October 17: Jim Seals of '60s Duo Seals and Crofts is 70-years-old today.

Seals and Crofts is a band made up of Jim Seals -  born James Seals, October 17, 1941, in Sidney, Texas - and Dash Crofts from Cisco, Texas.

The soft rock duo was one of the most successful musical acts of the 1970s. They are best-known for their hits "Summer Breeze" and "Diamond Girl." Jim played guitar, sax and fiddle with the duo.

Seals joined a band called Dean Beard and the Crew Cuts where he played guitar; later on Crofts joined the band. With Beard, they moved to Los Angeles to join The Champs. In 1963, Jimmy Seals, Dash Crofts, Glen Campbell, and Jerry Cole left The Champs to form a band named "Glen Campbell and the GCs" which played at The Crossbow in Van Nuys, CA. The band only lasted a couple of years before the members went their separate ways. Crofts returned to Texas and Seals joined a band named The Dawnbreakers (a reference to a book about the beginnings of the Baha'i Faith by the same name.)

 

(Press album cover for direct link to the entire Amazon Website):

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Crofts eventually returned to California to join The Dawnbreakers. After the failure of that group, the two decided to play as a duo, with Seals on guitar, saxophone and violin, and Crofts on guitar and mandolin. Their first album with Warner Brothers was unsuccessful, but their second album, Summer Breeze charted at #7 in 1972. The record of the same name sold over one million copies, and was awarded a gold disc by the R.I.A.A. in December 1972.

After a long and successful run of recordings in the 1970s,the duo disbanded in 1980, to focus on other things.  Both of them went on to become public advocates of the Bahá'í Faith. They reunited briefly from 1991–1992 and again in 2004, when they released their final album, Traces.

Seals moved to Costa Rica and has lived on a coffee farm off and on since 1980.

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