As a child Jimmy's life seems to have been interesting and somewhat itinerant. His father became a "Sausage Skin Merchant" and the family lived for a time in Mount Vernon/Baillieston in East Glasgow, James going to school still in Dennistoun, and then in 1921 in Millport on Bute, James still a "scholar".  So where the young man leant his football and how he by the following year found his way to Glasgow's southern suburbs is unclear. Yet, having been a noted sprinter on the track Jimmy would from 1922 spend the whole of his fifteen year footballing career, living locally, doing much on the field as a very rapid outside-right for Queen's Park. In his first season promotion to the First Division was won and there then still Scotland's only amateur team stayed until he retired in 1937, reaching in 1929 its highest place of fifth.

Meantime Crawford worked in retail in the ladies clothing trade, clearly prosperously, never seemingly tempted by the professional shilling. And in 1935 in Pollokshields he would marry Jess Dempster. They were to have two children, a boy and a girl., both born in the southern suburbs still. However, when Jimmy's passing came it would not be in Glasgow but in Castle Douglas in Kirkcudbrightshire. The year was 1976, he was aged seventy-two with his body brought back to Cathcart and Linn for cremation.