Born June 8 1944 William Royce Scaggs was raised in Oklahoma and Texas. He met future collaborator and friend Steve Miller while attending school in Dallas, TX. The two joined forces in the ‘Marksmen Combo’ before attending University of Wisconsin together, and eventually forming the ‘Ardells’, later changing the name to the ‘Fabulous Knight Trains’.
In 1963 Scaggs parted company with Miller and returned to Dallas as the front man for the ‘Wigs’. The band moved to England and almost immediately broke up, with John Andrews and Bob Arthur leaving to form ‘Mother Earth’. Scaggs stayed in Europe as a street performer. In 1965 he recorded a miserable solo album, ‘Boz’.
Scaggs returned to the states in 1967, and rejoined Miller in his new ‘Steve Miller Band’ just in time for the Monterey Pop Festival. Scaggs recorded two great albums with the ‘Steve Miller Band’, ‘Children of the Future’ and ‘Sailor’, before cutting out to retry a solo career in 1968.
The Publisher of Rolling Stone, Jann Wenner talked Atlantic into giving Scaggs a contract, and he responded with the acclaimed and self titled ‘Boz Scaggs’, featuring an appearance by Duane Allman. Fenton Robinson sued for composer credit on the track ‘Loan Me a Dime’ and won, costing Scaggs his contract with Atlantic.
Scaggs signed with Columbia in 1971 and released ‘Moments’. Like the previous album, it was well acclaimed but sold poorly. Scaggs remained a favorite of the critics while doing poorly on the charts for several years.
1976’s ‘Silk Degrees’ reached number two in album sales, with two singles ‘Lowdown’ and ‘Lido Shuffle’ making it to the top ten. His next two albums, ‘Down Two, Then Left’ and ‘Jo Jo’ did just as well, but by the 1980’s Scaggs had pretty much retired from music.
He had bought Slim’s, a nightclub in San Francisco and spent his time managing it, performing only at the clubs annual New Years Eve concert. In 1988 he released ‘Other Roads’ and toured with Donald Fagen’s Rock and Soul Revue in 1991. He recorded ‘Some Change’ in 1994 and followed it with 1997’s ‘Come on Home.’
Sources
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