Both Jim and Dash had grown up in small towns in Texas, surrounded by what Jim called “hillbilly music.” Jimmy won the Texas state fiddle competition when he was nine years old, and could play just about anything. Dash had an ethereally beautiful voice. Multi-talented instrumentalists, songwriters, and singers, they played in various bands as teenagers, including one called Dean Beard and the Crewcats, and then, in the late 1950s and early 1960s, with the one-hit wonders The Champs, known for their instrumental hit
Tequila.
In 1963 another Champs band member, the then-unknown son of an Arkansas sharecropper named Glen Campbell, formed a band with Jim and Dash called Glen Campbell and the GCs. That group only lasted a few years until Glen, one of the legendary session players in the group of consummate hit-making L.A. back-up musicians known as the Wrecking Crew, went on to a successful solo career.
During the rest of the 1960s, Jim and Dash struggled. Dash went back to Texas, and Jimmy wrote songs. Eventually Jimmy joined a Baha’i-oriented L.A. band called The Dawnbreakers – after the famed book of the same name, a powerful rendition of the early days in Baha’i history – and Dash came back to California to play with them. During that period, both Jimmy and Dash became Baha’is...
Most of the solo artists and touring bands I met then lived the insane lives of rock stars, constantly indulging themselves in the well-known excesses of that time, some even contemptuous of their fans and convinced their fame made them better than others.
But Jimmy and Dash were different. Because of their commitment to Baha’i principles, Seals and Crofts acted in the exact opposite way. They loved humanity, and that love extended to each human being they encountered. Courteous and kind to their fans, they had none of the pretense of the typical celebrities. Jimmy and Dash felt they owed their success to Baha’u’llah’s teachings, so they held informal Baha’i firesides after their concerts, inviting everyone in the audience to attend and ask questions about the spiritual principles of the Baha’i Faith.
Jimmy never lost the humility and the desire to unite humanity that characterized his music. His presence generated love, not just among his family and his friends but among everyone he met...
I’ll miss you, Jimmy, but I know you’re now lifting up your voice in the limitless lights of that invisible realm.
The Life and Death of Jimmy Seals
In the 70's, there were two great teachers of the Baha'i Faith in America, I felt. The Baha'i Temple in Wilmette, and Seals and Crofts The American Baha'is owe a lot to Jim Seals and Dash Crofts.
