Jazz guitarist, song and film composer. He left Italy with his family in 1922 for France. They settled in Porte de Choisy, an immigrant neighborhood in Paris. Among their neighbors was Django Reinhardt's family, where little "Rico" was soon considered as one of the children of the family by Django's mother. Learning to play the mandolin at the age of three, he began to put school on hold to go and play the banjo on the terraces of cafés and brasseries when he was eight. With thirteen he played in the streets, becoming friends with people like Lou Bonin of the Groupe Octobre, Jacques Prévert, Pierre Prévert and Paul Grimault. Grimault and Jacques Prévert adopted him as a friend. From 1935 to 1938 he lived at Grimault's house, where he discovered the guitar and jazz. There, the painter Emile Savitry brought some of his musician friends, the Ferret brothers, and especially Django and Joseph Reinhardt, whose original formation, the String Quintet of the Hot Club de France, invented an innovative European jazz, where Crolla discovered all the possibilities of true jazz: improvisation, spontaneous creation, freedom.
From 1938 onwards, he was among the musicians invited to the jazz clubs where Coleman Hawkins, Benny Carter, Bill Coleman, and Gus Viseur performed. The Second World War interrupted his career: mobilized in Italy, he deserted and returned to France. In 1947 he met Yves Montand and became his musical conscience. Between 1947 and 1953, Montand and the jazzy quintet, which Crolla created with Bob Castella toured all the entertainment venues, casinos, posh clubs, popular halls, the Étoile, ABC (music hall), followed by Music hall performances, the composition of 40 songs, and more intense years of touring with and without Montand. From 1950 on he also composed (partly in collaboration with André Hodeir) more than 50 scores for short films and documentaries, making in 1955 his first score for feature films with "Gas-oil" (starring Jean Gabin), followed by "Cette sacrée gamine," "Le vent se lève," "Une Parisienne," "Voulez-vous danser avec moi?" and many more. A heavy smoker, he died after an operation of a cancer of the lungs, only 40 years old.