His 'Summer Breeze' Made Us Feel Fine

Singer-songwriter Darrell "Dash" Crofts, who teamed with childhood friend Jim Seals for such 1970s soft-rock hits as "Summer Breeze," "Diamond Girl," and "Get Closer," has died. He was 87. Crofts died Wednesday of heart failure at the Heart Hospital of Austin, in Austin, Texas, said his daughter, Lua Crofts Faragher. She noted that her father had been suffering heart issues for several years and had been hospitalized for about a month. Seals and Crofts were native Texans who'd 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 hit soft-rock (or "easy listening") bands that included America, Bread, and Loggins and Messina.

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. He met and befriended Seals when both were teens and in a local rockabilly band, the Crew Cats. By the end of the 1950s, they'd moved to Los Angeles and joined the Champs, best known for the early rock hit "Tequila." Seals and Crofts would later briefly play in a band led by Glen Campbell, as well as join another California group, the Dawnbreakers, whose members included Crofts' future wife, Billie Lee Day. Although they performed on the same bill as Eric Clapton and Deep Purple, among others, they were turned off by the volume and lifestyle of hard-rock performers and honed a gentler sound. Seals & Crofts released their eponymous debut album in 1969, following that with Down Home and Year of Sunday.

Their commercial breakthrough, 1972's "Summer Breeze," as well as "Diamond Girl" and "Get Closer," all reached the Top 10, while other popular singles included "I'll Play for You," "Hummingbird," and "We May Never Pass This Way (Again)." "Summer Breeze" "was the beginning of bigger concerts, bigger crowds, and we kept getting hits in the Top 40," Crofts said on a 2021 podcast. "That cemented us in the music business." Like many bands of the era, Seals & Crofts sang of love, peace, music, and the natural world, though their inspirations were rooted less in the counterculture than in the Baha'i faith, a monotheistic religion advocating global unity that they both embraced in the 1960s. "It became a driving force in their careers and the way they lived their lives," Faragher said.

By the early '80s, 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'i gatherings, while also recording on their own. Crofts released a solo album, Today, in 1998, then reunited six years later with Seals for Traces. More recently, their music was revived by Faragher and Seals' cousin Brady, who toured together as Seals & Crofts 2 (Jim Seals died in 2022). Faragher said that her father's death, a few years after that of Seals, marked the end of an era. "That's what makes it so painful—that it's the end," she said. "But the music will always, always live on." 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. More here.