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<\/div>Of the many things the singer-songwriter Jim Croce left to his two-year-old son after he died in a plane crash in 1973 at age thirty, a collection of a thousand or so vinyl records loomed large. For young A. J. Croce, listening to these old hits\u2014by Otis Redding, Wilson Pickett, Ray Charles, and the like\u2014steered the trajectory of his life, instilling in him a love of music, inspiring his career, and connecting him to his hitmaking dad forever.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cMy father\u2019s record collection was a huge influence on me,\u201d says Croce, a self-taught piano virtuoso and a Billboard-charting singer-songwriter himself, who has collaborated with such luminaries as Willie Nelson, B.B. King, and John Oates. \u201cIt was so deep\u2014old blues, jazz, rock and roll, soul, country, folk. Just all over the map.\u201d When he was fifteen, though, a fire destroyed his house, and the collection he\u2019d spent his adolescence augmenting and emulating was lost. Only two albums survived, a little smoke-damaged but functional: a Bessie Smith record and a Fats Waller collection.<\/p>\n\n\n
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