Henri Crolla was born Enrico Crolla on 26 February 1920 in Naples, into a family of itinerant Neapolitan musicians, and grew up in Paris, where his career took place. The family left Italy for France in 1922 as fascism rose, and settled at the Porte de Choisy, on the edge of the shanty district known as "la Zone," among Roma and Manouche travellers. French Wikipedia says the neighbours included the family of Django Reinhardt, and that Django's mother treated the boy, called "Rico" or "Riton," as one of her own children. He began on his mother Teresa's mandolin at the age of three, and at eight was playing banjo on the terraces of Montparnasse brasseries such as La Coupole. His parents, Antonio and Teresa, ran small family bands, one of them named Jazz Crolla, and were friends of the composer Nino Rota, according to French Wikipedia. Crolla was the only child to follow them into music. He was naturalized French in 1946; Wikipedia describes him as an Italian jazz guitarist and film composer, and he is listed here as Italian, his country of birth.

The route into jazz ran through the poets. At thirteen he joined the agitprop Groupe Octobre, which put him in the circle of Jacques Prévert, Pierre Prévert and the animator Paul Grimault, and from about 1935 to 1938 he lived with Grimault. There, French Wikipedia reports, he discovered the guitar and jazz: the painter Émile Savitry brought friends such as the Ferret brothers and Django and Joseph Reinhardt to the house. Prévert nicknamed him "Mille-pattes" (thousand-legs) for the agility of his playing. From 1938 he sat in at Paris clubs where the American visitors Coleman Hawkins, Benny Carter and Bill Coleman played, and he worked with the accordionist Gus Viseur at La Boîte à Sardines; those club appearances come from his French Wikipedia biography, and no Discogs record credit backs them. The war interrupted him: he was mobilized in Italy, deserted, and returned to France, working odd jobs and small concerts until 1945.

After the war he appears on jazz records. Discogs lists him on the Swing label's Jam Session N° 4 (1947) and on pianist Léo Chauliac's 1947 Pacific 78 "Three Little Beans" / "Bouncing Boogie-Woogie," and the Frémeaux anthology of his work opens with sides made with Chauliac. French Wikipedia and the Django Reinhardt site both list a 1947 Académie du Jazz prize shared with Chauliac and the bassist Emmanuel Soudieux. In 1947 he also met the singer Yves Montand and became, as French Wikipedia puts it, his musical conscience. Between 1947 and 1953 Montand and a jazz-tinged quintet built with the pianist Bob Castella played casinos, clubs and music halls, ending in the six-month Théâtre de l'Étoile run of 1953 that produced what French Wikipedia calls the first double 33 rpm album. Discogs lists more than 70 Montand releases among his credits, along with nearly 30 by Édith Piaf, whom he accompanied on "Cri du cœur," and singles with Mouloudji, Germaine Montero and others. He toured the Soviet Union with Montand in 1956-57.

His own jazz playing is documented mainly in the mid-1950s. In 1954-55 he invited Stéphane Grappelli, Soudieux and the drummer Baptiste "Mac Kac" Reilles to the reopened Club Saint-Germain for quartet nights of violin, guitar, bass and drums, and Discogs credits the pair together on a 1955 Ducretet Thomson EP and a Telefunken EP billed to the Grappelli-Crolla Quartet. For the Vega label he made the 10-inch LPs There's A Small Hotel and Love For Sale, with sleeve notes by Prévert, the EPs Mon Homme / C'est Mon Gigolo and 6 Jolis Petits Airs, and three larger LPs: Le Long des rues (1957), which won the Académie Charles-Cros's Grand Prix du Disque, Bonsoir Chérie and C'est pour toi que je joue (both 1958). French Wikipedia says he preferred little-known but excellent sidemen such as the clarinetist Maurice Meunier and the very young pianist Martial Solal; Discogs credits Solal on piano on the 2001 CD Notre Ami Django and as arranger of the 1956 EP Quatre Classiques Du Jazz, and lists Meunier, Soudieux, Michel Hausser (vibraphone) and Georges Arvanitas (piano) on the 2002 Jazz In Paris reissues. In 1958 Vega issued Notre Ami Django, Hommage de ses compagnons, a tribute to Reinhardt (who had died in 1953) led by Crolla with Grappelli, the clarinetist Hubert Rostaing and the saxophonist André Ekyan; a short film by Paul Paviot documented the tribute.

From 1950 Crolla and the composer André Hodeir, a classically trained musicologist, wrote more than 50 scores for short films and documentaries, and from 1954-55 features: Gas-Oil (with Jean Gabin and Jeanne Moreau), Cette sacrée gamine, Une Parisienne and Voulez-vous danser avec moi? (both with Brigitte Bardot). Their Saint-Tropez Blues soundtrack (1961, Fontana) is Discogs-credited to a big band that includes Georges Arvanitas, Maurice Vander, Pierre Michelot and Roger Guérin. He also acted, as the title character of the Paul Grimault and Pierre Prévert comic short Enrico, cuisinier and as a lead, alongside a young Jacques Higelin, in Henri Fabiani's Le bonheur est pour demain, shot on the shipyard of the liner France in the summer and autumn of 1960. French Wikipedia says Crolla urged Higelin to try singing, gave him guitar lessons and, for his twentieth birthday, a guitar made by the luthier Antoine Di Mauro. Crolla's curiosity ran further afield: French Wikipedia says he paid for the first record of the serialist composer Jean Barraqué, though the music was far from his own.

A smoker, he died suddenly on 17 October 1960, at 40, after an operation for lung cancer at the end of the filming of Le bonheur est pour demain. French Wikipedia gives the place of death as Suresnes; Discogs and English Wikipedia say Paris. He is buried at the Bulvis cemetery. His work has been reissued repeatedly: Universal's Jazz In Paris series in 2001-2002 and 2010 (the three-CD The Jazz Sides), a 2020 Record Store Day LP of the Hodeir film scores from Moochin' About, a 2022 CD, L'Ombre de Django, on Italy's Musica Jazz label, and a two-CD Frémeaux & Associés anthology in 2025. Nino Bizzarri made a 2002 documentary on his life for RAI Uno, Vita e morte di un piccolo sole, which was shown at the Locarno festival and won a Premio Asolo for best artist biography in 2006.

Crolla's guitar is rooted in the Hot Club tradition he absorbed as a neighbour of the Reinhardts, and Discogs tags seven of the 37 releases and masters credited to him as main artist Gypsy Jazz, among them Notre Ami Django, Begin The Beguine and the Grappelli EPs. Most of his own Vega records are American standards ("Body And Soul," "The Man I Love," "Stardust," "Begin The Beguine," "Love For Sale") played in a small-group swing setting with clarinet, vibraphone, piano and bass, and the 2002 CD of the 1955 sessions also carries Charlie Parker's "Yardbird Suite" (Discogs adds a Bop style tag to it).

An honest account has to hold two things. He was a jazz guitarist by reputation, by his Grappelli and Django-tribute records and by Discogs, which tags 28 of the 37 releases and masters credited to him as main artist as Jazz and calls him a jazz guitarist. But for years his steady work was chanson accompaniment (his Montand and Piaf credits make up a large share of the Discogs list) and film scoring, and the 2025 Frémeaux anthology is titled Jazz, Chanson, Musiques de Film et Poésie. His Vega records also include Paris songs, film themes and poetry with Prévert, so his catalog reads more as a working musician's than as a single jazz lane.