Boz Scaggs

Who says album titles matter? For Boz Scaggs, for instance, coming up with a name for the record is the last thing on the to-do list once the recording is finished. Who cares, in short. And rightly so, one might add, since in his case, even though the titles are often extremely simple or, indeed, the product of off-the-cuff choices, the words still manage, almost miraculously, to capture the essence of his work. It's remarkable, too, that the most absurd title Scaggs ever picked ended up belonging to his masterpiece. Because "Silk Degrees" would theoretically mean something like "degrees of silk," but in truth the American singer-songwriter and guitarist from Canton, Ohio decided at the time to use those two words with no serious intent whatsoever, so much so that he later admitted: "It was just something I'd scribbled in the margin of a page."

The seventh LP by one of the most important artists of the notorious blue-eyed soul scene, and indeed of the whole yacht rock lineage, arrived in 1976, eleven years after his rough-edged debut, "Boz", and seven after his self-titled second album, with which Scaggs first revealed to the world the full extent of his charisma and, above all, his sublime voice, marked by a twofold quality: warm like the great soul singers of Motown, yet at the same time as gentle as many folk storytellers of the late 60s. It's a stylistic duality that runs through other facets of his sound too, resurfacing time and again throughout the career of this American musician, raised between Oklahoma and Texas.

If Boz Scaggs's early records tended to engage mostly with the soul spirit of the Motown and Stax legends, with "Silk Degrees" things evolve in surprising fashion. Boz morphs into an entirely new hybrid: on one hand, there's a recurring pull towards orchestral touches that never overwhelm, seasoning virtually all ten songs on the record, while on the other, the rhythm section gets punchier, especially the bass, often crackling with energy, as on the album's first gem, "What Can I Say", one of those tracks capable of merging Paul Anka and Curtis Mayfield in one fell swoop, and also one of the most memorable opening tracks of 1976, and beyond.

It should also be said that Scaggs has repeatedly been credited with actively contributing to the formation of Toto, to be clear: one of the most important bands in the entire history of music.

On "Silk Degrees" the players are, in fact, David Paich, David Hungate and Jeff Porcaro. The three obviously already knew each other, and had already played together on seminal records such as Pretzel Logic by Steely Dan. However, it was precisely their meeting with Scaggs that fuelled the dream of forming a band of their own, a dream that took shape in particular during the tour alongside their friend Boz. So much so that shortly afterwards Paich stated: "I'm not sure Toto would have come together so soon, or in the same way, without 'Silk Degrees'."

Produced by Jon Wissert and recorded across two Los Angeles studios, Davlen Sound Studios and Hollywood Sound Recorders, "Silk Degrees" stands, alongside other yacht gems such as Bobby Caldwell's self-titled album, released two years later, and above all Steely Dan's "Aja", also released just a year afterwards, as one of the undisputed masterpieces of a genre that aimed to blend elements of funk and soul with jazz-inflected touches and carefully calibrated pop-rock excursions, at times meant to ease the mood and smooth everything over in the name of a style that is, at least on paper, immensely alluring.

In this sense, the memorable cover photograph taken by Moshe Brakha of Scaggs in Avalon perfectly captures the magnetic yet dreamlike atmosphere that permeates "Silk Degrees", notwithstanding its resemblance to other, earlier covers of a similar kind, such as the first "Greatest Hits" by Abba, which immortalises Agnetha Fältskog and Anni-Frid Lyngstad also seated on a bench, though not turned to the side like Scaggs, and specifically without any suggestive details, such as a woman's well-groomed hand emerging from the opposite side, hinting at the start of something, just as the ocean looming in the background could carry an equally metaphorical meaning. Heavily inspired by Brakha's shot was, four years later, the cover photo of "I'll Need Someone To Hold Me When I Cry", the album by Janie Fricke released in 1980.

"Silk Degrees" yielded four hit singles: the unforgettable "It's Over", with its sticky, once again orchestrally-flavoured refrain, the driving "Lowdown", which would not have been at all out of place on the tracklist of "Superfly", the already-mentioned "What Can I Say" and "Lido Shuffle", plus the achingly sweet "We're All Alone", which Rita Coolidge, a friend and former backing vocalist for Scaggs, carried to the top of the charts in 1977. "Lowdown", moreover, also won a Grammy Award for best r&b song, shared by Scaggs with the track's co-author David Paich. Worth mentioning too is John Travolta, who chose to choreograph his hugely famous dance in "Saturday Night Fever" to the strains of that very same "Lowdown".

What makes "Silk Degrees" a truly era-defining album, though, is its dizzying alternation of soft rock moments, such as the monumental love ballad "Harbor Lights", with its refrain fit for a hand-in-hand stroll through Central Park or a sunset walk on some West Coast beach, alongside others with a sparkling Broadway-operetta feel like the effervescent "Lido Shuffle", and still others delivered with the poise of a seasoned soulman, like "What Do You Want The Girl To Do", co-written by Scaggs with Allen Toussaint, right through to the irresistible "Georgia", yet another epic passage on a record of endless, timeless class.

"Silk Degrees" would be followed by potential successors such as "Middle Man" in 1980 and sudden forays into Aor territory, like the unlikely "Other Roads" from 1988. To find anything comparable, however, one has to go further back in time, to 1972, when with "My Time" the American singer-songwriter, despite being closer at the time to the so-called San Francisco Sound, laid the groundwork for what, four years later, would become his unreachable masterpiece.

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02/05/2026