In a 1952 contest in west Texas, Jim won the fiddle division while his father triumphed in the guitar category. “And the stench was so bad you couldn’t breathe.” Jim became transfixed by a visiting fiddler and his father ordered him an instrument from the Sears catalog when he was 5 or 6. ““There were oil rigs as far as you could see,” Seals told an interviewer of his upbringing in Iraan, Texas. James Eugene Seals was born in 1942 to an oilman, Wayland Seals, and his wife Cora. I am very sad over this but I have some of the best memories of all of us together.”įor several years in the late ’50s and early ’60s, both Seals and Dash Crofts - who survives his partner - were members of a group that bore little stylistic similarity to their later act: the Champs, although they joined after that band had recorded its signature hit, “Tequila.” Seals played sax in that group and Crofts was on drums. … He belonged to a group that was one of a kind. Dan adored his older brother and it was because of Jimmy opening doors for us that we came to Los Angeles to record and meet the right people. “We didn’t always agree and it wasn’t always easy and it wasn’t always fun but it definitely was always entertaining for sure. “I listened to him and I learned from him,” Coley continued. He was an enigma and I always had regard for his opinion. We didn’t always see eye to eye, especially as musicians, but we always got along and I thought he was a bona fide, dyed-in the-wool musical genius and a very deep and contemplative man. He taught me how to juggle, made me laugh, pissed me off, encouraged me, showed me amazing worlds and different understandings on life, especially on a philosophical level showed me how expensive golf was and how to never hit a golf ball because next came the total annihilation of a perfectly good golf club, and the list goes on and on. “He was Dan’s older brother, (and) it was Jimmy that gave Dan and me our stage name. “I spent a large portion of my musical life with this man,” he wrote. ![]() John Ford Coley shared his thoughts at length in a Facebook post. But neither member showed a particularly heavy interest in chasing the limelight after the 1970s. The duo broke up in 1980, followed by a couple of very fleeting reunions in the early ’90s and early 2000s, which generated only one album after their original run, the little-noticed “Traces” in 2004, They never reembarked together on the kind of nostalgia-stoking package tours that would have seemed a natural for an act with so many well-remembered hits. Both members of the duo were deeply embedded in that peace-loving faith from the late ’60s forward. 6, as did a more upbeat song in 1976, “Get Closer,” sung with Carolyn Willis.īesides those three songs that reached the top 10 on the Hot 100, four more made it to the adult contemporary chart’s top 10: “We May Never Pass This Way (Again)” in ’73, “I’ll Play for You” in ’75, “Goodbye Old Buddies” in ’77 and “You’re the Love” in ’78.Ĭritic Robert Christgau called the duo “folk-schlock,” but Seals and Crofts had the last laugh - or would have, if crowing with vindication was part of the Baha’i way. ![]() “Summer Breeze” in 1972 and “Diamond Girl” in 1973 both reached No. 1 on the Hot 100, their biggest songs were for a time as ubiquitous as any that did top the chart. ![]() Although none of the pair’s hits ever reached No. With Jim Seals as the primary lead vocalist of the harmonizing duo, Seals and Crofts came to be the very emblem of “soft rock” with a run of hits that lasted for only about six years. “Tell him and your sweet momma hi for me.” “You and Dan finally get reunited again,” Coley wrote.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |