One half of soft-rock duo Seals & Crofts
‘‘It was the only thing I’d heard that made sense to me, so I responded to it.’’
Seals on Baha’i faith
Jim Seals singer and songwriter b October 17, 1942 d June 6, 2022
One mellow summer afternoon in Woodstock in 1970, Jim Seals was taking a break from recording with his partner Dash Crofts when a gentle zephyr blew through the window, ruffling the curtains with its warm current of air.
It set in train a series of images, some drawn from his childhood – a newspaper on the sidewalk, music coming from a neighbouring house, a man getting home from work to enjoy supper with his family, followed by the chorus: ‘‘Summer breeze, makes me feel fine/Blowin’ through the jasmine in my mind.’’
Music and words seemed to come together so effortlessly that Seals later said it felt as if the song was writing itself.
It took another two years for the duo to record a version with which they were satisfied, but when they did it became the title track of Seals & Crofts’ 1972 album Summer Breeze. It was their fourth album and none of its predecessors had charted, but the song became a hit single and the album sold two million copies in the US.
Summer Breeze turned them from a warm-up act into bona fide headliners and further hits followed in a similarly gentle style. Their next album, Diamond Girl (1973), sold half a million copies and Seals, with his long hair and goatee, and Crofts, with his beaming and benign hippy demeanour, came to personify the sound of smooth, radio-friendly 1970s soft rock.
With success came some brickbats. Robert Christgau of The Village Voice, widely regarded as the doyen of American rock critics, called the duo ‘‘folk-schlock’’. Others criticised them as bland superspreaders of a plague of mellowness.
Certainly their placid style, lush harmonies and sweet songs were a long way from the heavy rock of Led Zeppelin or the doom-metal of Black Sabbath, with whom they once refused to tour.
Yet it was a deliberate decision and to anyone who asked ‘‘where’s the beef?’’, Seals responded that in a chaotic 1970s world reeling from the Vietnam War, student protests and race riots, the duo’s music was intended to soothe in troubled times.
The music also reflected the duo’s Baha’i faith, a Persian-rooted religion that holds all races, creeds and religions to be of equal worth. They became adherents in the late 1960s and a number of their songs include references to Baha’i scripture. ‘‘It was the only thing I’d heard that made sense to me, so I responded to it,’’ Seals said. ‘‘That began to spawn some ideas to write songs that might help people to understand.’’ Baha’i literature was passed out at their concerts and they plugged their faith earnestly in interviews and on stage.
Seals saw the Baha’i message as one of peace and harmony, although ultimately it led to division and controversy over their 1974 anti-abortion song Unborn Child. Released in the aftermath of the landmark Roe v Wade ruling by the US Supreme Court enshrining a woman’s right to choose, the duo’s record label Warner Brothers disowned the song, which was banned by some radio
stations, and their concerts were picketed.
The Baha’i faith professed that life began at the moment of conception, Seals explained. ‘‘The song was really just asking a question: what about the child?’’ he told the Los Angeles Times years later. ‘‘On one hand we had people sending us thousands of roses, but on the other people were literally throwing rocks at us. If we’d known it was going to cause such disunity, we might have thought twice about doing it.’’
They reigned in the charts throughout the 1970s, but by the end of the decade tastes were changing and when they were dropped by their record company in 1980, Seals & Crofts called it a day.
‘‘We were still drawing 10,000 to 12,000 people at concerts,’’ Seals said. ‘‘But we could see, with this change coming where everybody wanted dance music, that those days were numbered. We decided that it was a good time, after a long run at it, to lie back. We were like fish out of water.’’
The duo reunited briefly in 1990 and again in 2004, when they released their first album together in 24 years. Seals also toured as Seals & Seals with his brother Dan, who had scored hits in the 1970s as one-half of England Dan & John Ford Coley, until his sibling’s death in 2009.
After his chart success with Seals & Crofts, much of his time was spent in Costa Rica where he owned a coffee farm. He also kept a home in Nashville.
He is survived by his wife of 52 years, Ruby Jean,, two sons, and daughter Juliette, who at one time played in a group called the Humming Birds with Crofts’ daughter Amelia.
James Eugene Seals was born in 1942 in Sidney, Texas, into a musical family. His grandparents played fiddle and banjo and his father, Wayland, worked in the oil fields by day but played guitar in an amateur band and wrote songs by night. His mother, Susan, played the dobro and family jam sessions took place on the back porch.
When Seals was 6 his father ordered him a fiddle from a Sears catalogue. When he was 10 he won a West Texas fiddling contest while his father won in the guitar category at the same jamboree. Soon father and son were playing at ranch parties and barbecues as a duo.
Inspired by the emerging sound of rock’n’roll, in his mid-teens he switched to the saxophone, which he played in a local rockabilly band called the Crew Cats. He met Crofts, the son of a Texan cattle rancher, when he sat in for the group’s absent drummer.
The two found an instant rapport and in 1959 joined The Champs, who had just had a No 1 hit with Tequila. They moved to Los Angeles, where they also wrote songs for other artists, including Brenda Lee and Ricky Nelson, and backed Glenn Campbell.
By 1965 they had started their own band, the Dawnbreakers. It was the group’s manager, Marcia Day, who introduced them to the Baha’i faith.
Success proved more elusive and with the band getting nowhere, in 1969 they decided to emulate Simon & Garfunkel and become an acoustic folk troubadour duo. It took another three years before Summer Breeze elevated them to stadium fillers.
Seals later recalled the moment they realised the song had changed their lives when they arrived for a show in Ohio. ‘‘There were kids waiting for us at the airport and that night we had a record crowd,’’ he said. ‘‘I remember people throwing their hats and coats in the air as far as you could see, against the Moon. Prettiest thing you’ve ever seen.’’
Times
The history of holidays and recreational activities is particularly visible in those parts of the country that have long been tourist magnets. While driving through a tourist destination can acquaint one with the ‘headline’ attraction, whether flyfishing in the Tongariro River or hot pools in the case of Turangi and Tokaanu respectively, you have to get out of the car to gain a richer appreciation of the scenery and heritage of a place.
With that in mind, a recent drive along Wharf Rd at Tokaanu unsurprisingly took us to the historic Tokaanu Wharf.
With the beauty of Lake Taupo laid out before us, the wharf became a terrific viewing platform as well as an interesting landscape feature in its own right. The heritage structure allows you to walk almost 200 metres from the shoreline and on a late winter afternoon the peace and stillness of the scene was only broken by the screech of birds settling for the night in the nearby rushes.
At the foot of the wharf, which is probably more accurately described as a pier, is a signboard that provides some history of the structure and its modern restoration.
At a time when Tokaanu was the principal settlement at the southern end of Lake Taupo, the wharf was built to facilitate visitor travel, as well as postal services, between Taupo and Tokaanu.
While the sign suggests that the wharf was ‘probably built in the late 1870s or early 1880s’, historic newspapers and parliamentary journals available on PapersPast indicate that it is more likely to have been built in the spring of 1899.
Efforts to have a wharf built had been part of a development programme championed by ‘the leading chiefs of Tokaanu’ to the colonial government in 1894 (Wanganui Herald July 16, 1894, P2). Subsequently it appears that the tourism prospects of the district were the catalyst for developing much-needed local infrastructure – sound familiar?
The SS Tongariro began running between Taupo and Tokaanu in midNovember 1899 and, after an initial length of just 10 feet [three metres] had been built, the pier was extended in late 1902.
The steamer departed Taupo on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays and made the return, two hour and twentyminute trip on the following day; services were reduced to twice a week during the winter.
News reports that include a mention of the wharf often involved notable personages.
In February 1911, for example, Prince Leopold of Battenberg alighted on the wharf after sailing from Taupo in the company of Sir James and Lady Mills. On board the steamer, the prince was reportedly gifted a ‘greenstone trophy’ by Kahotea Te Heuheu.
A month later Lord Islington, the Governor of New Zealand, travelled by car and steamer from Rotorua to Tokaanu to go fishing on the Tongariro; the journey had taken seven and a half hours.
The wharf continued to serve its recreational purpose for many years after it ceased to be used for regular steamer services in 1925. During his visit to New Zealand in the summer of 1934-35, Prince Henry, the Duke of Gloucester, travelled from his accommodation at the Chateau Tongariro to Tokaanu to set out on lake fishing trips from the wharf. I would have to be a lot more interested in the sport to go to the trouble of finding out how many fish were caught!
Restored in 2003 by the Department of Conservation in partnership with the Department of Internal Affairs and the Tongariro Natural History Society, the wharf retains much of its historic fabric. As well as being a notable heritage structure, the wharf is a highly picturesque landmark that rewards the curious traveller willing to turn down a side road to see where it leads.
At a time when Tokaanu was the principal settlement at the southern end of Lake Taupo, the wharf was built to facilitate visitor travel, as well as postal services, between Taupo and Tokaanu.