Though his time in the spotlight was comparatively brief, singer-songwriter Jim Croce left an indelible impression. His career was cut short on Sept. 20, 1973, when a plane carrying him crashed, killing him and five others. He was 30, and left behind a wife and toddler son, A.J.
As the younger Croce grew to adulthood, he launched a creatively successful career all his own, with a style that drew upon musical traditions across the American landscape. To date A.J. Croce has released 11 well-received albums; 2021’s By Request is his latest. But as the 50th anniversary of Jim Croce’s best-loved works approached, A.J. shifted his focus to a celebration of his late father’s music. “Croce Plays Croce” is a cross-country tour spotlighting the life, times and music of Jim Croce. The tour comes to San Jose Civic on Oct. 23.
Jim Croce’s musical vignettes were portraits of characters—some partly real, some the product of his fertile imagination—and his straightforward way with words and melody earned him fame. His success would come comparatively late; after two non-charting albums, he struck gold with 1972’s You Don’t Mess Around With Jim. That LP spawned three hit singles: the title track, “Operator (That’s Not the Way it Feels)” and the classic “Time in a Bottle.” Two more successful albums and four more hit singles followed in rapid succession, but Jim Croce died before he could truly enjoy the success his music had found.
A.J. Croce began playing his father’s music in 2019; prior to that he had made a point of avoiding it. “As an artist, I felt I needed to have some integrity,” he explains. “I couldn’t feel proud of what I did if it was just based on the work of someone else.” Instead, he toured and/or collaborated with some of the most respected names in music, including B.B. King, Taj Mahal, Ray Charles, Aretha Franklin, James Brown and the Neville Brothers. “They all really encouraged me to do what I do,” he says. “They hired me because they liked what I did.”
Yet even while A.J. wasn’t playing his father’s music, he was involved with it behind the scenes. “For almost 30 years, I had been working with the publishing,” he says. “I was making sure that people still heard the music through [placement in] film and television series.”
Those efforts have helped to keep Jim Croce’s body of work in the public consciousness. “Licensing those songs does something more for an legacy catalog like my father’s,” A.J. says.
Thanks to so-called sync licensing of recordings from those early ’70s records, “the music is going to reach people that are my kids’ age, and the generation after them,” he says. “Stranger Things did much more for ‘You Don’t Mess Around With Jim’ than having it played on the radio every day [does].” A.J. says that the primary benefit of that placement “wasn’t what it paid; it was that it helped make younger generations conscious of the music.”
And that music continues to resonate with current-day listeners; 1974’s Photographs and Memories: His Greatest Hits is filled with Jim Croce songs that have lasted. And the 50-year mark struck A.J. as the right time to celebrate that body of work.
A.J. suggests that the reason those songs endure has much to do with his father’s knack for creating universal characters. “Whether he’s writing in first-person perspective or third-person, he makes heroes out of everyday people,” A.J. observes. He compares Jim Croce’s writing to that of rock ’n’ roll legends Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller (“Hound Dog,” “Spanish Harlem,” “Stand By Me” and dozens of others). “They all wrote great character songs; they had a sense of humor, and the stories were organic.”
A.J. Croce credits the honesty at the core of his father’s songs as another key to their continued popularity. Those songs were not a put-on, he says. “This was a real person telling stories. And I think that people are looking for real; they’re looking for music that isn’t just manufactured to sell.”
Jim Croce had a master’s degree in psychology, and he brought a deep understanding of the human psyche to bear in his storytelling songs. His works championed “heroes in their own worlds, with all their imperfections and flaws,” A.J. says. “And that makes [the characters] even more likable.” Jim Croce sometimes began writing a song by basing it upon an actual individual, and then applied artistic license to craft a relatable story. “Leroy Brown was a real person,” A.J. notes. “But he was a totally different character than the one in the song.”
Jim Croce’s son says that people come to the “Croce Plays Croce” shows for nostalgia. “They grew up with the songs, or their parents showed them the songs…or their grandparents showed them the songs,” he says. “People come to the concerts more than once or twice even, because with the stories, the show is different every night.”
A.J. Croce says that he treats his dad’s music with respect. “But we also improvise and show that the music is alive,” he emphasizes. “It’s not just about my father; it’s about two generations of a musical legacy, told through the lens of a family.”
Ultimately, though, A.J. Croce admits that the essence of his father’s songs is hard to pin down. “I think that if I knew the exact answer,” he says with a chuckle, “I would write the same type of songs and create some more American classics.”
“Croce Plays Croce” takes place at 8pm on Oct. 23 the San Jose Civic Auditorium, 135 W San Carlos St, San Jose.
