Boz Scaggs
(born June 8, 1944) is an American singer, songwriter and guitarist. He gained fame in the 1970s with several Top 20 Hits in the United States along with the #2 album Silk Degrees
. Scaggs continued to release and record in the 1980s and 1990s, and still tours into the 2000s. [1]
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BOZ SCAGGS TICKETS
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Early life and career
Scaggs was born
William Royce Scaggs
in
Canton, Ohio, the son of a traveling salesman. The family moved to Oklahoma, then to
Plano, at that time a Texas farm town just north of Dallas. He attended a
Dallas private school,
St. Mark's, where a schoolmate gave him the nickname "Bosley". Soon, he was just plain Boz.
After learning guitar at the age of 12, he met
Steve Miller at
St. Mark's. In 1959, he became the vocalist for Miller's band, The Marksmen. The pair later attended the
University of Wisconsin-Madison together, playing in
blues bands like
The Ardells and The Fabulous Knight Trains.
Leaving school, Scaggs briefly joined the burgeoning
rhythm and blues scene in London. After singing in bands such as The Wigs and Mother Earth, he traveled to Sweden as a solo performer, and in 1965 recorded his solo debut album,
Boz
, which was not a commercial success. Scaggs also had a brief stint with the band
The Other Side with
Mac MacLeod and fellow American
Jack Downing.
Returning to the U.S., Scaggs promptly headed for the booming
psychedelic music center of
San Francisco in 1967. Linking up with Steve Miller again, he appeared on the
Steve Miller Band's first two albums,
Children of the Future
and
Sailor
, which received good reviews from music critics. After being spotted by
Rolling Stone
publisher
Jann Wenner, Scaggs secured a solo contract with
Atlantic Records in 1968.
1970s
Despite good reviews, his sole Atlantic
album,
Boz Scaggs
, featuring the
Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section and
slide guitarist
Duane Allman, performing
Fenton Robinson's "Loan Me A Dime", achieved lukewarm sales, as did follow-up albums on
Columbia Records. (His Atlantic album was deleted and replaced with the exact same cover and tracks, but it was given a new catalog number and it was completely remixed in Los Angeles in 1977. This new remix brought Duane Allman's guitar up to the front, but it greatly altered the original feeling. On the track "Finding Her", the volume fades down extremely low for the last minute, an obvious mixing error by engineer Craymore Stevens. The original has never been available on CD.)
In 1976, he linked up with
session musicians who would later form
Toto and recorded his smash album
Silk Degrees
. The album reached number 2 on the U.S.
charts and number 1 in a number of countries across the world, spawning three hit
singles: "
Lowdown", "
Lido Shuffle", and "What Can I Say", as well as the
MOR standard "
We're All Alone", later
covered by
Rita Coolidge and
Frankie Valli. A sellout world tour followed, but his follow-up album, the 1977
Down Two Then Left
, did not fare as well commercially as
Silk Degrees
.
1980s on
The 1980 album
Middle Man
spawned two top 20 hits, "Breakdown Dead Ahead" and "Jojo," and Scaggs enjoyed two more hits in 1980-81 ("
Look What You've Done to Me" from the
Urban Cowboy
soundtrack, and "
Miss Sun" from a greatest hits set, both U.S. #14 hits). But Scaggs' lengthy hiatus from the music industry (his next LP,
Other Roads
, wouldn't appear until 1988) slowed his chart career down dramatically. "Heart of Mine" in 1988, from
Other Roads
, was Scaggs' final top 40 hit but was a major
adult contemporary success.
Scaggs continued to record and tour sporadically throughout the 1980s and 1990s, and for a time was semi-retired from the
music industry. He opened the San Francisco
nightclub,
Slim's
, in 1988, and remains a co-owner as of 2008.
[2]
After
Other Roads
, Scaggs took another hiatus and then came back with
Some Change
in 1994. He released
Come On Home,
an album of
blues, and
My Time,
an anthology in the late 1990s. He garnered good reviews with
Dig
although the CD, which was released on September 11, 2001, was lost in the post-
9/11 melée. In May 2003, Scaggs released
But Beautiful
, a collection of
jazz standards that debuted at number 1 on the jazz charts.
He tours each summer, has a loyal cadre of fans, remains hugely popular in Japan, and released a
DVD and a live CD in 2004. Other releases followed. In 2008, Scaggs began an expanded tour, and is scheduled to appear across the US from spring through fall.
Discography
Albums
Year
| Album
|
1965
| Boz
|
1969
| Boz Scaggs
|
1971
| Moments
|
Boz Scaggs & Band
|
1972
| My Time
|
1974
| Slow Dancer
|
1976
| Silk Degrees
|
1977
| Down Two Then Left
|
Boz Scaggs
- (1977 remix of his original 1969 album)
|
1980
| Middle Man
|
Hits!
|
1988
| Other Roads
|
1994
| Some Change
|
1997
| Come On Home
|
My Time: A Boz Scaggs Anthology
|
1999
| Fade Into Light
|
2001
| Dig
|
The Lost Concert
(live)
|
2003
| But Beautiful
|
2004
| Greatest Hits Live
(CD/DVD)
|
2005
| Fade Into Light
(re-release)
|
2006
| Hits!
- (2006 version of 1980 greatest hits compilation with five more tracks)
|
2008
| Speak Low
|
Singles
Year
| Title
| US
| Album
|
1971
| "We Were Always Sweethearts"
| 61
| Moments
|
"Near You"
| 96
|
1972
| "Dinah Flo"
| 86
| My Time
|
1976
| "It's Over"
| 38
| Silk Degrees
|
"Lowdown"
| 3
|
"What Can I Say"
| 42
|
1977
| "Lido Shuffle"
| 11
|
"Hard Times"
| 58
| Down Two Then Left
|
1978
| "Hollywood"
| 49
|
1980
| "Breakdown Dead Ahead"
| 15
| Middle Man
|
"JoJo"
| 17
|
"Look What You've Done To Me"
| 14
| Urban Cowboy
(soundtrack)
|
"Miss Sun"
| 14
| Hits!
|
1988
| "Heart Of Mine"
| 35
| Other Roads
|
Family
{{#if:December 2007{{#ifexist:Category:Articles to be expanded since December 2007
Scaggs and his wife grow grapes in
Napa County, California, and have produced their own wine.
Scaggs' son, Austin Scaggs, is a
music journalist. Austin has a column called "The Smoking Section" in
Rolling Stone
. Another son, Oscar, died of a heroin overdose in 1998 at the age of 21.
[3]
References
- Boz Scaggs - Fade Into Light
- Boz Scaggs' nightclub Slim's 20 years old
- Boz Scaggs' Son Dead From Overdose from VH1.com. January 4, 1999. Accessed June 13, 2008.