Born October 17, 1941, in Sidney, Texas to oilman and musician Wayland Seals[1], Jim Seals was a fiddle champion in his youth and later took up the saxophone. Seals joined an outfit called Dean Beard and the Crew Cats, in which he played sax; later on, Dash Crofts joined Seals in the band.
With Beard, they moved to Los Angeles to join the Champs (“Tequila”). Seals also spent time during 1959 in the touring band of Eddie Cochran. Jim Seals’ song “It’s Never Too Late” was recorded by Brenda Lee in 1961.
RIP Jim Seals. So long pal, thanks for all the beautiful music. – Steve.
Steve Miller
By 1963, Seals, 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, California. After that ended Seals joined the Dawn-breakers and eventually Crofts would join also. In 1969, Seals and Crofts split out on their own. Their fourth album, “Summer Breeze” was their commercial breakthrough. The single “Summer Breeze” reached #4 on the adult contemporary chart.
I think our music is a combination of the Eastern part of the world and the Western. We’ve had people from Greece, Israel, England and France, China, everywhere, listen to our music and say, ‘Oh, it’s music from the old country.’ And it really seemed strange to us because we didn’t realize it ourselves until we started comparing our work with, for example, Persian music, which, when you listen to it, is really very close to ours. And we had no knowledge of this at all beforehand. So it’s just something that happened.
Jim Seals – 1971
Jim would write the lyrics for most of their songs while Crofts wrote the music. They recorded 11 studio albums from 1970 until 1980 and released about 15 singles. Jim also appeared in the 1978, “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” movie.
This is a hard one on so many levels as this is a musical era passing for me. And it will never pass this way again as his song said. He belonged to a group that was one of a kind. You and Dan finally get reunited again. Tell him and your sweet momma hi for me.
John Ford Coley – formed ’70s rock duo England Dan & John Ford Coley with Seals’ late older brother Dan
Jim had a stroke in 2017 and died at his home in Nashville, Tennessee, on June 6, 2022, after a long illness. He was 80 years old.
Footnotes
- Wayland Seals, an oil field pipefitter and musician, was born Eugene Wayland Seals on January 20, 1912, in Big Sandy, Benton County, Tennessee. Wayland eventually followed his father into the oil patch life. During World War II, he served as a warrant officer in the United States Army. Upon discharge, Seals headed to West Texas and settled near Iraan in Pecos County, where he took a job as a pipefitter for the Shell Oil Company in the prolific Yates Field. His day job in the oil field did not interfere with his own musical ambitions. He earned a reputation as a topnotch guitar picker, and he worked with Tex Collins and the Tom Cats, while also fronting the Oil Patch Boys and the Seals Family Band, which featured a four-year-old Danny on doghouse bass. Wayland also served as the opening act for nationally-known performers such as Ernest Tubb and Bob Wills when they toured the area.
Sources
Wikipedia
People
IMDB
Rolling Stone
