"Seven League Boots" was recorded as a demo by the Curtis Brothers in 1975 along with another song called "Blue Letter". "Blue Letter" was covered the same year by Fleetwood Mac and sung by Lindsey Buckingham on their mega-selling self titled Fleetwood Mac album ( the same album that has "Rhiannon.") These demos by the Curtis Brothers were apparently not released officially- though "Blue Letter" was included on the Curtis Brothers album that was released in 1976. I didn't realize that Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks (you can hear her voice on occasion in the video above) had worked with them on these recordings.
In the early 1980s, the Curtis Brothers offered "Seven League Boots" to Stephen Stills who was working on a solo project. Stills liked the melody but asked if he could rewrite the song which he did under a new title "Southern Cross". The Curtis Brothers agreed to this. The Southern Cross is a constellation used for navigation in the Southern Hemisphere. Seven League boots are footwear found in European folklore that takes strides of seven leagues per step (a distance of about 21 miles).
In the early 1980s, the Curtis Brothers offered "Seven League Boots" to Stephen Stills who was working on a solo project. Stills liked the melody but asked if he could rewrite the song which he did under a new title "Southern Cross". The Curtis Brothers agreed to this. The Southern Cross is a constellation used for navigation in the Southern Hemisphere. Seven League boots are footwear found in European folklore that takes strides of seven leagues per step (a distance of about 21 miles).
Stephen Stills' new lyric totally transformed the song. The 1982 CSN Daylight Again album on which the song is finally released was originally slated to be an album with a lineup of just Stills and Graham Nash-but their label had enough of CSN solo projects and wanted a more lucrative album with the full Crosby, Stills, and Nash lineup. Eventually, Stills and Nash relented, but some of the songs on the album don't include Crosby because they were recorded before he was brought in. Instead, the CSN vocal style was created by Stills and Nash with additional backing vocalists. In this case, the vocalists were Timothy B. Schmidt and Art Garfunkel. Of course, you don't really notice it's them. However, the video recorded for the song features David Crosby even though he didn't sing or play on the recording. The Curtis Brothers never made it big-but at least they had these two songwriting credits on two albums that sold over 6 million copies in total.
Above is the video of "Southern Cross"-which was played a lot on video channels at the time. It was the last top 40 hit CSN had.
Originally published January 2, 2019
More about the origins of Southern Cross.
