense of who he was as a person at home and the stories that he told and where it came from. You know, having lost my sight at a young age I did get to know him, you know, in a way that a lot of people don't get to know their parent.
SAM DINGMAN: You know, I, I just had this thought, you know, like a lot of times when you're a kid, you know, your parent goes to work but you don't really know what they do there or, or who they are and there usually isn't a recording of it.
Like I'm just having this memory of going to my dad's law office for the first time when I was 8 or something and hearing him dictate a letter to his secretary. And I was like, that's my dad. Like he talks like that. He, he knows those words. I don't even, who is this person? Was the experience of, of hearing your dad on these tapes, anything like that for you or did it mostly match up with the perception that you had of him?
CROCE: I think it was more kind of the other way around for me hearing live performances of him when I got a little bit older and hearing the fact that he was so much the same on stage as he was at home.
DINGMAN: Yeah. Yeah. Before we get to the part of your life where you started playing his music, I wanted to ask you about how you learned to play music. You mentioned losing your sight and I've heard you say that something that you used to do during the period where you couldn't see was spend a lot of time sitting at the piano learning music. Can you describe how you did that? How did that go?
CROCE: Yeah. So early on, you know, there would be someone that would show me a chord and then they would say, do you hear how that sounds? And I would say, yeah. And, and then they would move my finger and they would say, do you hear how that sounds?
You know, now it's a minor chord. Do you see how, how, how that feels different and sounds different? Yes. And then move my finger and, and say, do you, well, do you know you hear that dissonance? You know, you're playing a chord that has a note in it that doesn't belong there. It was tonality, it was just in my head, in my, in my ears.
And so my earliest memories of that kind of thing were having a little transistor radio tuned in to like top 40 in the ’70s, you know, hearing the Stones or hearing McCartney or hearing ELO or Elton John or, you know, whatever it was and running to the piano to try and play along. And as my sight improved, I saw what I was playing, but I already had it in my head. I mean, to this day I can play with my eyes closed and half the show I do. It's just I feel it.
DINGMAN: I remember taking music lessons when I was a kid and I was in the fortunate position of being able to see. And I'm, I'm realizing that so much of my experience of it was like looking for nods of approval on my teacher's face, you know what I mean? So I didn't have a very embodied experience of it, but I would imagine that would have been different for you.
CROCE: Yeah. You know, I wanted to understand the fundamentals of what made a certain artist sound the way they did. And so when I was learning songs, for example, I was 15 and playing in bands, a lot of the people I was playing with, they were older and they kind of learned the song and then that was that they learned the version. Note for note the way it was played on the record and that just seemed wrong to me.
The record was just, it just happened to be. And in my head, I always felt this way, the record was just that pass. It was not precious. And what was precious was the way it made you feel. And so the idea of playing other people's music for me was never about trying to copy them as much as it was about trying to find the essence of what was great about them.
DINGMAN: Wow. So help me make a connection between what you were just describing, that sense of using someone else's recordings just kind of as a starting point with something else I heard you say once, which was, you said for a long time, you were hesitant to cover your dad's music because quote, “I didn't feel like there was any integrity in playing my dad's stuff.”
CROCE: Yeah, I still feel the same way. I felt like when I started out, I could have taken that path. Not only did I want my own identity, but I also thought that like, I would let people down by performing my father's music because some of these songs are so iconic. How do you not compare one person to the other when you're hearing them? You know, I thought back, I've been asked since I was 16 to record an album of my father's music. I still haven't done it, you know. But I love, I love this show.
What has happened is that they hear me through him and they hear him through me. And one of the most unique and beautiful things about this show is that people come because of nostalgia. They love the songs. They remind them of a place they remind them of the partner, a husband, a wife of, you know, their parent, their child, they shared these songs with and I become this three dimensional personification of their memory of their nostalgia.
And when the music is actually playing, it brings it all to life in a way that's almost, it's almost surreal, but I'm there, but I'm present. And so my father never got to see my success, never got to see me grow as an artist and never got to perform together. And so that was a sad thing. But the fact that I'm able to do it is the redemption.
[SNIPPET OF SONG]
DINGMAN: Well, you can see A.J. Croce tonight doing his show, Croce plays Croce, singing his father's songs and his own songs and telling stories at the Mesa Arts Center. A.J., thank you so much.
CROCE: It's been a pleasure. I hope to see you there.
