Jim Seals

James Eugene Seals (October 17, 1942 – June 6, 2022) was an American folk musician. He was one half of the folk duo Seals & Crofts with Dash Crofts and was the older brother of Danny "England Dan" Seals.

Seals was a multi-instrumentalist, playing the fiddle as a child before playing saxophone in bands throughout his teenage years, where he eventually met Dash Crofts, then a drummer. The two formed soft rock duo Seals & Crofts, in which both members sang and played the guitar and mandolin among other instruments; they would go on to record hits such as "Summer Breeze" and "Diamond Girl". Seals died in 2022.

Seals was born to pipefitter Wayland Seals and Susan Taylor Seals in Sidney, Texas. He grew up in Iraan, Texas. Seals recalled that he grew up surrounded by oil rigs and smoke covered the air. "The stench was so bad, you couldn't breathe." Jim's older brother, Eddie, was born in 1937 to Wayland and his former partner Clodell, who died in 1940. His father played guitar and he encouraged Jim to play the guitar. When Jim showed interest in a traveling fiddler soon after, at age 5 or 6, Wayland bought him his first fiddle to learn to play on.

Seals quickly learned to play the fiddle. In 1952, when he was about ten years old, he entered a west Texas contest and won the fiddle division. His younger brother Dan played stand-up bass. Their father entered, and won, the guitar category.

He also learned how to play the saxophone and formed The Seals Family Band with Dan. In high school he played the sax in Dean Beard & the Crew Cats where he met Darrell "Dash" Crofts who joined the band on drums. After graduating, they moved to California and joined The Champs who had just released the song "Tequila" in 1958. The two remained in the band until its disbanding in 1965. The two then worked in The Dawnbreakers with The Champs' Glen Campbell. From 1958 to 1965, Seals released five singles as "Jimmy Seals"; his first single in 1958 was released under "Jimmy Seals And His Sax".

Biography summary from English Wikipedia, photograph via Wikimedia Commons.