Boz Scaggs
July 4 at 8 p.m. | Hard Rock Casino Vancouver
Tickets and info: starting from $69.50 at HardRockCasinoVancouver.com
1 Silk Degrees. Lowdown, Lido Shuffle, We’re All Alone — these singles took Boz Scaggs’ 1976 album Silk Degrees to #2 on the Billboard album sales chart. By then, Scaggs had already been in the music biz for over 10 years — he’d released his first solo album in 1965, and recorded and played with the Steve Miller Band. Silk Degrees went on to sell over four million copies. Fun fact #1: the album was recorded with session musicians who would go on to form Toto.
2 A Fool to Care. The 71-yearold singer’s latest album, A Fool to Care, features duets with Lucinda Williams (on Whispering Pines, a song by The Band) and Bonnie Raitt. The record showcases the musical influence of Texas, Louisiana and even Oklahoma. Reviewers have praised the record’s sense of fun.
3 Other hits. Silk Degrees wasn’t Scaggs’ only hit machine — there was also the 1980 album Middle Man, which gave radio the songs Breakdown Dead Ahead and Jojo. And let’s not forget Look What You’ve Done to Me, from the soundtrack to the 1980 movie Urban Cowboy. Remember when mechanical bulls were a thing?
4 Memphis. On his critically acclaimed 2013 album Memphis, Scaggs had the good taste to cover tracks by Willy DeVille (of the great but nearly forgotten R&B/rock band Mink DeVille, 1976-1984), as well as Moon Martin (who wrote Bad Case of Loving You (Doctor, Doctor), a 1979 hit for Robert Palmer) and Steely Dan.
5 Dukes of September. Scaggs’ connection with the mighty Dan doesn’t end with a cover song. He has also toured with Dukes of September, a group that includes Michael McDonald and Steely Dan’s Donald Fagen.