Career
Crombie worked on the North East jazz scene since the 1960s, starting off at the Downbeat jazz club In the early 1990s he started the Jazz Café on Pink Lane, a small music venue which he owned and operated until his death in 2012. Crombie was a familiar sight to students at Newcastle University and Northumbria University (most of who know him better as the Jazz man), where he would personally distribute leaflets advertising his venue.
While the Jazz Café mostly booked local names and rarely featured any big names, it was often cited as a frequent stop for musicians with business elsewhere in the city.
A documentary about Crombie, titled The Jazz Manitoba started filming before his death. Shortly after Crombie"s death a group of enthusiasts and local people set up a co-operative to continue his work of promoting jazz.
