Seals & Crofts with England Dan & John Ford Coley & Walter Heath - PBS Soundstage, WTTW Studios, Chicago, IL, 5-19-1974

Here's a rather unusual episode of the "PBS Soundstage" TV show. This one stars Seals and Crofts, but also has two guest acts, England Dan and John Ford Coley, and Walter Heath.

In the early 1970s, Seals and Crofts were pretty much the epitome of mellow soft rock. They had a bunch of hits, with the biggest being "Diamond Girl" and "Summer Breeze." 

 I remember hearing their songs on the radio, and I didn't think much about them. They seemed to be pretty typical poppy romantic fare. But what I didn't realize until putting this album together was that they had a pretty heavy religious agenda. It turns out both Seals and Crofts were members of the Bahai faith. There's nothing wrong with that; people can believe whatever they want. But I'm not a fan of proselytizing. It seems Seals and Crofts concerts doubled as efforts for them to gain new concerts to the faith they believed in, to the point that the concerts were usually followed by "rap sessions" where the two of them talked about their religious beliefs. There was some banter like that in this recording. I cut that part out, because it's not something I want to hear each time I play this.

England Dan and John Ford Coley was another soft rock duo remarkably similar to Seals and Crofts. In fact, it turns out the real name of "England Dan" is Dan Seals, and he's the younger brother of James Seals of Seals and Crofts. Due to that family connection, it seems like a no-brainer that England Dan and John Ford Coley would be guests for this show. Note that they would eventually have a bunch of hits, the biggest being "I'd Really Love to See You Tonight." But all of those would come after 1975. So they were relative unknown at the time of this concert.

This concert has a second guest act: Walter Heath. He is a relatively obscure soul singer. It turns out he converted to the Bahai faith in the late 1960s, so that no doubt has something to do with his involvement here. It seems he often toured with Seals and Crofts in the 1970s, as did England Dan and John Ford Coley.

This concert is fine overall if you're into the soft rock sound. But one big problem for me was that the song "Summer Breeze" wasn't included. In my opinion, that's their best known song. It was a hit in 1972, so one would assume it would have been played in all their concerts. Perhaps what made it to this TV show was edited down from a longer concert, I don't know. But I was bothered enough by that song not being included that I stuck it on at the end. The version I chose is from an episode of the BBC TV show "The Old Grey Whistle Test," recorded in 1975.

This album is 59 minutes long. Everything here is unreleased.

01 Hummingbird (Seals & Crofts)
02 talk (Seals & Crofts)
03 Windflowers (Seals & Crofts)
04 We May Never Pass This Way [Again] (Seals & Crofts)
05 Ruby Jean and Billie Lee (Seals & Crofts)
06 Year of Sunday (Seals & Crofts)
07 talk (Seals & Crofts)
08 Unborn Child (Seals & Crofts)
09 talk (Seals & Crofts)
10 I'm the Pilot (Seals & Crofts with England Dan & John Ford Coley)
11 talk (Seals & Crofts with England Dan & John Ford Coley)
12 Dust on My Saddle (Seals & Crofts with England Dan & John Ford Coley)
13 Diamond Girl (Seals & Crofts)
14 talk (Seals & Crofts with Walter Heath)
15 Made to Love (Seals & Crofts with Walter Heath)
16 talk (Seals & Crofts with Walter Heath)
17 You Know You're Wrong, Don't You Brother (Seals & Crofts with Walter Heath)
18 talk (Seals & Crofts)
19 Foot Stompin', Hand Clappin', Hog Callin' Music [Instrumental] (Seals & Crofts with England Dan & John Ford Coley)
20 Summer Breeze (Seals & Crofts)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/wHkvZqLP

alternate: 

https://bestfile.io/pC1qqopZNwdoLHi/file

The cover image is a screenshot taken from this exact concert. It was rather blurry and low-res, so I used the Krea AI program to add detail and clarity.

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