Dan Seals of England Dan and John Ford Coley was born on this date in 1948...

... he died on March 25, 2009.

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Did you know?

So how does a boy from Texas end up as "England Dan?" It was a childhood nickname he'd gained from his affected English accent and love of The Beatles.

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Danny Wayland "Dan" Seals was born in McCamey, Texas to a music-oriented family. He was taught by his father to play the upright bass. He is the younger brother of Seals & Crofts member Jim Seals. His bother Eddie is also a musician.
Dan moved to Dallas as a teenager.

Dan with his brother Jim of Seals & Crofts

He and classmate John Colley, who later changed the spelling of his last name to Coley, formed a group with three other Samuell students called the Playboys Five, then they were part of part of Dallas pop/psych group Southwest F.O.B.

He and Coley eventually split off from the group. He then became known as the "England Dan" half of the soft rock duo England Dan and John Ford Coley, which charted nine pop and adult contemporary singles between 1976 and 1980, including the #2 Billboard Hot 100 hit "I'd Really Love to See You Tonight."

Dan and John

Their other hits include the 1977 hits "Nights Are Forever Without You," "It's Sad to Belong," and "Gone Too Far"; "We'll Never Have to Say Goodbye Again" and their last top-40 hit, "Love Is the Answer." After seven LPs, they disbanded in 1980. and Seals signed as a solo artist with Atlantic Records in 1980.

He kept the name England Dan for his debut solo album, Stones. Although no single charted on the country charts, his first single ever as a solo artist "Late at Night" did peak at #57 on the US Hot 100. His next album, Harbinger, was also unsuccessful, commercially. Seals reinvented himself as a solo country-pop artist, and adapted his style to fit country radio's demands while keeping his soft singing style. He signed with Capitol Records in 1983.

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Throughout the 1980s and into the early 1990s, he released 16 studio albums and charted more than 20 singles on the country charts. Eleven of his singles reached Number One: "Meet Me in Montana" (with Marie Osmond), "Bop" (also a #42 pop hit), "Everything That Glitters (Is Not Gold)," "You Still Move Me," "I Will Be There," "Three Time Loser," "One Friend," "Addicted," "Big Wheels in the Moonlight," "Love on Arrival," and "Good Times."

Five more of Seals' singles also reached Top Ten on the  charts.

In 2008, Seals completed radiation treatments for mantle cell lymphoma at Vanderbilt Medical Center in Nashville and M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston and received a stem cell transplant in December of that year at NIH in Maryland. Seals died at the age of 61, on March 25, 2009 at his daughter's home.

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