Darrell “Dash” Crofts, the singer-songwriter who teamed up with his childhood friend Jim Shields to write such 1970s soft rock hits as “Summer Breeze,” “Diamond Girl” and “Get Closer,” has died. He was 87 years old.
Crofts died Wednesday of heart failure at Austin Heart Hospital in Austin, Texas, said his daughter Lua Crofts Faragher. According to her, her father had been suffering from heart disease for several years and had been hospitalized for about a month.
Shields and Crofts, both native Texans, have known each other since high school and played together in various groups before forming the duo “Seals and Crofts” in the late 1960s. Blending pop, country, folk and jazz, they were part of a wave of million-selling soft rock (or “easy listening”) bands that included America, Bread and Loggins, and Messina.
“Summer Breeze,” “Diamond Girl” and “Get Closer” all reached the Top 10, while other popular singles included “I’ll Play for You,” “Hummingbird” and “We May Never Pass This Way (Again).” The latter’s wide-eyed emotion made it a high school yearbook favorite.
“Life / So they say / It’s just a game and they’ll miss it / Love / Like the autumn sun / Should die / But it’s only just begun.”
It’s not always easy to hear
Like many bands of the time, Shields & Crofts sang about love, peace, music, and the natural world. However, its inspiration was rooted less in the counterculture than in the Baha’i Faith, a monotheistic religion advocating world unity that both sides embraced in the 1960s.
“It became the driving force behind their careers and how they lived their lives,” Faragher said.
They incorporated Baha’i themes into their music, with “Hummingbird” being a metaphor for the Baha’i prophet Baha’u’llah, distributing literature after shows and sometimes preaching from the stage, such as during their performance of “Tonight” with Johnny Carson.
“At first we start writing songs with very simple lyrics like, ‘The leaves are green, the sky is blue, I love you, and you love me,’ but they grow into a much broader consciousness about life, love, and unity,” Crofts told Stereo Review in 1971.
One of the Baha’i tenets, that the soul begins with the formation of the fetus, has caused controversy. In 1974, a year after the Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade decision upheld the right to abortion, Shields & Crofts released the ballad “Unborn Child,” the title track of their new album.
The song was inspired by a recording engineer’s wife who saw a television documentary about abortion and wrote poems like, “Oh, little bud, growing in my womb, only to be crushed before it blooms.” Although many radio stations refused to play “Unborn Child” and protesters picketed Shields & Crofts, the album was certified gold for sales of 500,000 copies.
“I think we had more good than bad,” Crofts later told the St. Petersburg Press. “Because so many people called us and said, ‘We decided to name our kids after you because you helped us decide to save their lives with that song.'” That was very fulfilling for us. ”
By the early 1980s, soft rock bands were out of fashion, and Shields and Crofts were dropped from their Warner Brothers label. Although they briefly disbanded, they continued to perform together at Baha’i gatherings, as well as record their own recordings. Crofts released a solo album, Today, in 1998 and reunited with Shields six years later for Trace. Most recently, their music was revived by Faragher and Shields’ cousin Brady, who toured together as Shields & Crofts 2 (Jim Shields died in 2022).
“There has never been a time when we played and hundreds of people didn’t come and express their love and tell us the music changed their lives,” Faragher said.
“There were a lot of people who loved them,” she added. “They were a constant service to humanity.” Her father’s death a few years after Seal’s death marked the end of an era, she said.
“That’s what hurts so much. It’s over,” she said. “But music will always live on.”
Long-awaited breakthrough
Darrell George “Dash” Crofts was born in Cisco, Texas in 1938 and began singing and playing music from an early age, eventually learning piano, guitar, drums, and mandolin.
He met Shields when they were both teenagers in a local rockabilly band, the Crew Cats, and they became friends. By the end of the 1950s, they had moved to Los Angeles and joined The Champs, best known for their early rock hit “Tequila.” Shields and Crofts later played briefly with Glen Campbell’s band and joined another California group, the Dawnbreakers, whose members also included Crofts’ future wife, Billie Lee Day.
They shared the same performances as Eric Clapton and Deep Purple, but were turned off by the loudness and lifestyle of hard rock performers and honed in on a gentler sound. Shields & Crofts released their eponymous debut album in 1969 and quickly followed up with Down Home and Year of Sunday.
Their commercial breakthrough came in 1972 with “Summer Breeze.” The song featured a chorus that rivaled the Eagles’ “Take It Easy,” a contemporary hit that defined escapism from the 1960s onwards. “The summer breeze makes me feel good / It blows away the jasmine in my heart.”
“That was the start of bigger concerts, bigger crowds, and we continued to have Top 40 hits. That solidified our position in the music business,” Crofts said on the Inside MusiCast podcast in 2021.
Mr. Crofts is survived by his second wife, Louise Crofts. his children, Lua, Faizi and Amelia; and eight grandchildren, Faragher said. His first marriage ended in divorce.
