Jim Seals, who teamed with fellow musician “Dash" Crofts on such 1970s soft-rock hits as “Summer Breeze" and “We May Never Pass This Way Again," has died at age 80, the AP reports. His death was announced Tuesday by several people including John Ford Coley, who had formed the ‘70s duo England Dan and John Ford Coley with Seals’ older brother Dan. Further details were not immediately available. “This is a hard one on so many levels as this is a musical era passing for me," Coley wrote. “And it will never pass this way again as his song said. He belonged to a group that was one of a kind."

Seals and Darrell George “Dash" Crofts were Texas natives who had known each other since they were teenagers and had previously been in the Champs, which before they joined had a hit single with “Tequila," and a group including Glen Campbell. They started Seals and Crofts in the late 1960s and over the next several years were among a wave of soft-rock groups that included America, Bread, and England Dan and John Ford Coley. Seals and Crofts had three top 10 hits: “Summer Breeze," “Diamond Girl," and “Get Closer." Other popular songs included “Hummingbird" and “You're the Love."

Seals and Crofts also released the controversial “Unborn Child," an anti-abortion song that came out the year after the 1973 Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision and was banned by some radio stations. They broke up in 1980, but reunited briefly in the early 1990s and again in 2004, when they released the album Traces. Seals also performed on occasion with his brother Dan, who died in 2009. He is survived by his wife, Ruby, and their three children.

Thanks for posting. I heard this about six hours ago. My sister saw them at a theater in LA and she said it was excellent.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2022-06-08 19:38 by shattered.

Oh jeez . R.I.P.

They were a great duo together.

Sad news...

RIP Jim Seals

_____________________________________________________________
Rip this joint, gonna save your soul, round and round and round we go......

Summer Breeze - what a memory. Always to be associated with finding, after some time had passed, Linda K partying at Ledbetter's Tavern in Baltimore after she and her old man split and they disappeared from my life. I still see the sky blue polka dot dress she was wearing that night and her smile as she saw me and Summer Breeze played in the bar. Gawd, life became so sweet at that moment. This will always my memory of Seals and Croft's main hit, though, my fave version of Summer Breeze is by the Isley Brothers which I've linked to below. RIP Mister Seals and thanks for the memory.

[www.youtube.com]

R.I.P.

Summer Breeze
Diamond Girl
... EZ m-o-r radio listening

They satisfied an early 70s demand for a CSN style of music that the actual CSN were usually unable to fulfill because they were too busy arguing amongst themselves to spend very much time making records.

Btw, which one was Seals? The one with the hat, right? Never could tell them apart.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2022-06-08 23:22 by tatters.

In 2019, I spent a day with Jim and his wife Ruby, in Hendersonville. They split their time between that suburb of Nashville and Costa Rica, where they had raised their three kids. Jim wasn’t in the best of health—he’d suffered a stroke in 2017—but they welcomed me to their home. We sat on the back deck, among the mockingbirds and the bougainvillea. Jim had a great memory, though sometimes Ruby, who had been with him since 1969, would gently prod him. His voice was soft and quiet.

My favorite story of that day was the tale of how he had written the monster hit “Summer Breeze,” a song that helped define the seventies. It came to him in 1970 in a Woodstock, New York, recording studio, the melody and the words at the same time, as he remembered his days as a little boy running around a shotgun shack in a small Texas oil-field town—the halcyon days before his parents split up and he moved on and became a rock star, his life changing irrevocably. He told me how many times the band recorded it before finally getting it right, and how he reacted when he first heard it on the car radio in Los Angeles in 1972. “We’re on the freeway,” he said, and began choking up. “You’ll have to forgive me. We’re on the freeway going to Hollywood, and boom, it came on.” I asked why this still affected him so many years later. He paused. “So thankful. We had worked so hard for so long.”

Fifty years later, those first notes from Jim’s acoustic guitar on “Summer Breeze” still make us nostalgic for another time. I have no idea what Jim meant about the summer breeze blowing through the jasmine of his mind. But I know exactly how he felt.

Michael Hall of the Texas Monthly. (6/7/2022)