- Included among the Record Descriptions of Favorite Albums (Part 1).
- Seals and Crofts was one of the most successful soft rock duos of the 1970’s, with hits that include “Summer Breeze”, “Diamond Girl”, and “Get Closer”.
Seals and Crofts – Unborn Child (1973): Seals and Crofts – Jim Seals and Dash Crofts – was one of the most successful soft rock duos of the 1970’s, with hit songs that include “Summer Breeze”, “Diamond Girl”, “We May Never Pass This Way (Again)”, and “Get Closer”. Jim Seals comes from a musical family; his brother Dan Seals was part of a similar soft rock duo England Dan and John Ford Coley, and he later had a lucrative career in country music in the latter half of the 1980’s. It is fair to say that this is not the type of music that I normally buy, but I enjoy hearing soft rock when it is as well done as this. In the early 1970’s, the first of the Darryl’s restaurants, called Darryl’s 1906, opened on Hillsborough Street in Raleigh near the North Carolina State University campus.
Taking a cue from their street address at 1906 Hillsborough Street, Darryl’s had an old-timey, laid-back atmosphere and was furnished with displayed antiques and curios, and Tiffany-style lamps at many of the tables. Describing themselves as the first casual dining restaurant, the Darryl’s menu featured beer, pizza, burgers, and several interesting sandwiches, with the steak and cheese sandwich and the meatball submarine being regular orders of mine. Being around the corner from our apartment, we ate there all the time; and their jukebox played this kind of music a lot, with “Summer Breeze” and “Diamond Girl” becoming favorite songs of mine in that time period. The Darryl’s chain eventually grew to a dozen restaurants in four states, though evidently the Darryl’s in Greensboro is the only one that remains. I have such fond memories of Darryl’s – and also of the nearby Players Retreat that had the best bar food I have ever tasted – not least because of the music of Seals and Crofts and others that was always playing in the background. For decades, Unborn Child was my only Seals and Crofts album; I found Summer Breeze more recently, though it hasn’t yet surfaced to be cleaned. The title song “Unborn Child” was highly controversial and did not perform well on the charts, nor did the album’s other single “King of Nothing”; however, Unborn Child is a Gold album that reached #14 on the Billboard album chart and #18 in Canada. “Unborn Child” is written from the standpoint of a fetus in the womb; both Jim Seals and Dash Crofts were and remain adherents of the Baháʼí Faith that opposes abortion, and they didn’t care whether or not the album or song made money. They also insisted that the song’s message was more universally that one should not take life too lightly, and should consider its value before carrying out the procedure of abortion. From Wikipedia: “For this record, Seals and Crofts won the ‘Keep Her in Her Place’ award from the National Organization for Women (tying with Paul Anka for his recording of ‘(You’re) Having My Baby’) during ‘its annual putdown of male chauvinism’ in the media on Women’s Equality Day.” Then and now, Unborn Child is blamed for derailing the career of Seals and Crofts; while their profile was certainly lower, Seals and Crofts remained quite successful for several more years. Their follow-up studio album I’ll Play for You (1975) was also a Gold album and included a #18 single “I’ll Play for You”; and the title song of their next album Get Closer, “Get Closer” (not the same song as the Linda Ronstadt hit “Get Closer”) performed even better, reaching #6 on the Billboard Hot 100 and #2 on the Easy Listening chart. Their album Greatest Hits (1975) was a multi-Platinum record that reached #11 on the album chart. The Seals and Crofts song “First Years” was the theme song for the debut season (1978–1979) of the television show The Paper Chase; and they recorded songs for two major motion pictures in the same time period, One on One (1977) and Foolin’ Around (1980). In 2004, Seals and Crofts recorded their first new album since 1980, Traces.