NEW YORK (AP) \u2014 Singer-songwriter Darrell \u201cDash\u201d Crofts, who teamed with childhood friend Jim Seals for such 1970s soft-rock hits as \u201cSummer Breeze,\u201d \u201cDiamond Girl\u201d and \u201cGet Closer,\u201d has died. He was 87.<\/p>\n
Crofts died Wednesday of heart failure at the Heart Hospital of Austin in Austin, Texas, said his daughter, Lua Crofts Faragher. She said her father had been suffering heart issues for several years and had been hospitalized for about a month.<\/p>\n
Seals and Crofts were native Texans who had known each other since high school and played together in various groups before becoming a duo, Seals & Crofts, in the late 1960s. Blending pop, country, folk and jazz, they were part of a wave of million-selling soft-rock (or \u201ceasy listening\u201d) bands that included America, Bread and Loggins and Messina. <\/p>\n
\u201cSummer Breeze,\u201d \u201cDiamond Girl\u201d and \u201cGet Closer\u201d all reached the Top 10, while their other popular singles included \u201cI\u2019ll Play for You,\u201d \u201cHummingbird\u201d and \u201cWe May Never Pass This Way (Again).\u201d The wide-eyed sentiments of the latter made it a favorite for high school yearbooks:<\/p>\n
\u201cLife \/ So they say \/ Is but a game and they\u2019d let it slip away \/ Love \/ Like the autumn sun \/ Should be dyin\u2019 \/ But it\u2019s only just begun.\u201d<\/p>\n
Not always easy listening<\/p>\n
Like many bands of the era, Seals & Crofts sang of love, peace, music and the natural world. But the inspirations were rooted less in the counterculture than in the Baha\u2019i faith, a monotheistic religion advocating global unity that they both embraced in the 1960s. <\/p>\n
\u201cIt became a driving force in their careers and the way they lived their lives,\u201d Faragher said. <\/p>\n
They worked Baha\u2019i themes into their music \u2014 \u201cHummingbird\u201d is a metaphor for the Baha\u2019i prophet Bahaullah \u2014 distributed literature after their shows, and sometimes preached from the stage, including during a performance on \u201cTonight\u201d with Johnny Carson.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou start out writing songs like \u2018the leaves are green and the sky is blue and I love you and you love me\u2019 \u2014 very simple lyrics \u2014 but you grow into a much, much broader awareness of life, of love, and of unity,\u201d Crofts told Stereo Review in 1971. \u201cIt\u2019s really great to be able to say something real in your music.\u201d<\/p>\n
One Baha\u2019i tenet, that the soul begins with the formation of the embryo, led to controversy. In 1974, the year after the Supreme Court\u2019s Roe v. Wade decision established the right to abortion, Seals & Crofts released the ballad \u201cUnborn Child,\u201d the title song of their new album. <\/p>\n
It was inspired by the wife of their recording engineer, who had seen a television documentary about abortion and wrote a poem with such lines as \u201cOh tiny bud, that grows in the womb, only to be crushed before you can bloom.\u201d Numerous radio stations refused to play \u201cUnborn Child\u201d and protesters picketed Seals & Crofts, although the album was certified gold for selling 500,000 copies.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think we got more good results out of it than bad,\u201d Crofts later told the St. Petersburg Press, \u201cbecause a lot of people called us and said, \u2018We\u2019re naming our children after you, because you helped us decide to save their lives with that song.\u2019 That was very fulfilling to us.\u201d<\/p>\n
By the early 1980s, soft-rock bands were out of fashion and Seals & Crofts had been dropped by its label, Warner Bros. They broke up for a time but continued to appear together at Baha\u2019i gatherings, while also recording on their own. Crofts released a solo album, \u201cToday,\u201d in 1998, and six years later reunited with Seals for \u201cTraces.\u201d More recently, their music was revived by Faragher and Seals\u2019 cousin Brady, who toured together as Seals & Crofts 2. (Jim Seals died in 2022).<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s not a time that we performed that we didn\u2019t have hundreds of people coming up and expressing their love and often saying the music changed their life,\u201d Faragher said. <\/p>\n
\u201cThere were so many people who loved them,\u201d she added. \u201cThey were a constant service to mankind.\u201d She said that her father\u2019s death, a few years after that of Seals, marked the end of an era.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s what makes it so painful \u2014 that it\u2019s the end,\u201d she said. \u201cBut the music will always, always live on.\u201d<\/p>\n
Long-awaited breakthrough <\/p>\n
Darrell George \u201cDash\u201d Crofts was born in Cisco, Texas, in 1938 and was singing and playing music from an early age, eventually learning piano, guitar, drums and mandolin. <\/p>\n
He met and befriended Seals when both were teenagers and in a local rockabilly band, the Crew Cats. By the end of the 1950s, they had moved to Los Angeles and joined The Champs, best known for the early rock hit \u201cTequila.\u201d Seals and Crofts would later briefly play in a band led by Glen Campbell, and join another California group, the Dawnbreakers, whose members included Crofts\u2019 future wife, Billie Lee Day. <\/p>\n
Although they performed on the same bill as Eric Clapton and Deep Purple among others, they were turned off by the volume and the lifestyle of hard-rock performers and honed a gentle sound. Seals & Crofts released their eponymous debut album in 1969, and soon followed with \u201cDown Home\u201d and \u201cYear of Sunday.\u201d <\/p>\n
Their commercial breakthrough came in 1972 with \u201cSummer Breeze,\u201d which featured a chorus that ranked with a contemporary hit, the Eagles\u2019 \u201cTake it Easy,\u201d as a definition of post-1960s escapism: \u201cSummer breeze makes me feel fine\/blowing through the jasmine of my mind.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThat was the beginning of bigger concerts, bigger crowds and we kept getting hits in the Top 40,\u201d Crofts told the podcast \u201cInside MusiCast\u201d in 2021. \u201cThat cemented us in the music business.\u201d<\/p>\n
Crofts is survived by his second wife, Louise Crofts; his children Lua, Faizi and Amelia; and eight grandchildren, Faragher said. His first marriage ended in divorce.<\/p>\n
\u2014-<\/p>\n
Noveck contributed from London.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NEW YORK (AP) \u2014 Singer-songwriter Darrell \u201cDash\u201d Crofts, who teamed with childhood friend Jim Seals for such 1970s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":547377,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[57],"tags":[1927,6778,236,7569,244035,88,10328,165888,244036,19015,244037,216,3509,1022,1059],"class_list":["post-547376","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-ap-top-news","tag-austin","tag-celebrities","tag-celebrity-deaths","tag-dash-crofts","tag-entertainment","tag-eric-clapton","tag-glen-campbell","tag-jim-seals","tag-johnny-carson","tag-louise-crofts","tag-music","tag-notable-deaths","tag-texas","tag-tx-state-wire"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/547376","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=547376"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/547376\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/547377"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=547376"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=547376"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=547376"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}