Dash Crofts, 'summer Breeze' Hitmaker With Seals & Crofts, Dies At 87

Dash Crofts, who arsenic half of nan duo Seals & Crofts scored a drawstring of easygoing Top 10 hits successful nan 1970s — including “Summer Breeze,” “Diamond Girl” and “Get Closer” — died Wednesday successful a infirmary successful Austin, Texas. He was 87.

His girl Lua Crofts Faragher told nan New York Times nan origin of decease was bosom failure.

With his partner Jim Seals (who died successful 2022), Crofts helped specify nan era’s soft-rock sound, layering lush harmony vocals complete strummy guitars and soulful, lightly jazzy grooves; nan style, which emerged successful nan aftermath of nan taste and governmental turmoil of nan precocious ’60s, offered comforting thoughts of romance and relationship and made stars of different acts specified arsenic America, Bread and James Taylor. Years aft their heyday, Seals & Crofts would beryllium regarded arsenic purveyors of what came to beryllium known arsenic yacht rock.

Jim Seals, left, pinch Dudley Moore and Dash Crofts successful Los Angeles successful 1980.

(Ron Galella / Ron Galella Collection / Getty Images)

The duo’s biggest deed was 1972’s “Summer Breeze,” which described a serene Friday nighttime astatine home:

See nan grin awaiting successful nan kitchen

Food cooking and nan plates for two

Feel nan arms that scope retired to clasp me

In nan evening, erstwhile nan time is through

With its image of a gentle breeze “blowing done nan jasmine successful my mind,” nan song, which was nominated for a Grammy Award, reached No. 6 connected Billboard’s Hot 100 and drove nan band’s medium by nan aforesaid sanction to double-platinum sales; connected Spotify, “Summer Breeze” — later featured successful movies and TV shows including “Dazed and Confused” and “Freaks and Geeks” — has been streamed much than 320 cardinal times. In 1973, nan Isley Brothers remade nan opus connected their “3 + 3” LP; 2 decades aft that, nan gothic metallic set Type O Negative recorded a sludgy, slowed-down rendition.

Darrell George Crofts was calved Aug. 14, 1938, successful Cisco, Texas, wherever his begetter was a cattle rancher. (His mother gave him nan nickname Dash and gave his copy sister, Dorothy, nan nickname Dot.) After gathering arsenic teenagers, he and Seals moved to California together successful nan precocious ’50s to prosecute euphony and soon joined nan Champs, who’d conscionable topped nan Hot 100 pinch nan mostly instrumental deed “Tequila.”

Seals and Crofts played pinch nan Champs — Glen Campbell was different personnel of nan group — until nan mid-’60s; they released their first medium arsenic Seals & Crofts successful 1969, by which clip they’d go progressive successful nan Baha’i faith.

In 1974, connected nan heels of nan Supreme Court’s Roe vs. Wade decision, nan duo released “Unborn Child,” an antiabortion opus that drew wide condemnation. Seals said successful an question and reply pinch The Times successful 1991 that “Unborn Child” was “really conscionable asking a question: What astir nan child? We were trying to say, ‘This is an important issue,’ that life is precious and that we don’t cognize capable astir these things yet to make a judgment.” He added that if he and Crofts had known nan opus “was going to origin specified disunity, we mightiness person thought doubly astir doing it.”

Seals & Crofts collapsed up astir 1980 but later reunited to execute connected nan road; they put retired an medium called “Traces” successful 2004. In summation to his girl Lua, Crofts’ survivors see his wife, Louise; different daughter, Amelia Crofts Starkweather; and a son, Faizi.