Boz Scaggs

Boz Scaggs - Greatest Hits Live - 2004 - Mailboat Records

In 2004 Boz Scaggs released his first, and what is likely to be only, officially sanctioned live disc in an extensive career. With 35 years of experience and 13 albums of material to choose from, it also substitutes as a reasonable best-of, although Sony/Legacy's 1997 double set My Time did an excellent job of recapping his studio hits. Even if it's a byproduct of the associated DVD recorded at the same August, 2004 San Francisco gig, this is a lively and professionally performed show that makes up in soul what it lacks in spontaneity. Live hits' discs coming in the twilight of the artist's career are typically dicey affairs, often used as a backdoor way for a new label to release some of the act's best material, the originals of which they do not have rights to. While that may be the case here, this is far from a fast way to make a few bucks off Scaggs' catalog. The seven-piece band (plus two backing vocalists) offer perfect, occasionally inspired renditions of a relatively unsurprising set list. The show is a terrific mix of the lovely, but sometimes sappy Scaggs ballads such as "Heart of Mine," "We're All Alone," "Slow Dancer" and "Look What You've Done to Me" with the blue-eyed funk-pop of "Lowdown," "Jojo," "Georgia," and "Lido Shuffle." The songs that ultimately work the best and are the loosest are the blues-based tracks, in particular a sumptuous version of Bobby "Blue" Bland's "Ask Me 'Bout Nuthin' but the Blues," and nearly a half-hour on disc two dedicated to the jazzy jump blues of "Runnin' Blue" and a fiery "Loan Me a Dime." Scaggs is in terrific voice throughout, the band adapts remarkably well to a varied set list and the live sound is crisp but not sterile. Many of the arrangements, especially of the pop songs, don't differ substantially from the originals, but the effect is lively and with slightly more drive due to the live setting. The rather forced between-song patter very present in the DVD is edited out for the audio version, which provides a better musical flow. Some of these songs never charted, and were not even particularly popular. Many tracks from My Time and even three from the slimmer Hits! collection are missing. But these are minor complaints for an extremely well produced, immaculately played, stylishly presented and dynamic look at Scaggs' diverse catalog. © Hal Horowitz © 2010 Rovi Corporation. All Rights Reserved http://www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&sql=10:kifpxq8sld6e

This album has been described as "Ultra-smooth white soul with a hint of cool funk". Many people only associate Boz Scaggs with his famous mid '70's disco soul funk classic album, "Silk Degrees" and his hits "Lowdown", "Lido Shuffle", and "What Can I Say", but the man has been around since the mid sixties, and recorded many great albums which always seem to be overshadowed by "Silk Degrees". The album here was recorded live in San Francisco at the Great American Music Hall on 26th and 27th August 2003. There are sixteen great tracks covering most of Boz's best work, from the jazzy "Harbor Lights" to the blue "Loan Me A Dime". The album has a great bluesy, jazzy, soul pop sound, with some great hard rock included. There is also a DVD version of this album available. Check out Boz's "Middle man" album @ BOZSC/MM Info on his "Some Change" album can be found @ BOZSC/SOCH Although Boz Scaggs is probably best known for his classic "Silk Degrees" album, his 1974 "Slow Dancer" album is often overlooked, and is well worth listening to

TRACKS / COMPOSERS

1.Lowdown - David Paich/Boz Scaggs
2.Slow Dancer - George Daly/Boz Scaggs
3.Heart Of Mine - Bobby Caldwell/Dennis Matkosky/Jason Scheff
4.It All Went Down The Drain - Earl King
5.Harbor Lights - Boz Scaggs
6.Jojo - David Foster/David Lasley/Boz Scaggs
7.Ask Me 'Bout Nothin' But The Blues - Henry Boozier/Deadric Malone
8.Breakdown Dead Ahead - David Foster/Boz Scaggs
9.Look What You've Done To Me - David Foster/Boz Scaggs
10.I Just Go - Boz Scaggs
11.Georgia - Boz Scaggs
12.Miss Sun - David Paich
13.Lido Shuffle - David Paich/Boz Scaggs
14.Runnin' Blue - Boz Scaggs
15.Loan Me A Dime - Jesse Anderson/Mike Middlebrook/Fenton Robinson
16.We're All Alone - Boz Scaggs

Tracks 1 - 8 comprise CD 1, and tracks 9 - 16, CD 2

MUSICIANS

Boz Scaggs (vocals, guitar)
Drew Zingg (guitar)
Matt Bissonette (bass instrument)
Jim Cox, Michael Bluestein (keyboards)
John Ferraro (drums)
Charles McNeal (saxophone)
Richard Armstrong (trumpet)
Ms. Mone't, Barbara Wilson (background vocals)

BIO (Wikipedia)

Boz Scaggs (born William Royce Scaggs, 8 June 1944, Canton, Ohio) 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. 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 fellow American Jack Downing and Brit Mac MacLeod. 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. Despite good reviews, his sole Atlantic album, featuring the Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section and slide guitarist Duane Allman, 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 real 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. 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. 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 country from spring through fall. Scaggs and his wife grow grapes in California's Napa County and have produced their own wine.