American singer-songwriter (born 1947)
Musical artist
Ingrid Croce (née Jacobson, born April 27, 1947) is an American author, singer-songwriter and restaurateur. Between 1964 and 1971, Ingrid performed as a duo with her husband, Jim Croce, releasing the album Jim & Ingrid Croce in 1969.
Biography
Early life
Ingrid Jacobson was born and raised in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in a Jewish family. When she was eight years old, she worked at her grandmother's dress store in South Philadelphia laying stitches. Her mother, Shirley, played piano on her own local television show. Ingrid learned to cook with her and started singing in local clubs and on television by the time she was 10. Her father, Sidney, was a general practitioner with his medical office in their home in West Philadelphia. Her parents divorced and she moved from school to school.[1] By the age of 15, Ingrid was employed as the junior art therapist assisting her father at the University of Pennsylvania where he did his residency for his psychiatric practice. When Ingrid was 15 years old, her mother died at the age of 36 from breast cancer and a weak heart. She left high school and gymnastics and moved to her father's home in the suburbs. She and her twin sister, Phyllis, attended several high schools after the death of their mother. They graduated from Nether Providence High School in 1965. Ingrid attended Rhode Island School of Design and Moore College of Art and travelled to Mexico in her senior year when she won a fellowship to study painting and pottery in San Miguel de Allende.[2]
With Jim Croce
In December 1963, when she was 16 years old, Jacobson met her future husband, Jim Croce, at the Philadelphia Convention Hall and Civic Center where she was auditioning as part of The Rum Runners to be a contestant in an upcoming hootenanny and he was a judge in the contest.[3] Three years later, they got married in a Jewish wedding.
When Jim and Ingrid Croce discovered they were going to have a child, Jim became more determined to make music his profession. He sent a cassette of his new songs to a friend and producer in New York City in the hope that he could get a record deal. When their son A. J. Croce was born in September 1971, Ingrid became a housewife, while Jim traveled to promote his music.
On September 20, 1973, a week before A.J.'s second birthday, as Jim Croce's songs were topping the music charts, he died in a plane crash in Natchitoches, Louisiana.[4] After Jim died, Ingrid and A.J. spent time in Quepos, Costa Rica.[5] After they moved to San Diego, she developed a Head Start program for Costa Rica, opened a children's school in Point Loma, and wrote a children's book, Mirandome. When A.J. was almost four years old, he was temporarily blinded by serious physical abuse by Ingrid's boyfriend.[6]
In the early 1970s, Croce led the movement to revamp the Gaslamp Quarter, San Diego.[7]
From 1977 to 1981, Croce was the vice-consul of Costa Rica in San Diego. She wrote and sang songs, completed two solo albums, and started the publishing company Time in a Bottle. She sat on the board of the Woman's Bank and traveled to Israel, where A.J. took his rites of passage. In 1983, she became a dedicated runner and finished the Stockholm Marathon, taking third place in her category.[8]
In 1984, while on the road promoting her albums, she lost her voice because of tumors on her vocal cords. Two operations failed to restore her voice, ending her singing career.[1][9]
Restaurant business
In 1985, at the suggestion of a friend, Croce opened a restaurant, Blinchiki, in Hillcrest, San Diego. The restaurant lasted less than a year.[9]
In 1985, she opened Croce's and in 1987, she expanded it to include a jazz bar after obtaining a liquor license. That day, her house burned down.[9]
In the late 1980s, she became a board member of the California Restaurant Association, San Diego County Chapter, and the San Diego Convention & Visitors Bureau.[10]
In 2004, she launched San Diego Restaurant Week to improve the dining scene in San Diego. Twice per year, the event draws 250,000 guests to 150 participating restaurants.[7]
In 2014, Croce moved the restaurant to Bankers Hill, San Diego and renamed it Croce's Park West. The restaurant had dining, bar and terrace areas, and a large room at the back for live music. The restaurant closed two years later.[11]
Publications
In 1996, Croce wrote Thyme in a Bottle, an autobiographical cookbook with memories and recipes from Croce's Restaurant.[12] When the book sold out, guests to her restaurant and website were encouraging and she re-issued the book through her own publishing company, Avalanche Records and Books, in 1998.
In 2003, 30 years after Jim Croce's death, Ingrid and A.J. Croce released the DVD Have You Heard Jim Croce Live, with an album of the same name, the album Jim Croce, Home Recordings, Americana and the album Facets (Jim Croce's first album from 1966).[13][14] KPBS broadcast the documentary The Legacy of Jim Croce, with commentary by Ingrid and A.J. and with segments from the DVD.[15]
In 2004, Croce published Time in a Bottle,[16] a photographic memoir of Jim's songs with lyrics and her favorite photos, compiled in collaboration with her husband, Jim Rock, and Deborah Ogburn.
