Music by Jim Seals and Dash Crofts
Lyrics by Jim Seals
Produced by Louie Shelton
from the album Summer Breeze
single released August 1972
Musicians:
Jim Seals: Lead and backing vocals, saxophone, guitar
Dash Crofts: Lead and backing vocals, electric guitar
Larry Knechtel: Piano
Jim Gordon: Drums
What is your earliest musical memory?
I was born in 1969. My parents have long expressed the story to me about how when I was a baby, whenever I cried and was difficult to settle down into calmness, they would place Side Two of The Beatles' "Abbey Road" album and throughout that side long suite of gorgeously connected songs, I would indeed settle and soon fall asleep. Certainly, this is an experience of which I possess not even one memory, but I do believe burrowed itself deeply inside my DNA, only to be fully released years later, when the time was absolutely perfect for me to understand it.
Just a couple of years ago, my Father revealed to me that also when I was an infant, he would actually dance with me to The Delfonics' eternal slow jam from 1970, "Didn't I (Blow Your Mind This Time)." Of course, this is also an experience of which I posses not even one memory, but when I heard this news, it was a story that made me fall in love with my Father all over again, completely reconfirming that this is the greatest man I have ever known.
While those two anecdotes do not begin to describe what I think may be my first true musical memory, it did indeed happen soon thereafter those events. In my house, music was a part of the every day fabric of life as it was ever present and always a source of joy. The music of the Motown era was always played and I do have faint memories of my parents enjoying Marvin Gaye's 1971 "What's Going On" album (one that I would embrace many years later) and certainly the ebullient sounds of The Jackson 5 were constant. But for something that I actually connected with through something purely inexplicable...well, there were two such memories that were truly powerful that occurred before I was even five years old. One of which I will save for a future date but for now, I wish to focus on the other and that is Seals and Crofts' slice of mellow gold, "Summer Breeze."
To this very day, when I hear those opening acoustic guitar notes, followed by the classic melody and the sounds of that toy piano, I am just taken back to the point where I was possibly three or four years old, sitting upon my parents' couch, holding the album jacket and somehow forming pictures in my mind based on the words that I was hearing. I tried to imagine what exactly "jasmine" even was. When they sing about the "arms that reach out to hold me," I visualized two cartoon arms reaching forwards to embrace.
But that chorus!!! Man, that chorus!!!! It was intoxicating and just somehting that absolutely never lasted as long as I wished that it would for I never wanted it to end. I also remember feeling a hint of sadness as the song crossed its musical bridge to the final set of lyrics because I knew that the magic was about to end. Thankfully, I was able to go back to the record player and start the experience all over again. And I did, thus beginning my penchant for playing beloved music ad nauseum!
Trust me, I am not sure if I knew of any other songs on that album...perhaps aside from the album's opening track "Hummingbird," which did weave a a certain spell. But, "Summer Breeze," to the very best of my musical meory, was the very first song that travelled through the ether and chose me.
How about you? What was your first musical memory? Think hard and deeply. WSPC's lines are open!
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