The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #79207   Message #4144699
Posted By: keberoxu
17-Jun-22 - 09:12 PM
Thread Name: Lyr Req: Ruby Jean and Billie Lee (Seals & Crofts)
Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Ruby Jean and Billie Lee (Seals & Crofts)
If you know your Seals & Crofts fan info about their careers,
then you know of someone who is not named in this song.

She is Marcia Day,
who died a few years back
(Jim Seals only died this month, in 2022).

Marcia Day was a music agent, an enthusiastic adherent to the Baha'i cause,
and the mother of Billie Lee Day along with four other daughters.
Marcia sort of swept Seals & Crofts up off the sidewalk when
the two of them were going through a starving-musician stage.
She became their manager, staying with them through to their eventual success.
And she is the reason that Seals & Crofts became Baha'is.

Billie Lee Day and Dash Crofts had two daughters,
first Lua (referenced in the song), then Amelia.
I don't know under what conditions the marriage ended.
The two daughters are grown with children of their own now,
and they both sing.
Dash Crofts has remarried in the last twenty years or less.

Which brings us to Jim "Jimmy" Seals.
Ruby Jean Anderson, of African-American origin, was an aspiring model,
and Marcia Day took Ruby Jean under her wing.
It was at Marcia's house that Jim Seals met Ruby Jean.
He had a challenge when he asked his father for permission to enter
into an interracial marriage, to which his father objected at first.
Seals was in love, though, and in time his persuasion won over his father.
The happy couple had two sons and a daughter,
largely raised on a coffee plantation in Costa Rica.
Now Ruby Jean, newly widowed, is a grandmother.

Oh, before I forget:
Lana Day and Donadell "Donnie" Day Feingold
were also Marcia Day's daughters,
have now in this post named three out of five daughters/sisters.

And the marriages of these two latter sisters
were also within the Seals & Crofts career orbit:
engineer Joey Bogan married Lana Day,
musician/producer Louie Sheldon married Donnie.
These two professionals remained close to Seals & Crofts for years.