Darrell “Dash” Crofts, half of the soft-rock duo Seals & Crofts, died on Wednesday following complications from heart surgery. He was 85.
The duo’s producer, Louie Shelton, a longtime session guitarist and member of the Wrecking Crew, confirmed Crofts’ death in a post on Facebook. “Sad to hear our dear brother and partner in music has passed away today,” he wrote. “Sending love and prayers to all his family and many fans.”
“With sorrow and gratitude, we mourn a man whose loving-kindness, remarkable compassion, beautiful and tender voice has uplifted so many hearts across the globe,” a family statement read (via USA Today). “We extend our gratitude and appreciation for the outpouring of love and support that we have received from around the world, and we celebrate and honor his legacy of service to mankind.”
Originally a drummer, Crofts shifted to mandolin to form Seals & Crofts in 1969, alongside musical partner Jim Seals. With their blissful harmonies and flowery, mystical lyrics, the Texas duo embodied soft rock, ushering in the genre at the dawn of the Seventies with a gentle nudge and a tip of Seals’ signature newsboy cap.
Though “Summer Breeze” wasn’t a Number One hit — it peaked at six on the Billboard Hot 100 — it was covered by the Isley Brothers, Type O Negative, and others, and featured across TV and film, from Dazed and Confused to How I Met Your Mother. The group’s 1975 Greatest Hits compilation, which contained gems like “Diamond Girl” and “We May Never Pass This Way (Again),” sold over 2 million copies upon its release in 1975. It was reissued for its 50th anniversary last year, for a special Record Store Day release.
Darrell “Dash” Crofts was born in Cisco, Texas on August 14, 1940, alongside his twin sister, Dorothy. As noted in Goldmine in 1992, the nickname “Dash” stems from his mother, who entered the twins in a beauty contest when they were babies, under the names Dot and Dash. Crofts played baseball and took piano lessons at five years old before pivoting to drums. He was two years older than Seals, who grew up an hour south in Sidney, Texas. They met while they were both in the local band the Crew Cats, and later joined the Champs, moving to California.
The Champs scored a hit in 1958 with the instrumental “Tequila,” and despite Seals and Crofts not playing on the track, it changed their lives. “The song took off and scared the shit out of all of us,” Crofts told Rolling Stone in 1971. “We were literally stars overnight. In one sense, I guess it was a fantastic experience. We were awfully young, the whole rock scene was really innocent, we met a lot of different people and went to a lot of places. But God, it was a hard life. Hard in every way. We were constantly on the road in a bus.”
Seals and Crofts peeled off and briefly joined the Dawnbreakers, a Vegas-style lounge act, before becoming a duo in 1969. They released their self-titled debut that year, followed by two other albums (1970’s Down Home and 1971’s Year of Sunday) that failed to make an impact. But 1972’s Summer Breeze, which opened with the breezy “Hummingbird,” changed everything. By then, Crofts had traded in the drums for the mandolin, and they rode the wave of soft-rock, releasing Diamond Girl a year later.
Seals & Crofts’ manager, Marsha Day, introduced them to the Baháʼí faith, which they converted to in the mid-Sixties. In interviews and onstage, they often spoke about the Middle Eastern religion, founded by the nineteenth-century Persian prophet Baháʼu’lláh. “The more your financial thing goes up, the more test it is to be mature with what you’re doing,” Crofts told Rolling Stone in 1973. “If a guy doesn’t really care, if he’s not concerned about the important things, then it doesn’t matter.” When writer Steve Moore asked Crofts what’s important to them, he answered, “Unity. Unification of the planet. That’s the only goal I see in mind.”
That desire for unity came to a halt in 1974, when Seals & Crofts released the highly controversial, pro-life song “Unborn Child,” off their album of the same name. “The Baháʼí faith professes that life begins at the moment of conception,” Crofts said in 1975, “and it was written to the mother and the baby, not to take this life so lightly.” Rolling Stone criticized the album’s “dumb” lyrics and “cornball narration” of the opening song “Wildflowers,” and the title track was banned from several radio stations.
Though the duo were able to somewhat bounce back with 1976’s yacht-rock treasure Get Closer, they were never able to achieve the same success as their “Summer Breeze” days. Following the release of 1980’s fittingly titled The Longest Road, they were dropped by Warner Bros, and didn’t release a new album until 2004, when they reunited for Traces. Seals suffered a stroke in 2017, and died five years later; his wife, Ruby Jean Seals cited “an unspecific ongoing chronic illness” as the cause.
