In an interview with KGNU’s Doug Gertner, A.J. Croce discusses his musical journey, influenced by his father Jim Croce’s legacy. He shares how losing his sight as a child and growing up with music in his home shaped his passion, with artists like Ray Charles serving as major inspirations. A.J. talks about his “Croce Plays Croce” tour where he reinterprets his father’s hits while keeping the music fresh, blending nostalgia with new arrangements and audience participation (Interview date: 10/7/2024)
Doug Gertner: I don’t usually come on the air and admit if I’m having technical difficulties, but in this case, I’m going to see if A.J. Croce is there.
A.J. Croce: I’m here, man. Can you hear me?
Doug Gertner: Oh, man, I can. I’ve got a little new tech situation here and I don’t usually break the fourth wall and admit that, but in this case I couldn’t be any more delighted than to say that we’re speaking with A.J. Croce and he’s headed to Denver. Since the magic of radio works, I want to hit you with some questions, some of which you’ve heard before and maybe throw you a few curveballs since we’re getting into the baseball playoffs and all of that. A.J., your father, Jim Croce, of course, is quite well known to many of our listeners.
He sold 50 million records over the last 50 years, and folks likely know the story of his untimely death in a plane crash in 1973 shortly after you turned two years old. I wonder if you can pick up the narrative from your perspective, growing up with your mom, Ingrid, who I understand herself as a force of nature. Talk a bit about your memories and how you came to play music, and ultimately your dad’s music in addition to your own?
A.J. Croce: There was music around the house all the time from before I was born. I was born into a house where there was music playing and so I was inspired by it. Of course my parents had written together and had performed and recorded together in the sixties.
So it was around. As a kid, I’d lost my sight when I was around four years old. I really came to know my father in a curious way, which was not just through his music, but through his record collection. His record collection was so deep.
There was Fats Waller and Bessie Smith and all the great Delta guys like Mississippi John Hurt and Blind Blake. There was Reverend Gary Davis and the swing artists. There was the great folk music, pretty much everything that was part of the Harry Smith anthology and the rock and roll of Little Richard and Fats Domino and Elvis and the Stones and the Beatles and tons of great soul. He was a huge fan of soul music growing up in South Philly, from James Brown and Solomon Burke and Ray Charles and Otis Redding, Sam Cooke, it was an inspiration. Ray Charles was my gateway drug. I was a piano player before anything else.
Doug Gertner: And you were visually impaired and there’s that connection to the greats. Your father left you then not only the legacy of his own music, the catalog that you’ll be hitting heavily in Denver, but also the music he loved on recording. Presumably there was a piano in the house you were also pounding on. Before we circle back to Jim Croce, you mentioned, and I name checked your mom Ingrid, who, as you said, played in a duo, recorded with your dad. There was Jim and Ingrid initially before he rose to prominence. She recorded some albums of her own, but then she went on to start a Head Start program in Costa Rica, ran a marathon, and published books. She’s a well known, successful entrepreneur in San Diego. I guess my question is, am I missing anything? What’s been the influence of the parent who effectively raised you once you lost your dad at such an early age?
A.J. Croce: I think that there was a part of that business side that I understood, that I realized was important. My father had signed a terrible publishing deal, a terrible management deal. And so from a really young age, I learned how to read statements, I understood what they meant and why they meant what they meant. So it was really natural at a certain point. I had already been working with my own publishing for ten years when the rights reverted to me and I wanted to make sure that I could preserve the music and make sure his legacy was heard.
I think if there’s something that my mother instilled in me, it was hard work and that you just can’t expect anything to work out the way you expected it to.
Doug Gertner: Yeah, it certainly didn’t for her. Her business acumen can’t hurt in an industry that’s notorious for backroom deals and the like.
Look, this probably is not a big part of your life, but we’re in the midst of the Jewish high holidays. I wanted to note that Ingrid, your mom, was raised Jewish. She and Jim had a Jewish wedding, and you had, it sounds like, a bar mitzvah in Israel at around age 13. Would you expand on that?
A.J. Croce: I went to a Jewish school because it was the closest school to my house. My mother didn’t practice any faith. She didn’t attend synagogue or church or any sort of temple. She enrolled me in this Jewish school because it was the closest school to the house.
So consequently I learned Hebrew. I learned how to read in Hebrew and really understood the traditions that had been passed down. When the time came, I didn’t really care about the bar mitzvah, but my grandmother on my mother’s side, of course that meant a lot to her.
Instead of having some big, flashy party I went and had a very quiet ceremony in Israel. It was really for the sake of the tradition. I think I told the rabbi, I don’t think I believe in God. The rabbi said, that’s part of Judaism. You have to continue to question. And I said, I can get my head around that. So yeah, I was raised a Roman Catholic Jew.
Doug Gertner: I love it. I love it. Your mom schleps you over to Israel and says, read the Torah. It’ll make your grandmother happy. That’s very sweet.
We’re speaking with A.J. Croce. A.J., I wanted to circle back a little bit to your experiences with visual impairment and blindness. What role does that play in your musical development? Where does it leave you today in terms of the disability?
A.J. Croce: It got better for a period of time. Around the time I was 10, 11 it was a gradual thing. I was completely blind for about six years and then it gradually improved.
I was able to drive for many years and I don’t any longer. It was part of what made me practice. It was because I love music. It was a calling and I knew that it was a refuge as well. Playing music, of course it gave me a place and a reason and a purpose. When I started out, there were a few things that really changed my life. First, touring around with a guy named Floyd Dixon, a blues piano player. We would finish the show with these old 40s and 30s boogies. Meade Lux Lewis, Albert Ammons, stuff like that. Four handed boogies, Pete Johnson. And then Mae Axton, who wrote “Heartbreak Hotel”, heard me play. She called a guy named Cowboy Jack Clement. I was 17. And Cowboy was the staff producer, writer, bon vivant character for Sun Records from ‘53 to ‘60, and then here in Nashville after that, until his passing, and worked with all those icons. He heard me and hired me. That was my first session, and that changed my life. B.B. King, when I was 18, heard me play and hired me. Those particular events really had a profound impact on my life and my career, and just having that support of all those artists who really took me under their wing.
Doug Gertner: From out of the gate, soon after Mae discovered you, so to speak, you played with some of Nashville’s finest. I noticed that the great T Bone Burnett produced your first LP and the fine drummer Jim Keltner was your producer for your second. Ry Cooder and David Hidalgo, you’ve played with so many. Talk about your own recordings a little bit as distinct from the work that you do to remember your father.
A.J. Croce: I developed as an artist like so many people do. I think I was a strong piano player first, and then my voice developed, and my songwriting developed. I don’t know which developed sooner or better. It’d be the audience that has to judge that. It wasn’t as if it was all simultaneous. I didn’t come out of the box knowing who I was. I wore the influences that I had grown up with on my sleeve and we stand on the shoulders of giants. My influences are so diverse and I think that comes across in the music.
Along the way, I was so fortunate to work with so many great producers and musicians who really saw my love and curiosity and interest in learning and sharing what I love along the way, and they wanted to be part of it, whether it was Allen Toussaint or Mitchell Froom or T Bone or John Simon or so many of the others, it was just a really fortunate thing that they saw something of themselves in me. I think it was the love of what I do and the and just the fact that I was, no matter what it was, it’s who I am, it’s a calling.
Doug Gertner: It is this calling that comes through the music you’ve made on all of your solo LPs. A.J. Croce is my guest on the line today, and as I’m saying, he’s bringing Croce Plays Croce, the 50th anniversary tour. This is A.J. Croce playing the music of his father, Jim Croce. They’re coming to the Paramount Theater in Denver on Saturday, and I will have a pair of tickets to give away for that show as we wrap up today. A.J., pivot, if you would, to let folks know what we can expect at the Paramount this weekend, the band that you’re touring with and maybe some of your favorite points and parts of this show, Croce Plays Croce.
A.J. Croce: It’s really so much fun. We’ve got videos, the band is amazing. What I’ll say that’s really unique about this – we’re not a cover band. Even if I’m performing the music of my father, we’ll play all the hits. I know people are coming to hear that music. I know they love it. I think it was important for me to take certain songs into consideration, maybe some deeper cuts, and say, these things need to live, they need to be a little different than the records. We’ll keep the heart of them the same, but we need to make sure in the arranging of these songs that they have life, because had this music continued, had my father lived and performed this music, like any artist, like myself with my own music, it evolves. You’re not going to play it exactly like the record for the rest of your life if you can help it. I think people come with this element of nostalgia and what they see is that it’s living and breathing and it’s alive. I think that’s so powerful about this concert and why we’ve had such success with it.
So many people come night after night because every night’s different. I have a framework. Of course, I have the hits in there, but every night I open up the request line, any song, my father’s or mine or anyone else’s for that matter, that they want to hear. They shout out at the point where we open the request lines and they are part of the show.
The secret of this show, I think, and I’ll talk about the band in one sec, but the secret is the stories. The stories are what my father really was gifted at. If anyone out there saw him, they knew that he might play a two hour show and only play five songs because there were stories about the stories, about the songs. And while I’m not going to elaborate or be as verbose as he might’ve been, It’s so important that those stories and that the history of that and the telling of them is carried on for it to be truly relevant and and alive.
Doug Gertner: I’m so looking forward to it. A.J. Croce is my guest today. He plays Jim Croce for this 50th anniversary tour. We’re gonna go out on – you did an album called By Request, playing some other great covers beyond the Jim Croce catalog. I’ve got Billy Preston’s gem, “Nothing From Nothing”, which again, from one piano player, Billy Preston, to another, A. J. Croce, that’s natural, but talk about this one a little bit before I let you go.
A.J. Croce: Yeah, man, this is with my group. The concept was that I love entertaining. Not just live in concert, but love to make food and listen to music with my friends and play music with them. I had particularly memorable evenings, and they were all requests that friends had made over the years. Billy Preston was one request and there was a Randy Newman request, Tom Waits requests, all of these artists that were part of it. My band, who’s going to be joining in this show, they’re so amazing, man.
Gary Mallaber on drums, who was the drummer on “Moondance” and “Tupelo Honey”, a bunch of Van Morrison, and he was the drummer with Steve Miller Band, and played with the Beach Boys, Joe Walsh, and Frampton, on and on. David Berard, who I’ve known since I was 19. He was out with Dr. John for almost 40 years, a great singer and bass player. Was out with Etta James and B.B. King and the Nevilles, so our paths crossed a lot. And then James Pennebaker on guitar and fiddle, and he was with Delbert McClinton and Leroy Parnell and Freddy Fender and so many others. He’s playing. And then the ladies are wonderful too, the singers. Jackie Wilson and Catrice Ford.
I feel pretty lucky to have such a wonderful band and they really helped me present this music and preserve this legacy in a natural, beautiful, organic way.
Doug Gertner: It’s very exciting. We’re really excited to be talking to A.J. Croce today and to see Croce Plays Croce. The 50th anniversary tour is coming to the Paramount in Denver this Saturday. We’re going to go out on “Nothing From Nothing”, Billy Preston’s tune as interpreted by A.J. Croce and his fine band. Such a treat to talk with you today. Safe travels as you make your way to Denver, and we will see you Saturday at the Paramount in downtown Denver for Croce Plays Croce. Thanks, A.J.
A.J. Croce: Wonderful. Thanks for having me. Can’t wait to see you.
