Song of the Day 8/27: Seals & Crofts, “Hummingbird”
Darrell “Dash” Crofts, half of the ’70s soft rock hitmakers Seals & Crofts, died Wednesday at 87 in a hospital in Texas.
Crofts and fellow Texan Jim Seals met as teenagers when they played together in a rockabilly band there before moving to California and joining the Champs in 1958, after that group had scored a No. 1 hit with the instrumental “Tequila.” They left in 1963 to join another Champs alumnus, Glen Campbell, in his band, but drifted apart after that group broke up.
They reunited as a duo in 1969 and scored their best-known hit, “Summer Breeze,” in 1972, kicking off a string of soft-rock hits that included “Diamond Girl” and “We May Never Pass This Way Again.” Seals sang lead; Crofts supplied the high harmonies.
“Hummingbird,” the follow-up single to “Summer Breeze,” made it to No. 20 in 1973. It’s not actually about the nectar-drinking bird but Baháʼu’lláh, the prophet of the Baháʼí faith, which both musicians had joined years earlier. They used to stay on stage after their concerts to answer questions about the religion, formed in 19th-century Iran. Their beliefs undermined their career when they released the anti-abortion song “Unborn Child” soon after the Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade decision. They broke up in 1980, though they played together occasionally through the years. Seals died in 2022.
Even during the singer-songwriter boom, they were scorned by critics like Robert Christgau, and “The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Rock” later called them “the super wimps of the seventies.” But they played with some of the top musicians of their day. In this live performance from Don Kirshner’s “Rock Concert” TV show, their backing band includes drummer Jeff Porcaro and keyboardist David Paich, both future members of Toto.
