Into The Music
Dash Crofts, the guitarist and vocalist who formed one half of Seals and Crofts, died on March 26 at the age of 85. The California soft-rock duo were among the most commercially successful acts of the early 1970s, and Crofts was central to everything they built.
Seals and Crofts broke through in 1972 with “Summer Breeze,” a song that became so culturally embedded it has never really left. The track’s combination of folk guitar, warm harmonies, and that instantly recognizable opening riff made it a defining sound of its era. They followed it with “Diamond Girl” in 1973, and by the mid-70s they were selling out arenas and racking up platinum records at a pace most acts would envy.
What set Crofts apart as a musician was his command of multiple instruments. He played mandolin, violin, guitar, and percussion, and that range gave Seals and Crofts a texture that went beyond the typical soft-rock formula of the time. The duo were also Baha’i, a faith they spoke about openly and that shaped some of their music, most notably the 1973 single “We May Never Pass This Way (Again).”
Jim Seals, Crofts’ bandmate and the other half of the duo, died in 2022. With Crofts gone now too, the chapter is fully closed. But the catalog they left behind holds up in ways that sometimes surprise people who come to it fresh. “Summer Breeze” works because the songwriting is genuinely good, not because of nostalgia or era-specific goodwill. That is not a small thing.
Before Seals and Crofts, Crofts had worked in session music and played with the Champs, the group behind “Tequila.” He and Seals had actually known each other since childhood, growing up in Texas, which perhaps explains the musical ease between them. There is something in the looseness of their playing together that sounds like two people who never had to prove anything to each other.
Crofts is survived by his wife, Billie Lee Crofts, and their children. No cause of death was given.
The music world has lost a lot of its 1970s architects in recent years. Each one takes something irreplaceable with them, not just a voice or a guitar part, but an entire sensibility about what popular music could be.
“Summer Breeze” just immediately started playing in my head reading this. I have to be honest, it’s not music that usually makes me want to move , it’s so gentle! , but there’s something about that melody that just gets into you and stays there. Soft rock gets underestimated as a genre. Rest well to him, what a run he had.