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BOZ SCAGGS - SILK DEGREES
by Johnny Black
Nobody would have thought that a former Steve Miller Band sideman whose name sounded like a disease of sheep would suddenly, after six failed solo albums, rocket to international stardom, but that’s exactly what Boz Scaggs did with Silk Degrees.
Sure, his fifth album, Slow Dancer, had gone Gold in 1974, but that was still a far cry from the 5x platinum sales that 1976’s Silk Degrees would eventually rack up. So what transformed Scaggs from solid, journeyman axe-hero into slick, multi-platinum groovemeister?
Simple. He put down his guitar, found a new producer and assembled a crack team of studio hotshots. Those three vital changes helped to push his evocatively raspy voice front and centre for the first time, and also elevated him out of the psychedelic blues furrow in which he had been languishing into a rock/dance hybrid that resonated well with the disco sound that dominated America in those days.
Producer Joe Wissert had cut his teeth with The Turtles way back in 1965 and more recently had worked wonders for Earth Wind And Fire, and it was he who brought Scaggs together with the musicians for Silk Degrees.
"Joe had been hearing a good deal about these young musicians - Jeff Porcaro, David Paich and David Hungate - who had been doing sessions together," revealed Scaggs some years later. "He thought they might be the nucleus of a great section, so we got together on a session to see if it would work. Obviously it did, and they were the section that made the Silk Degrees album with me."
And, as he told Joe Smith for the 1988 book Off The Record, "They performed above and beyond the call of duty, with input that was invaluable. They gave me their 'A' stuff, they didn’t save anything for themselves, and that’s a huge reason why Silk Degrees turned out as good as it did."
But let’s not forget that the Silk Degrees sessions also benefitted from the wizardry of two godlike session guitarists, Fred Tackett and Louie Shelton, so it’s little wonder that Scaggs unplugged his plank. "It was very intimidating to me to be around the best musicians of my age, the best ones in the LA studio scene. Really, the songs and the arrangements that I was doing at that time were beyond my technical capacity to play.”
Relieved of guitar duties, Scaggs started dabbling with the piano where, on more than one occasion, his relative ineptitude led him to play in unorthodox ways (i.e. he made mistakes) that actually opened up new avenues for exploration which a more accomplished player might never even have considered.
Fortunately, in David Paich, Scaggs found himself partnered with a much more accomplished player who was open-minded enough not to dismiss Scaggs’ efforts out of hand, so the pair quickly evolved into a formidable songwriting team.
"I sat down the weekend before the sessions with Dave Paich and we came up with about three songs," Scaggs told Rolling Stone. "The rest were just skeletons when I got to the studio. The only song I had completely written before I went down to L.A. was Harbor Lights." By the time the album was completed, the duo had co-written no less than five cuts.
Lowdown, the song that would rocket Scaggs to international fame, was born that same weekend from a brief phrase Paich had played on his piano one day but, when Scaggs asked him to repeat it, he couldn’t seem to find it again until, "One day he was fooling around in the studio and I ran out and said, 'That’s it! That’s it!'" he revealed to Geoff Brown of Melody Maker. "And since it was just a little incidental piece in one of his longer pieces, he didn't mind giving up that little riff. So we worked on it one night, just started playing around with it."
More recently, Scaggs told the Songfacts website that, "We brought it back to the band and recorded it. We were just thrilled with that one. That was the first song that we attempted, and it had a magic to it."
In the Scaggs-Paich partnership, each of them had a well-defined role. "David and I put together the format for the music," remembers Scaggs. "I wrote the lyrics in all cases. David was more of an arranger. We’d sit down at the piano, and for What Can I Say?, we’d just go through it. He’d throw out the changes and I’d say, 'Yes, some of that.' Or, 'No, none of that - let’s stretch out this piece.'"
Another memorable Scaggs-Paich collaboration was the classic Lido Shuffle, of which Scaggs has said, "There was a song that Fats Domino did, called The Fat Man, that had a kind of driving shuffle beat that I used to play on the piano, and I just started kind of singing along with it. Then I showed it to Paich and he helped me fill it out. It ended up being Lido Shuffle."
Another significant element in the song, as Scaggs has pointed out, was, "the groove Jeff set up on Lido Shuffle - a classic shuffle. It's a very elusive little time that he plays. It sounds simple, but it's really not easy to execute."
With that Fats Domino-inspired shuffle overlaid with Scaggs’ irresistible "Woah-oh-oh-oh" vocal hook and Paich’s beautifully constructed twin portamento analog synthesizer break, Lido Shuffle remains a dance-floor-filler to this day. Porcaro, Hungate and Paich would go on to become the core of Toto, for whom Paich would write Africa and Rosanna, confirming that his work with Scaggs was no fluke.
Scaggs also credits Jeff Porcaro as a huge influence on Harbor Lights. "That was a songwriter presenting a song and getting back an interpretation from the musicians that wouldn't have been possible without his unique interpretation. I'd throw it out in the air, and this kindred spirit would collect it and transpose it back to me in a way that would give the song new meaning and new life."
There are no fillers to be found anywhere on Silk Degrees, but it’s definitely worth singling out We’re All Alone, a Scaggs composition, which Rita Coolidge turned into a Top 10 hit single on both sides of the Atlantic in 1977. As Coolidge recalls, "One day I was in (A+M boss) Jerry Moss' office and he said that the Boz Scaggs album Silk Degrees was in a million homes and there was a song on it that was perfect for a woman to sing. He said, 'It's called We're All Alone and as he's not doing it as a single, I think you ought to record it.'" The track has since become a perennial standard, with cover versions by Frankie Valli, The Walker Brothers, The Three Degrees and at least twenty others.
Even the album’s enigmatic title has an intriguing origin, stemming from one of Scaggs’ idiosyncratic working methods. "I have this box full of bits of paper, cocktail napkin scribblings, bits of wisdom," he explains. "I always look through it before I do an album. Silk Degrees was a phrase I'd had around in that box for a long time."
Released in March 1976, Silk Degrees was not an immediate hit. The first single, It’s Over, barely limped into the Top 40, peaking at No38, but then in June Lowdown turned Scaggs’ career around, hitting No3 in Billboard, paving the way for Lido Shuffle, winning a Grammy and turning the album into a monster that remained on the chart for 78 weeks, eventually selling over 5m copies.
Summing it all up, Scaggs has said, "Silk Degrees was an experience for me that I would wish for every musician, every creative person, because it was the fulfilment of a lot of work. It was arrival, it was finally one that really got through to a lot of people. I was ready to go."
And from David Paich’s perspective, "Silk Degrees was instrumental in launching Toto. So, I owe him a lot. That was a turning-point album. He allowed me so much freedom, and we were able to write just a whole range of things. When you put those kind of guys in the studio, and give them freedom, you end up with things like Silk Degrees. You end up with things like Toto IV.”
PRODUCTION NOTES
Silk Degrees was recorded in September 1975, mostly at Davlen Studios in Universal City, Los Angeles. Davlen, founded by entrepreneur Len Kovner, may not be the first name that springs to mind when we think of LA studios but it was undeniably among the best. As well as Boz Scaggs, it was frequented by Quincy Jones, Hall And Oates, Alice Cooper, Toto, England Dan And John Ford Coley, Fleetwood Mac, The Average White Band, Robin Trower, Al Stewart and Randy Edelman, to name but a few.
Some of the tough but gritty sound of the album is, unquestionably, down to producer Joe Wissert, of whom Scaggs said, "He’s the first producer I've worked with who wasn't primarily an engineer. He’s on top from an artistic level in that he makes songs stronger, defines melodies per se. He's aware of contemporary styles and after that he's personable, a gentleman."
But Wissert was definitely aided by the quality of Davlen’s gear, the heart of which was a 'B' Range Console designed in 1973 by audio engineer Malcolm Toft at the acclaimed Trident Studios in London. The console featured eight main output busses, virtually unheard of in the mid-seventies, and was fitted with quadraphonic (surround) bus clusters, accompanied by eight Penny And Giles automated joysticks, with four bus outputs per unit.
The combination of the right producer, studio, gear and musicians came together so that, in Scaggs’ own words, "Musically, I discovered a whole new ground, a whole new footing for myself. I fell into a group of musicians who really understood my music and were able to lend their talents to getting it out of my head and onto the record. It was a very fulfilling experience."
It has long been rumoured that The Beatles recorded five songs at Davlen in 1976, during an attempted re-union, but Len Kovner has emphatically and consistently denied this story.
Some recording for Silk Degrees was also undertaken at Hollywood Sound, 6361 Selma Ave, Los Angeles. Better known than Davlen, Hollywood Sound was established in 1965 by sound engineer Jesse Hodges, and subsequently was passed on to his son Jonathan Hodges. Hollywood Sound has always enjoyed a great reputation and has been used over the years by everybody from by The Doors to Prince, Michael Jackson, Madonna, Frank Sinatra, Jackson Browne and The Red Hot Chili Peppers.
(Feature by Johnny Black, first published in Hi Fi News)
ADDITIONAL QUOTES....
David Leishman (reviewer, Rolling Stone) : Last year's Slow Dancer, like his classic first album, suggested that Boz Scaggs might break out of his San Francisco Bay Area cult to a larger national following. Dancer wasn't a radical departure from his earlier recordings, but for the first time Scaggs played no instrument, concentrating instead on singing.
Joe Wissert has replaced Johnny Bristol as producer, but Silk Degrees, although blander, is similar in style to its predecessor. Georgia, a smoky ballad, lets Boz soar into the Fifties harmony he's recently discovered; his beautiful voice could easily hold its own on any street corner in New York. But Jump Street points up the dilemma in the decision not to play guitar on record. While similar in form to Dime a Dance Romance, from his Steve Miller days, it lacks drive and focus: where Romance was propelled by Scagg's singing and playing, Jump Street just meanders without an instrumental counterpoint to Boz's singing. It probably isn't the session players' fault; Scaggs simply doesn't feel comfortable when singing rock and roll without his guitar.
Without solid rock as a base, Scaggs's more diverse approach falters. He sings well in the disco fashion, but the tunes don't have the meat to complement the first-rate ballads. We're All Alone expresses the right mood at the album's close, but it would have shone brighter had Lido Shuffle, which preceded it, been more distinguished. To become as big a force as his is a talent, Boz Scaggs needs to reintroduce his own rock and roll.
Billboard magazine review : A mixed bag of material, and it's all well handled by Scaggs, backup singers and band. AM and FM will each have their pick of cuts. Black radio might even jump on the bandwagon with a cut like "What Can I Say." The writing/arranging team of Scaggs and David Paich score throughout. Expect Scagg's followers to be pleased, while the uninitiated get turned on.
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by Johnny Black
Nobody would have thought that a former Steve Miller Band sideman whose name sounded like a disease of sheep would suddenly, after six failed solo albums, rocket to international stardom, but that’s exactly what Boz Scaggs did with Silk Degrees.
Sure, his fifth album, Slow Dancer, had gone Gold in 1974, but that was still a far cry from the 5x platinum sales that 1976’s Silk Degrees would eventually rack up. So what transformed Scaggs from solid, journeyman axe-hero into slick, multi-platinum groovemeister?
Simple. He put down his guitar, found a new producer and assembled a crack team of studio hotshots. Those three vital changes helped to push his evocatively raspy voice front and centre for the first time, and also elevated him out of the psychedelic blues furrow in which he had been languishing into a rock/dance hybrid that resonated well with the disco sound that dominated America in those days.
Producer Joe Wissert had cut his teeth with The Turtles way back in 1965 and more recently had worked wonders for Earth Wind And Fire, and it was he who brought Scaggs together with the musicians for Silk Degrees.
"Joe had been hearing a good deal about these young musicians - Jeff Porcaro, David Paich and David Hungate - who had been doing sessions together," revealed Scaggs some years later. "He thought they might be the nucleus of a great section, so we got together on a session to see if it would work. Obviously it did, and they were the section that made the Silk Degrees album with me."
And, as he told Joe Smith for the 1988 book Off The Record, "They performed above and beyond the call of duty, with input that was invaluable. They gave me their 'A' stuff, they didn’t save anything for themselves, and that’s a huge reason why Silk Degrees turned out as good as it did."
But let’s not forget that the Silk Degrees sessions also benefitted from the wizardry of two godlike session guitarists, Fred Tackett and Louie Shelton, so it’s little wonder that Scaggs unplugged his plank. "It was very intimidating to me to be around the best musicians of my age, the best ones in the LA studio scene. Really, the songs and the arrangements that I was doing at that time were beyond my technical capacity to play.”
Relieved of guitar duties, Scaggs started dabbling with the piano where, on more than one occasion, his relative ineptitude led him to play in unorthodox ways (i.e. he made mistakes) that actually opened up new avenues for exploration which a more accomplished player might never even have considered.
Fortunately, in David Paich, Scaggs found himself partnered with a much more accomplished player who was open-minded enough not to dismiss Scaggs’ efforts out of hand, so the pair quickly evolved into a formidable songwriting team.
"I sat down the weekend before the sessions with Dave Paich and we came up with about three songs," Scaggs told Rolling Stone. "The rest were just skeletons when I got to the studio. The only song I had completely written before I went down to L.A. was Harbor Lights." By the time the album was completed, the duo had co-written no less than five cuts.
Lowdown, the song that would rocket Scaggs to international fame, was born that same weekend from a brief phrase Paich had played on his piano one day but, when Scaggs asked him to repeat it, he couldn’t seem to find it again until, "One day he was fooling around in the studio and I ran out and said, 'That’s it! That’s it!'" he revealed to Geoff Brown of Melody Maker. "And since it was just a little incidental piece in one of his longer pieces, he didn't mind giving up that little riff. So we worked on it one night, just started playing around with it."
More recently, Scaggs told the Songfacts website that, "We brought it back to the band and recorded it. We were just thrilled with that one. That was the first song that we attempted, and it had a magic to it."
In the Scaggs-Paich partnership, each of them had a well-defined role. "David and I put together the format for the music," remembers Scaggs. "I wrote the lyrics in all cases. David was more of an arranger. We’d sit down at the piano, and for What Can I Say?, we’d just go through it. He’d throw out the changes and I’d say, 'Yes, some of that.' Or, 'No, none of that - let’s stretch out this piece.'"
Another memorable Scaggs-Paich collaboration was the classic Lido Shuffle, of which Scaggs has said, "There was a song that Fats Domino did, called The Fat Man, that had a kind of driving shuffle beat that I used to play on the piano, and I just started kind of singing along with it. Then I showed it to Paich and he helped me fill it out. It ended up being Lido Shuffle."
Another significant element in the song, as Scaggs has pointed out, was, "the groove Jeff set up on Lido Shuffle - a classic shuffle. It's a very elusive little time that he plays. It sounds simple, but it's really not easy to execute."
With that Fats Domino-inspired shuffle overlaid with Scaggs’ irresistible "Woah-oh-oh-oh" vocal hook and Paich’s beautifully constructed twin portamento analog synthesizer break, Lido Shuffle remains a dance-floor-filler to this day. Porcaro, Hungate and Paich would go on to become the core of Toto, for whom Paich would write Africa and Rosanna, confirming that his work with Scaggs was no fluke.
Scaggs also credits Jeff Porcaro as a huge influence on Harbor Lights. "That was a songwriter presenting a song and getting back an interpretation from the musicians that wouldn't have been possible without his unique interpretation. I'd throw it out in the air, and this kindred spirit would collect it and transpose it back to me in a way that would give the song new meaning and new life."
There are no fillers to be found anywhere on Silk Degrees, but it’s definitely worth singling out We’re All Alone, a Scaggs composition, which Rita Coolidge turned into a Top 10 hit single on both sides of the Atlantic in 1977. As Coolidge recalls, "One day I was in (A+M boss) Jerry Moss' office and he said that the Boz Scaggs album Silk Degrees was in a million homes and there was a song on it that was perfect for a woman to sing. He said, 'It's called We're All Alone and as he's not doing it as a single, I think you ought to record it.'" The track has since become a perennial standard, with cover versions by Frankie Valli, The Walker Brothers, The Three Degrees and at least twenty others.
Even the album’s enigmatic title has an intriguing origin, stemming from one of Scaggs’ idiosyncratic working methods. "I have this box full of bits of paper, cocktail napkin scribblings, bits of wisdom," he explains. "I always look through it before I do an album. Silk Degrees was a phrase I'd had around in that box for a long time."
Released in March 1976, Silk Degrees was not an immediate hit. The first single, It’s Over, barely limped into the Top 40, peaking at No38, but then in June Lowdown turned Scaggs’ career around, hitting No3 in Billboard, paving the way for Lido Shuffle, winning a Grammy and turning the album into a monster that remained on the chart for 78 weeks, eventually selling over 5m copies.
Summing it all up, Scaggs has said, "Silk Degrees was an experience for me that I would wish for every musician, every creative person, because it was the fulfilment of a lot of work. It was arrival, it was finally one that really got through to a lot of people. I was ready to go."
And from David Paich’s perspective, "Silk Degrees was instrumental in launching Toto. So, I owe him a lot. That was a turning-point album. He allowed me so much freedom, and we were able to write just a whole range of things. When you put those kind of guys in the studio, and give them freedom, you end up with things like Silk Degrees. You end up with things like Toto IV.”
PRODUCTION NOTES
Silk Degrees was recorded in September 1975, mostly at Davlen Studios in Universal City, Los Angeles. Davlen, founded by entrepreneur Len Kovner, may not be the first name that springs to mind when we think of LA studios but it was undeniably among the best. As well as Boz Scaggs, it was frequented by Quincy Jones, Hall And Oates, Alice Cooper, Toto, England Dan And John Ford Coley, Fleetwood Mac, The Average White Band, Robin Trower, Al Stewart and Randy Edelman, to name but a few.
Some of the tough but gritty sound of the album is, unquestionably, down to producer Joe Wissert, of whom Scaggs said, "He’s the first producer I've worked with who wasn't primarily an engineer. He’s on top from an artistic level in that he makes songs stronger, defines melodies per se. He's aware of contemporary styles and after that he's personable, a gentleman."
But Wissert was definitely aided by the quality of Davlen’s gear, the heart of which was a 'B' Range Console designed in 1973 by audio engineer Malcolm Toft at the acclaimed Trident Studios in London. The console featured eight main output busses, virtually unheard of in the mid-seventies, and was fitted with quadraphonic (surround) bus clusters, accompanied by eight Penny And Giles automated joysticks, with four bus outputs per unit.
The combination of the right producer, studio, gear and musicians came together so that, in Scaggs’ own words, "Musically, I discovered a whole new ground, a whole new footing for myself. I fell into a group of musicians who really understood my music and were able to lend their talents to getting it out of my head and onto the record. It was a very fulfilling experience."
It has long been rumoured that The Beatles recorded five songs at Davlen in 1976, during an attempted re-union, but Len Kovner has emphatically and consistently denied this story.
Some recording for Silk Degrees was also undertaken at Hollywood Sound, 6361 Selma Ave, Los Angeles. Better known than Davlen, Hollywood Sound was established in 1965 by sound engineer Jesse Hodges, and subsequently was passed on to his son Jonathan Hodges. Hollywood Sound has always enjoyed a great reputation and has been used over the years by everybody from by The Doors to Prince, Michael Jackson, Madonna, Frank Sinatra, Jackson Browne and The Red Hot Chili Peppers.
(Feature by Johnny Black, first published in Hi Fi News)
ADDITIONAL QUOTES....
David Leishman (reviewer, Rolling Stone) : Last year's Slow Dancer, like his classic first album, suggested that Boz Scaggs might break out of his San Francisco Bay Area cult to a larger national following. Dancer wasn't a radical departure from his earlier recordings, but for the first time Scaggs played no instrument, concentrating instead on singing.
Joe Wissert has replaced Johnny Bristol as producer, but Silk Degrees, although blander, is similar in style to its predecessor. Georgia, a smoky ballad, lets Boz soar into the Fifties harmony he's recently discovered; his beautiful voice could easily hold its own on any street corner in New York. But Jump Street points up the dilemma in the decision not to play guitar on record. While similar in form to Dime a Dance Romance, from his Steve Miller days, it lacks drive and focus: where Romance was propelled by Scagg's singing and playing, Jump Street just meanders without an instrumental counterpoint to Boz's singing. It probably isn't the session players' fault; Scaggs simply doesn't feel comfortable when singing rock and roll without his guitar.
Without solid rock as a base, Scaggs's more diverse approach falters. He sings well in the disco fashion, but the tunes don't have the meat to complement the first-rate ballads. We're All Alone expresses the right mood at the album's close, but it would have shone brighter had Lido Shuffle, which preceded it, been more distinguished. To become as big a force as his is a talent, Boz Scaggs needs to reintroduce his own rock and roll.
Billboard magazine review : A mixed bag of material, and it's all well handled by Scaggs, backup singers and band. AM and FM will each have their pick of cuts. Black radio might even jump on the bandwagon with a cut like "What Can I Say." The writing/arranging team of Scaggs and David Paich score throughout. Expect Scagg's followers to be pleased, while the uninitiated get turned on.