April 4, 2020

"The incredible true story of two brothers raised on the hardscrabble country music of rural West Texas who dropped out, tuned in, found God, and helped launch the seventies soft-rock revolution."

I am not a soft-rock fan, and I've even gone out of my way to scoff at "Summer Breeze," but I loved this Texas Monthly article "The Secret Oil Patch Roots of ‘Summer Breeze.'"

Excerpt:
When Jim [Seals] was four, the family moved to Iraan, a recently founded boomtown. [The father] Wayland worked for Shell—first as a roustabout, digging ditches, and then as a pipeliner—and he and his family lived in a modest company house surrounded by derricks that stood like trees in a forest...

Wayland was an old-fashioned man, proud of his ability to do physical labor. He loved going to work, and he loved coming home at the end of the day and pulling out his guitar, playing country and western songs he heard on the radio and songs he had written. Sometimes he hosted casual jam sessions and sing-alongs in his living room. Neighbors would stop by, bringing dinner and cakes, and everyone... would sing, sometimes long after dark.

Jim, a shy, sensitive boy, was five or six when a fiddler named Elmer Abernathy visited the Seals home. The boy was mesmerized by the man’s instrument, and the next day Wayland, who’d always wanted a family band, ordered him a fiddle from the Sears catalog. When it arrived, Jim tried to play it but couldn’t figure out where to put his fingers or how to draw the bow, so he slid it under his bed.

One night a year later, Jim had a dream that he was playing his fiddle. “It was the most beautiful music,” he said. “I could play anything. When I woke up, I remembered the position of my fingers in the song and pulled out my fiddle. I played the song from my dream, and it wasn’t as good as the dream, but it was a start.”
Much more at the link! Highly recommended. And here's the song:

53 comments:

mockturtle said...

That's a good one. :-)

I Have Misplaced My Pants said...

Mr. Pants and I are obsessed with the Yacht Rock Sirius station. If you don't know about it, go find it. You can thank me later.

PJ said...

I loathed Seals & Crofts' soft rock sound as well, but that Jimmy Seals could play that fiddle.

Michael K said...

I love Dan Seals' music, especially this one

Wince said...

"Summer breeze, makes me feel fine, blowing through the jasmine in my mind"

To me that conjures an image of this guy's head being a potpourri sachet.

Nobody tops Bread, I'll tell you that.

SDaly said...

My late-teen daughter and her friends are big fans of "Yacht Rock" radio (soft 70's hits) on XMRadio. There is also a "Yacht Rock" station on Amazon Prime. Although I didn't really like it before, the music has grown on me, and the lyrics, though usually about sex, are much *sweeter* than music lyrics today, which are usually repulsive. Maybe that's why it's popular with the young.

Carter Wood said...

Seals and Croft were Champs, literally.

Tequila!

http://sealsandcrofts.com/champs.html

They were definitely of my high school years, a little earlier than Supertramp, to whom Seals and Croft were superior. And don't get me started on America. Those guys.

D. said...

A horse with no name with a mane that waved in the summer breeze.

Bay Area Guy said...

Bay Area Gal likes me to strum "Summer Breeze" on my steel guitar as foreplay.

But it only works in Spring or Summer - not during rainy quarantines.

Mark said...

What's a "Sears catalog"?

Mark said...

I remember when the Eagles were really cool and I bought their greatest hits album.

I played it two or three times and got sick of them and their sound.

Wince said...

A one hit wonder by Sammy Johns, but it could have been written by Ted Bundy.

I put her out in a town that was so small
You could throw a rock from end to end
A dirt road main street, she walked off in bare feet
It's a shame I won't be passin' through again

'Cause like a princess she was laying there
Moonlight dancing off her hair
She woke up and took me by the hand
We made love in my Chevy van and that's all right with me

Skeptical Voter said...


Well Michael K, "All That Glitters Is Not Gold" is a wonderful song-co written--or at least the credits say--by Bob McDill and Dan Seals. If a country song is three chords and the truth, then All That Glitters is a country song.

Mark said...

The eternal question: What to do with your hands when you are singing?

bagoh20 said...

I always liked that song. The simple pleasure of a warm summer Friday night coming home from work to your woman is pretty hard to beat for just feeling good about life. It really doesn't take much more.

Mark said...

Now you've done it AA --

The dreaded YouTube song contagion.

Ann Althouse said...

“ Seals and Croft were Champs, literally...”

That’s in the article. They’re not on the original recording but the took over as band members and toured. Got to really hate that song.

bagoh20 said...

Some music is more about what it brings back in a subliminal way. This one of those songs. It just brings back a feeling, a very good feeling about summer, about America of the past.

rehajm said...

As a kid I somehow convinced myself Sid & Marty were the Crofts and had no idea if there was only one Seals or Seals was plural.

Mark said...

I'm now on The Stylistics, Betcha By Golly Wow, on their first appearance on The Sooouuulll Train.

Mark said...

Don't forget the TV star one hit wonders -

https://youtu.be/YY8APrYU2Gs

Known Unknown said...

My copywriting partner and I once sent a parody cease-and-desist letter to an agency we wanted to work at for copying ideas in our portfolio. Our lawyers were the esteemed Seals and Crofts.

Known Unknown said...

A heavy nostalgia song for me is "Hello, it's Me" by Todd Rundgren. Which is odd, since it came out the year I was born, so I don't think I have an actual recollection of the song from childhood — just a feeling it evokes about the 70s.

wild chicken said...

My dipshit throw-together group had to follow that act at a county fair convention in SF. They were great, had horns. I remember them doing this song too.

Then we got up and bombed. On the way out I saw stage hands rolling out a white grand for the Pointer Sisters. A convention goer saw us in the escalator and shook his head.

Not my finest hour.

mockturtle said...

I love Dan Seals' music, especially this one

That's beautiful, Michael! :-) I think I'll get the CD.

Michael K said...

That's beautiful, Michael! :-) I think I'll get the CD.

He had other good albums and I love them. I also love opera but both are fine together. I can listen to him over and over.

Yancey Ward said...

It is weird. I despise this song, but I have to admit that I understand its appeal. I recognize it instantly every time I hear the first bar. I can smell the jasmine in my head right now, and I didn't even click the video.

Yancey Ward said...

I take your David Soul and raise you.

Lewis Wetzel said...


Blogger Known Unknown said...

A heavy nostalgia song for me is "Hello, it's Me" by Todd Rundgren. Which is odd, since it came out the year I was born, so I don't think I have an actual recollection of the song from childhood — just a feeling it evokes about the 70s.

In the late 70s, when I was a buck not quite 20 years old, I went to a Rundgren concert at the University of Minnesota campus with a girl I knew from work. I think it was at Northrup Auditorium. I was more interested in her than she was interested in me, but no hearts broken. I joked with her that Rundgren would just play "Hello, it's me" over and over again, 'cuz that was his only well known song. The concert didn't have a warm up band, instead they played Elvis Costello videos (a new form in those days) on a giant screen. Maybe Costello himself showed up & played along for the last of his sings? Can't remember, too long ago, and in the Twin Cities in 1979 Costello could not draw a crowd by himself.

Two-eyed Jack said...

I started up Pandora with Bill Withers, because it seemed like the thing to do. It just played "Me and Mrs. Jones" and "Hit the Road, Jack," back to back. I thought it would be great if Jack Jones sang them both.

Charlie Currie said...

My wife's grandfather was born in Hardscrabble, TX

Mark said...
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Mark said...
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Mark said...

If your going to raise, Yancy, you gotta go big.

I thought your link was going to take me to Frisco Jones.

JML said...

Great read, thanks.

Yancey Ward said...

Just be thankful I had too much self respect to link to this.

Mark said...

Yeah, Bruce Willis was able to overcome a lot of career-ending moments.

NorthOfTheOneOhOne said...

I can understand that song isn't every one's cup of tea, but that's one exquisitely crafted record! I do admire that about Yacht Rock, they put a lot of time and effort into putting out a good sounding record.

Here's another one that's equally well produced, but still gets a lot of hate

Flat Tire said...

Thanks for the link. After 40 + successful years in northern California I still want to move "back home".

Yancey Ward said...

I love "Lotta of Love". It was a hit at the time I first started to listen regularly to the radio for new hits in the Fall/Winter of 1978-79.

Yancey Ward said...

I never knew until now that Neil Young wrote that. Cool.

eddie willers said...

Here's another one that's equally well produced, but still gets a lot of hate

Who the HELL hates Nicolette Larson? Grrrr

Anyway, thanks Ann, that was a great article. Whoever would have thought that Seals & Croft were Texans.

And my girlfriend felt the way you did. She bought me a copy of "Honky Chateau" and I traded it for the "Summer Breeze" album (It was the song Hummingbird that made me do that). She was NOT pleased.

eddie willers said...

I never knew until now that Neil Young wrote that. Cool.

They met when she sang on his "Comes A Time" album.

Mark said...

Another Rundgren (that I did not know was his) --

https://youtu.be/9VnrpIFlx9k

Crazy World said...

That song is so special to me.

Josephbleau said...

I have to admit, at long last that in College I smoked Marihuana and listened to some of these songs.

Josephbleau said...

You can judge me as you will.

Wilbur said...

The best Todd Rundgren song -and it was an minor AM hit - was "We Gotta Get You A Woman".

Leroy boy, is that you?

TML said...

I motorcycled (BMW R1100S) through Iraan in 2000. Out of Mason. Menard, McCamey, Eldorado, Grit...great places. That part of Texas was beautiful.

Tom T. said...

Heard it too many times, never want to hear it again.

TML said...

That was a fantastic article. Loved every word.

Richard Dolan said...

Never heard it before, but listened to it now. Seems OK as background music. Not unpleasant enough to be annoying, easy to ignore when you're trying to concentrate on something else.

Anthony said...

I never really thought of Soft Rock as A Thing before, just the usual pop music that every generation has. It seems to have morphed into Adult Contemporary in the 1980s. That genre borrowed a lot from Soft Rock. I was addicted to Madison's Magic 98 for part of my undergrad career (1980-85).

I didn't particularly like SR then, I was a prog/hard rock guy. The last few years I've really appreciated the craft that went into them. I have some old speakers from that time (Advents and Genesis) and those songs just make them sing. Get remastered versions of some of them; they're even better. I have an America's greatest hits CD that is brilliant, and also the remastered version of Al Stewart's Year of the Cat. Even if you don't particularly like the songs, the recordings are brilliant.

One thing: That one Bread song, about a guy who finds his girlfriend's diary under a tree and starts reading it? Never paid much attention to it at the time (too young), but, man, the twist ending has got to be the most heartbreaking thing ever.