Bad, Bad Leroy’s Son Makes His Own Music Now

At the downtown restaurant and jazz club named after his fatherJ. Croce sat at the piano and played one of his own songs.

He has the long, narrow face, dark eyes and black hair of his father, the late pop singer Jim Croce. But A. J. (short for Adrian James) has his own style, especially the hats he collects. On this day, he wore a black porkpie.

There’s obvious talent in these genes. Narrow, graceful fingers coaxed solid left-hand bass patterns and right-hand doo-wops from the keys on “Is It Losing You?” a breakup tune. The voice, surprisingly full and throaty for a teen-ager, brought to mind Ray Charles.

Croce believes his composition has the makings of a hit. “I wrote it, I like the song, I think it has the potential to be produced right,” he said.

Now 18, Croce has quit high school and delayed college to pursue music full time. On Sunday evenings at the bar owned by his mother, Jim Croce’s widow, Ingrid (recently remarried), A.J. appears as a solo act. Other nights, he can be heard at Croce’s Top Hat Bar & Grill next door or other local clubs with Romy Kaye and the Swingin’ Gates, a blues-jazz band. His career is just starting.

Jim Croce’s career was riding high on hits such as “Bad, Bad Leroy Brown” and “Operator” when he died in a plane crash in 1973. The bar at Croce’s is like a scrapbook of his life. One wall is covered with a huge mural of his face, with the familiar curly hair and floppy mustache. In a plexiglass case over a doorway is one of Croce’s guitars. There are pictures of Croce with Ingrid and A.J. as a baby.

During the first months of A.J.’s life, Jim Croce’s popularity took him away from home for performances all over the country. Thoughts of his father are especially strong for A.J. each September. His birthday falls on the 28th, only a week after Jim Croce died in Natchitoches, La., shortly before A.J. turned 2.

It’s hard to know how much Jim Croce influenced his son’s music. Only recently has A.J. started including some of his father’s works in his performances.

“I think (the influence) mostly has to do with my playing acoustic music. Whether my father’s music was blues or not, the general concern with the way people act and interact has influenced my songs.”

“I think there was a lot of growing in deciding to be a musician, with Jim being so well known,” said Ingrid. “I think A.J. chose to do something different than Jim.”

Croce plays a background role with the Swingin’ Gates, whose members are mostly in their mid-’20s. Yet his electric piano work shines on a funky Ramsey Lewis tune and assorted boogie-woogies. His head bobs as he hunches over the keyboard. His foot stomps, and he turns out a satisfying stream of blues- and boogie-based improvisations.

“He’s got a lot of fire, spirit, determination and talent,” said San Diego sax man Joe Marillo, with whom A.J. studied music theory. “He has a keen sense of asking questions that are very logical.”

For the most part, Croce is self-taught. Occasionally, he takes a few lessons with a pro like Marillo, but he has a knack for figuring things out by himself, and gets impatient with formal instruction.

Although he is the son of a genuine pop star and has obvious ability, Croce has not yet been approached by a manager or record label seeking to make him the next Julian Lennon.

Success could come, but in the meantime, he seems content to polish his playing and singing.

Croce is self-assured and knowledgeable about music. Asked about influences, he named an eclectic group of artists, including Cecil Gant, Mose Allison, Nat King Cole and Louis Jordan, and two musicians he discovered through his father’s record collection: Fats Waller and Bessie Smith.

“Fats Waller’s style revolutionized singing,” he said of the singer, piano and organ man who hit his peak in the 1920s and ‘30s. “He influenced Louis Armstrong, Art Tatum and many others. I hear his style copied, but people don’t know it’s his.”

Some of his favorite music is from the ‘40s and ‘50s, when rhythm and blues, jazz, swing, jump and blues came together in fresh combinations. He dislikes the light brand of electronic music sometimes labeled jazz.

“I’m very traditional,” he said. “I refuse to play a synthesizer. Acoustic instruments are more real and personal.”

His electric piano, he points out, has strings in it like a real piano, and the sound and feel of the keys are reasonably authentic.

A.J. Croce seems to know his own abilities. “My real goal is to be able to sit down and play jazz as fluidly as I play blues. I don’t really consider myself a jazz musician yet. My influences are jazz, and in time that may show through more than it does now. I see myself as a traditional American musician.”

“He’s always reminded me of Jim,” said Ingrid, who met her future husband when he was 19, about the same age as A.J. “The humor, the easy way in which he writes music. His mannerisms. His sense of humor. Those are probably the two things that remind me most of Jim. The humor and the way he dances,” she said, laughing. “That’s hard to describe.”

“We have movies and tapes,” said A.J. “I can guess his personality. We have certain characteristics in common, like a sick sense of humor. When something bad happens, I think of it in almost a Monty Python way. Like a guy falling into a manhole. The guy’s in pain, but he looked funny.”

With more than 20 songs written, enough for an album, Croce said he doesn’t feel pressured to chase stardom just because his father was a star. He’ll make a demo tape soon and shop it around.

“Whether I become famous is unimportant. What’s important is the quality of the music.”