Seals and Crofts - folk balladeers

Subject: Seals and Crofts - folk balladeers
From: Mrrzy
Date: 29 Jul 02 - 11:54 AM

So, are they folk singers? A lot of their music seems very ballad-like to me (the boy down the road, etc) - and why aren't they popular now? Where are they now? How old are they now? Which of their songs is your metaphor? (On the mondegreen side, Met A Girl In Leningrad I'd always heard as Met a girl in linen red...)

Subject: RE: Seals and Crofts - folk balladeers
From: Wesley S
Date: 29 Jul 02 - 01:45 PM

Mrrzy - I found a wbsite at www.sealsandcrofts.com. It looks like most of your questions could be answered there - except for "are they folk". You're on your own there. It looks like the guitar player { Seals } owns a coffee plantation in Costa Rice and the mandolin player { Crofts } has a new CD out.

Subject: RE: Seals and Crofts - folk balladeers
From: Mrrzy
Date: 29 Jul 02 - 02:30 PM

Thanks, Wes, how's life?

Subject: RE: Seals and Crofts - folk balladeers
From: Wesley S
Date: 29 Jul 02 - 04:04 PM

Not bad at all. My wife and I are living with a little 19 month old Jekel and Hyde creature thats independant one minute and clinging to Mommy the next. Otherwise he's a lot of fun. He likes to dance when I'm playing one of my instruments.

On the musical front I seem to be making some headway on the mandolin and I'm expecting a new guitar in a few weeks. Our group has a couple of interesting gigs lined up too.

Subject: RE: Seals and Crofts - folk balladeers
From: Gypsy
Date: 29 Jul 02 - 11:21 PM

they sure were great at what they did. Oh yeah, and Hummingbird would be the metaphor for me .

Subject: RE: Seals and Crofts - folk balladeers
From: Mrrzy
Date: 30 Jul 02 - 09:36 AM

The funny little man seems to be a perfect metaphor on the futility of religion in the face of reality... and the girl up the road one a perfect metaphor for the futility of humanity in the face of time... others?

Subject: RE: Seals and Crofts - folk balladeers
From: open mike
Date: 30 Jul 02 - 10:59 AM

These guys are members of the Bahai faith a religion emphasizing unity , and some of their songs are taken from the writings of Baha'uallah- such as {"make me as a hollow reed"} and others. this prophet is from what used to be persia, now Iran, and the tradition of Persion poetry is very colorful. "England Dan" is seal's brother, and Croft's mandolin was one of the first mandolins heard by many-including me--and i loved it so much i took up the; mandolin.

Subject: RE: Seals and Crofts - folk balladeers
From: keberoxu
Date: 12 Apr 22 - 08:34 PM

How's this for curious circumstances, Mrrzy.

This post will link to an interview which was conducted in 1992, but never before published -- before 2019, that is.

You posted the OP in 2002, ten years later, wanting info.
And thirty years after the interview was conducted,
here it is today.

I presume that the publicity photo of Seals & Crofts
dates from their touring and recording years,
so it is earlier than the interview.
What HAS Dash Crofts got around his neck??

Meanwhile:
did you know that, Mrrzy, about "Tequila" and The Champs?

PS. I saw Seals & Crofts on the Smothers Brothers television show
before they really hit the big-time, when they were still doing recordings on their own, before the Warner Brothers contract.
I grew up listening to the album Down Home (also before Warner Brothers)
and I love it to this day.

Subject: RE: Seals and Crofts - folk balladeers
From: keberoxu
Date: 12 Apr 22 - 09:07 PM

They are still alive, by the way.
Jim Seals had a stroke and can't play guitar, by one report.
Still married to Ruby Jean Anderson,
all their children make music.

Dash Crofts had at least one child with Billie Lee, his first wife.
Something happened to that marriage,
and his second marriage is to a woman named Louise;
the two live on a ranch in Texas, where they breed Arabian horses.

Both men are over eighty years of age now.

Subject: RE: Seals and Crofts - folk balladeers
From: GUEST,keberoxu
Date: 14 Apr 22 - 09:36 PM

Anybody else on these musicians and their songs?

I have a soft spot in my heart for
a weird little song called 'Purple Hand'
with cheerful upbeat music and mystical mysterious lyrics.
And the guitar-mandolin interplay is delightful.

Subject: RE: Seals and Crofts - folk balladeers
From: GUEST,Don Meixner
Date: 14 Apr 22 - 10:24 PM

One of my best remembered concerts from the 1970s was John Sebastian at Manly Fieldhouse at Syracuse University in 1 971. Seals and Crofts opened for him that night and did a wonderful show. A fine introduction to us all of a very band. I saw them a few more times before they disappeared from top 40 radio and what was considered Pop Music at the time.

Subject: RE: Seals and Crofts - folk balladeers
From: Mrrzy
Date: 15 Apr 22 - 02:02 AM

I deny all ken of tequila under any circumstances.

I opened this thread thinking Ooh, I like them. Totally forgot it was my thread!

Subject: RE: Seals and Crofts - folk balladeers
From: keberoxu
Date: 15 Apr 22 - 07:47 PM

No mention, in this intergenerational interview in recent years,
of the Baha'i faith, in which Seals & Crofts married and started their families.

It does jump forward in time from the music-making years.
By the time this interview came out,
Jim Seals had had his stroke and had somewhat recovered his health.
Some of his large extended family had moved to Tennessee,
the actual birthplace, I believe, of his own father
(Seals is a born and bred Texan).

Jim Seals as a proud grandfather