Boz Scaggs
Boz Scaggs
William Royce Scaggsis an American singer, songwriter, and guitarist. He gained fame in the 1960s as a guitarist and one-time lead singer with the Steve Miller Band, and in the 1970s with several solo Top 20 hit singles in the United States, including the hits "Lowdown" and "Lido Shuffle" from the critically acclaimed album Silk Degrees, which peaked at #2 on the Billboard 200. Scaggs continues to write, record music, and tour...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionPop Singer
Date of Birth8 June 1944
CityCanton, OH
CountryUnited States of America
I love working with the quartet. I have more freedom and flexibility.
Quite frankly, I've always listened to the black side of the radio dial. Where I grew up, there was a lot of it and there was a lot of live music around.
I think the women - Lauryn Hill, Mary J. Blige, Erykah Badu - are doing new conceptual things and using their voices to create new American music.
I think that it can be said of a lot of artists, and myself included, that we made the same record over and over from the beginning.
I really just followed my musical instincts every step of my life.
I listened to classical guitar and Spanish guitar, as well as jazz guitar players, rock and roll and blues. All of it. I did the same thing with my voice.
As a guitar player, you can gravitate to the blues because you can play it easily. It's not a style that's difficult to pick up. It's purely emotive and dead easy to get a start with.
From the time I moved to San Francisco in 1967 to play with the Steve Miller Band, there was a lot of support in the music community for one cause or another, but this one was special because it was put on by people who understood where musicians hearts are.
A lot of what I have always done is do other singers.
I felt that, in retrospect, there was a time in the late Seventies, after I had a string of hits and successes, as a performer and a recording artist, that I wasn't saying anything.
My parents were music lovers and collectors. It was around.
I would say that I'm finding my voice in more ways than one.
I'm easily distracted by other things in the world around me.
I'm still trying to re-create a Ray Charles concert that I heard when I was fifteen years old, and all my nerve endings were fried and transformed, and electricity shot through me.