Jim Crozier works day job,

but music feeds his heart

By Randi Sam Atwood/Special to the Democrat

When Tallahassee singer-songwriter Jim Crozier was in his early 20s and working as a musician in New York City, his parents called and told him they were moving from his childhood home in Warren, Pa., to Tallahassee, and they had room to take only one thing of his with them.

He chose his very first guitar, a $13 Silvertone that he got for his birthday in 1963.

Crozier has been a musician for as long as he can remember. He took piano lessons from his aunt in second grade, started learning the trumpet in the school music program in fifth grade, and played guitar and bass in the junior high school band. As a teenager, he took every opportunity to perform — in the local theater’s orchestra pit, with his high school’s jazz band, at church and in the community orchestra.

In his junior year of high school, a summer stock theater group opened up in a barn 10 miles outside of town. Crozier started working with them, playing bass at first, then later becoming their musical director. Every summer they did six shows in 12 weeks, and he had never been happier.

“During my freshman year of college, the producer introduced me to a guy named Kenn Long, who was up from Texas to work with the company,” remembers Crozier. “He was also a playwright, and had written a show called ‘Touch.’ He had never written music, though, so I started writing music for it.”

“Touch” moved to New York that fall, and ran for a year Off-Broadway at the Village Arena Theatre. To Crozier’s astonishment, the original cast album was nominated for a Grammy Award.

“My 21st birthday party was the Grammy Awards Show at the Felt Forum in Madison Square Garden,” says Crozier. “I was sitting right behind Cheech and Chong and Roberta Flack. We didn’t win, of course — the winner that year was ‘Godspell’ — but then again, Henry Mancini didn’t get it that year either.”

Crozier left college in his sophomore year to move to New York City and become the music director for the 13th Street Repertory Company. He lived in the basement of the theater, spent a lot of time in rehearsals and performances and drove a cab to make ends meet. After the show closed, he fell on hard times and decided to take a break and stay with his parents in Florida.

“I arrived in Tallahassee in 1976, at a really tough time in my life. I thought I was just going to be passing through,” says Crozier. “One day I stumbled into the Leon County Food Co-op, and saw a notice that Bill Wharton was looking for a bass player — this was before he was the Sauce Boss. So I met him, and played with the Wild Blue Yonders for a while.”

He has been a significant part of the Tallahassee music scene ever since. Crozier auditioned for, and was accepted into, the FSU School of Music program, and graduated with degree in music composition and a certificate in performance on the double bass.

“I studied with Bill Kennedy, who had just arrived in town and was getting the FSU jazz bands started, and played with him and sometimes with Lindsey Sergeant, who was just getting the FAMU jazz program going,” says Crozier. “It was a great time. I met a guy named Jimmy Lohman in Bill Kennedy’s class, and we formed a trio — Jimmy, me and my brother, who plays the saxophone.”

The Lohman-Crozier Trio played three to four times a week at a now-defunct pub right across the street from the Capitol building.

“We were the happening scene,” he laughs. “It was my first real moment of fame in Tallahassee.”

Crozier was also a founding member of ACME Rhythm & Blues, as well as one of the earliest members of the Tallahassee Swing band, with which he still plays regularly.

“My mom was the director of the brand new senior center back then, and the swing band was looking for a place to practice on Tuesday nights,” says Crozier. “And then it turned out that they needed a bass player and a sax player, and mom said she just happened to know some people.”

After years of concentrating on playing bass, Crozier recently took up the guitar again. He is now performing solo (and sometimes with friends), and he calls his style “edgy blues and twisted Americana.” He has a standing gig on First Fridays on the Athena’s Garden Stage in Railroad Square Art Park, and he occasionally plays at Barnacle Bill’s, the Downtown MarketPlace and about once a month with the Jones Brothers Band at Food Truck Thursdays.

“I hadn’t played guitar in public since high school, but I’m enjoying it,” he says. “I’ve always been a composer/songwriter of a sort, but my output is usually about one original song a year. So I play a little Tom Waits, Leonard Cohen, Bob Dylan and even a Beatles song here and there.”

Though Crozier makes ends meet by working in IT for the state, he looks forward to the day when he can put his music career center stage.

“In less than two years I’ll be 62, and then I’m going to retire and get back to concentrating on music,” he says. “Both of my daughters will be married by then, and my house is paid off, so I plan to travel and tour and just play music full-time.”