In the early 70s, nobody embodied the soft-rock boom in pop music more than Seals and musical partner Darrell “Dash” Crofts.
Seals did not travel the standard route to strumming troubadour. Born on Oct. 17, 1941, in Sidney, Texas, Seals was the son of Wayland Seals, a Texas oilman and part-time musician. He began playing fiddle at a young age, winning numerous fiddle contests but eventually moving over to saxophone. In a local band, the Crew Cats, he met Crofts, and the two later joined the Champs, known for their instrumental hit “Tequila.
For a short time, Seals and Crofts had their own band, the Dawnbreakers, but by 1969 had peeled off into a duo. Their first three albums were commercial duds, but the fourth,, finally caught on after a Northeast DJ took a chance on the title song.
Behind 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. “I think our music is a combination of the Eastern part of the world and the Western,” Seals said in 1971.
By the mid-Sixties, both men had also converted to the Baháʼí faith, a Persian-rooted religion that, Seals said in 1971, “claimed that all religions were looking for the return of a messiah or world redeemer, and that He was the One.” Seals’ song “Traces” told the story of ten Bahá’í women who were executed in Iran in the Eighties. But those same beliefs led to controversy with 1974’s “Unborn Child,” an anti-abortion song that was banned by some radio stations .
In 1976, Seals and Crofts rebounded by shifting to a plusher, pop-R&B sound for “Get Closer,” which helped usher in the yacht-rock era. But they were never able to successfully follow up that hit. Subsequent albums weren’t nearly as successful, and pop’s shift to disco and New Wave essentially doomed them. After one last album, 1980’sSeals and Crofts reunited in 2004 for a new album,, which included remakes of their classics.
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