Boz Scaggs
But signs point to the latter, particularly the cover of Scaggs’s new album, Come On Home (Virgin). It depicts some underprivileged black kids hanging out on a littered city sidewalk in front of a dilapidated storefront displaying two posters for upcoming shows. The one on the right heralds old-time R & B legend Hank Ballard, best known for writing “The Twist.” The one on the left is for our man Boz, who, we’re to presume, is exploring his “roots.” And while it means next to nothing that Scaggs performed someplace called House of Blues two Sundays ago (the venue hosted Shonen Knife a few nights later), here’s how the Web site for his former San Francisco club describes him: “The Blue Light Bar and Restaurant was opened in 1984 by legendary blues star Boz Scaggs.” What’s this geezer’s deal?
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When Scaggs first hit commercial paydirt in 1976 with his seventh album, the stunning Silk Degrees, he had spent more than half of his 32 years plugging away at music, initially in Texas and Wisconsin with a series of bands led by blues rocker Steve Miller, who taught Scaggs how to play guitar. Following the ever-changing currents of pop music, Scaggs emigrated to England with a group of Texas college buddies in 1964, at the peak of the British Invasion, but they failed to make any kind of dent in that country’s overcrowded R & B scene. Scaggs took off to bum around Europe as a folksinger for a while, cutting a solo album in Sweden, Boz, that to this day remains obscure.
Next Scaggs delivered Down Two, Then Left, an appealing pop album that didn’t yield any big hits. This may have provoked him to lead off 1980’s Middle Man with tunes that closely approximated “Lowdown” (“Jojo”) and “Lido Shuffle” (“Breakdown Dead Ahead”). Both duly reached the top 20, as did follow-up film ballad “Look What You’ve Done to Me” and an Al Green-inspired Hammond-organ groover, “Miss Sun.” Scaggs closed out that busy year with a greatest-hits compilation, then proceeded to fade from public view. A final Columbia album, Other Roads (1988), slipped by on tiptoe to open the door for six more virtually silent years.
