“I think our music is a combination of the Eastern part of the world and the Western,” Seals said in 1971. That song finally put them on the charts, and subsequent singles like the even gentler “Hummingbird” and the lounge-jazzier “Diamond Girl” continued their streak the duo once boasted of the number of high school yearbooks that reprinted the lyrics of “We Will Never Pass This Way (Again).”īehind Seals’ goatee and caps and Crofts’ mandolin, what often distinguished the duo were the exotic musical accents in their songs despite Seals’ country music background, their music incorporated unusual tunings and time signatures beneath the duo’s keening harmonies. Their first three albums were commercial duds, but the fourth, Summer Breeze, finally caught on after a Northeast DJ took a chance on the title song. In a local band, the Crew Cats, he met Crofts, and the two later joined the Champs, known for their instrumental hit “Tequila.” (Seals and Crofts did not appear on the track.) As part of their tenure in the Champs, Seals and Crofts moved to California, where they also played with or wrote songs for a wide range of artists, including the Monkees, Buck Owens, Gene Vincent and Rick Nelson.įor a short time, Seals and Crofts had their own band, the Dawnbreakers, but by 1969 had peeled off into a duo. He began playing fiddle at a young age, winning numerous fiddle contests but eventually moving over to saxophone. 17, 1942, in Sidney, Texas, Seals was the son of Wayland Seals, a Texas oilman and part-time musician.
Seals did not travel the standard route to strumming troubadour. “Summer Breeze,” featuring Seals’ lead vocal and lyrics, would also be covered by many others, including the Isley Brothers and Type O Negative. Both their 1972 Summer Breeze and 1975 Greatest Hits albums sold two million copies each at the time. With their often exotic musical instrumentation, vaguely philosophical lyrics and wailing-wall harmonies, Seals and Crofts singles like “Summer Breeze,” “Diamond Girl” and “We Will Never Pass This Way (Again)” fit in equally with AM pop radio and the more adventurous world of FM. When the soft-rock boom hit pop music in the early Seventies, Seals and Crofts, which also included singer and mandolinist Darrell “Dash” Crofts, quickly came to embody the era. What an incredible legacy he leaves behind.” “My heart just breaks for his wife Ruby and their children. “I just learned that James ‘Jimmy’ Seals has passed,” Brady Seals wrote. Seals’ cousin Brady Seals, a country singer, also confirmed the singer’s death on Facebook. Ruby Jean Seals, Seals’ wife, confirmed his passing to Rolling Stone, citing “an unspecific ongoing chronic illness” as the cause. Jim Seals, half of the soft-rock troubadours Seals and Crofts, died Monday at the age of 79.
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