Mike Brooks
Audio By Carbonatix
One thing is clear after looking around the audience walking into a Boz Scaggs: This is not a musician who resonates much with the under-50 crowd. Really, it’s a shame.
While the 79-year-old musician’s best years may have passed by decades ago, the St. Mark’s School of Texas alumnus and jazz rock icon Boz Scaggs proved that his music was timeless Saturday night.
The lights fell black at 8:06 p.m. with the crowd of the Winspear Opera House coming to a roar at the sight of the singer bearing his cherry-red Fender guitar, standing in front of a six-man band, complete with two percussionists, a keyboardist, a guitar, a bass and a horn player.
Scaggs’ catalog runs deep, spanning nearly 20 albums and six decades. The singer, songwriter and guitarist stuck close to his hits, with just enough new material to keep it interesting and a couple deep cuts just for the hometown crowd.
Scaggs opened with “What Can I Say” from his multi-platinum, Grammy Award for Album of the Year-nominated 1976 album, Silk Degrees, which he recorded with the studio band that would become Toto. One switch to a tan, hollow-bodied Gibson and Scaggs began “Jojo,” from the platinum-selling, 1980 album Middle Man.
Keeping up with Scaggs’ guitars became difficult throughout the show as the musician seemed to have a different guitar selected for each of the night’s songs.
Though Scaggs had visibly aged, his voice has maintained its blue-eyed soul with surprising clarity. The same is true of Scaggs’ guitar prowess. Wrinkled though they may have become, Scaggs’ fingers lit up the fretboard as the singer played through his soul-blues standards.
Scaggs began with “Drowning in the Sea of Love,” a cover of soul singer Joe Simon’s 1972 hit, a song Scaggs has performed live at concerts for years and even contributed to the 1991 The New York Rock and Soul Revue: Live at the Beacon compilation.
Next was a cover of blues singer Bobby “Blue” Bland’s minor hit from 1963, “The Feeling Is Gone,” from his latest album, , Out of the Bluesthe last of a trilogy beginning with Memphis in 2013 and A Fool to Care in 2015. Scaggs acknowledged that Bland’s music had been a huge inspiration for many musicians with whom he’d come up.
Scaggs followed with another song from Out of the Blues, “Just Got to Know” – a song Jimmy McCracklin recorded in 1962 for his own Art-Tone label in Oakland that made it to No. 2 on the R&B chart. Scaggs let guitar player Michael Miller take the lead for the song’s finale, drawing many cheers from the audience.
In the introduction to “Miss Riddle,” one of six songs Scaggs composed with his longtime friend and Toto keyboardist David Paich for the album Dig (which was unfortunately released Sept. 11, 2001), Scaggs acknowledged the song’s other Dallas connection.
“This song is notable for a special reason tonight,” Scaggs said. “The horn arrangements were done by a young man named Roy Hargrove, Jr., who learned his trade here in Dallas, Texas. He went to your, what’s that artists’ school?”
The audience was quick to call out Booker T. Washington High School for the Performing and Visual Arts, located just across the street from the Winspear.
“He made a name for himself around the world,” Scaggs continued. “He passed away unfortunately about three years ago having made a number of records and establishing himself as a major, major jazz figure. He will be missed, but we’ll remember him tonight with the horn arrangement we did here. Eric Crystal will embellish it.”
And embellish it he did, with his saxophone weeping then rising through the song’s end.
Scaggs would acknowledge Paitch in the next song of the evening, “Miss Sun,” a 1977, non-album single that would only find a home in 1980 on Scaggs’ Hits! compilation.
The next song needed no introduction. The drums hit, the bassline followed, then came the synthesized flute sound that confirmed for everyone in the audience that “Lowdown,” Scaggs’ biggest hit, was coming. The song was the first of a medley of songs from Silk Degrees, followed by the sorrowful “Harbor Lights” – a track that highlighted the talents of every musician on the stage – and the upbeat “Georgia.”
The drums hit, the bassline followed, then came the synthesized flute sound that confirmed for everyone in the audience that “Lowdown,” Scaggs’ biggest hit, was coming.
The night’s singalong moment came when Scaggs sang the ballad “Look What You’ve Done to Me,” from the movie Urban Cowboy’s soundtrack in 1980, and really, how could anyone who’s experienced heartbreak not sing along with “Love, look what you’ve done to me / Never thought I’d fall again so easily”?
The ballad was followed by “another love song of sorts,” “Radiator 110,” one of four originals Scaggs wrote with blues musician and friend Jack “Applejack” Walroth for Out of the Blues.
The penultimate song of the night was the penultimate track of his second, self-titled album, “Loan Me a Dime,” a cover of bluesman Fenton Robinson’s signature song “Somebody Loan Me a Dime.”
Scaggs closed the night with “Lido Shuffle” from Silk Degrees, a song that many in the audience had been calling for from the show’s start time. The song’s celebratory nature provided a nice close to show as everyone sang to the song’s “Oh-Woah-Oh-Ohs.”
The band left the stage, but quickly returned for an encore. Scaggs came back to the microphone saying that Dallas, “has always been a special stop on the tours for me. It’s the city I grew up in. Tonight is particularly special because I have a lot of friends and relatives here tonight.”
The encore began with “It’s Over” from Silk Degrees, but Scaggs followed it with a song that the band rarely plays live. It was another song with horn arrangements by Hargrove, the sorrowful “Thanks to You” from Dig.
Closing with “Breakdown Dead Ahead” from Middle Man, Scaggs brought back that feeling of celebration. Just as the hometown show had been a special night for Scaggs, it was just as special for those in attendance.
