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A.J. Croce will play the Hoover Auditorium in Lakeside Chautauqua on Wednesday, July 12.
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A.J. Croce quietly follows in the footsteps of a legend

Shelby Duncan

A.J. Croce quietly follows in the footsteps of a legend

He’s the son of one of America’s most beloved and successful folk-rock troubadours, the late Jim Croce, who — like Buddy Holly and a few other radio pop stars of yesteryear — died suddenly in a plane crash at the height of his career.

IF YOU GO

WHAT: A.J. Croce

WHEN: 8:15 p.m. Wednesday

WHERE: Lakeside Chautauqua’s Hoover Auditorium in Lakeside, Ohio

COST: Admission requires a Chautauqua pass, which is $22.75 for adults and $15 for teenagers. Parking is an additional charge. Passes may be purchased at the gate. General admission seating only.

Adrian James “A.J.” Croce, who performs Wednesday in Lakeside Chautauqua’s Hoover Auditorium, was a mere 2 years old when his famous father — best known for songs such as “Operator,” “Time in a Bottle,” “Bad, Bad Leroy Brown,” “One Less Set of Footsteps,” and “Hey Tomorrow” — died at age 30 in 1973. He was too young to remember him, and could not have envisioned his father’s relatively small output of work would result in record sales in excess of 45 million copies and that his songs would appear on more than 375 compilations.

But music has been a cathartic release for A.J. Croce, a jazz, blues, soul and roots-rock artist who grew up to become such a gifted piano player that he began playing for audiences at age 12, turned professional at age 15, and went out on an extensive West Coast tour with none other than B.B. King at age 18.

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Music has been cathartic, not just in helping to get him past the hidden trauma of his father’s plane crash, but also in coping with the suffering he endured at the hands of his mother’s future boyfriend, whom Croce said was “violent and pretty cruel.”

A.J. Croce went blind in both eyes at age 3, a year after Jim Croce died. In an interview with The Blade, he said it was from beatings inflicted by his mother’s boyfriend, not a brain tumor that has been reported over the years by some media outlets. He said his mother, Ingrid Croce, ended up marrying the man but that relationship soon ended in divorce.

Croce said he was “always in pain” after being diagnosed with brain tumor syndrome, a condition that kept him hospitalized until he was 4. Doctors didn’t know why spinal fluid had built up and put constant pressure on his brain, causing it to swell.

“I was sick. I was throwing up,” Croce said. “The school didn’t know what was going on.”

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Times were different then, as were attitudes toward corporal punishment, he said.

He provided details of some of the beatings, saying they were from a dark period of his life that he doesn’t like to dwell upon.

“It’s never too late to forgive. You have to let a lot of stuff go,” said Croce, a Nashville-based father and dedicated family man. “You create the family you love.”

Those early childhood beatings helped push Croce more toward music. Though fond of music in general at a young age, Croce said he became especially inspired by musicians such as Ray Charles, Stevie Wonder and, yes, Toledo’s own Art Tatum, widely considered one of the most influential jazz pianists in history.

The common denominator: Each lost his sight at an early age. They taught him to persevere, said Croce, who eventually regained some of the vision in his left eye but said he remains blind in his right eye.

Music, he said, has “always been therapeutic.”

To hear Croce’s fingers gracefully glide along a keyboard like one of his mentors, famous New Orleans pianist Allen Toussaint, he appears to have little in common with his father’s folk guitar and catchy pop tunes.

But that’s a notion he wants to dispel in his special show titled “Croce: Two Generations of American Music.” His performance at Lakeside Chautauqua is one of only five or six times a year he does it, which he says in anything but a tribute concert.

He said those concerts present another side of Jim Croce, one in which he and his father both got their footing as musicians by learning songs of the early 1900s. Unbeknownst to many people, Jim Croce recorded a collection of obscure country blues songs in the late ’60s — including one album with his wife — before he became an overnight sensation as a cigar-chomping, solo pop artist with the release of his bestselling album You Don't Mess Around with Jim in April, 1972.

That mutual connection to American roots music helped draw him closer to his father long after his death, the younger Croce said.

“Our lives are very different and yet we have this commonality and love of the history of the roots of American music,” Croce said. “I think it’s this importance of knowing what became before you. You need to understand the fundamentals.”

A.J. Croce has put out nine albums, most to critical acclaim and national charts. He has performed as an opening act for some of music’s biggest names, including Carlos Santana, Rod Stewart, Aretha Franklin, Dr. John, Lyle Lovett, James Brown, B.B. King, Dave Matthews, Earth, Wind and Fire, and Ray Charles. He has sat in with artists such as Willie Nelson, Ben Harper, Ry Cooder, the Neville Brothers, Waylon Jennings, and David (Los Lobos) Hidalgo. He also has been on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, Late Show with David Letterman, Late Night with Conan O'Brien, The Today Show, Good Morning America, MTV, CNN, and Austin City Limits. Country legend Nelson has said A.J. Croce “represents his generation with a profound sense of honesty in his lyrics and quality in his delivery.”

But he’s still not as recognizable as Jim Croce — and that’s fine by him. He said in his interview with The Blade and in several other publications that he didn’t get into music to get famous or make money off his father’s name. He said he put off learning how to play guitar for many years because he didn’t want the inevitable comparisons to his father, but now loves the instrument.

He said he’s spent more than 25 years of his life on the road, compared to his father’s 18 years.

“I do this because I want to play music. I really love what I do,” Croce said. “I feel really, really lucky to have the career I've had. I’ve always considered myself a fringe artist, a truly independent musician faithful to his own artistic vision.”

Contact Tom Henry at thenry@theblade.com, 419-724-6079, or via Twitter @ecowriterohio.

First Published July 7, 2017, 4:18 a.m.

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A.J. Croce will play the Hoover Auditorium in Lakeside Chautauqua on Wednesday, July 12.  (Shelby Duncan)
Shelby Duncan
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