Four decades fly by as Boz Scaggs strikes huge chord at Flynn
By Paul Kaza, Free Press Correspondent
Forty years fly by when you’re having fun. Boz Scaggs released his first solo album in 1970, and he gave us some of the finest fruits of his labors Tuesday night at the Flynn Center.
Scaggs was a darling of the mid-‘70s, turning out a crop of best-selling singles that became “sing-along standards” and sold millions of albums just as pop was starting to shift into high disco gear. I’ve always felt that Scaggs was unfairly ruled “guilty by association” amongst purists who couldn’t deal with his music being so commercially viable. They preferred his earliest days playing guitar with Steve Miller, and his blues tinged materials.
Would we hear any blues? Could he still play the way he used to? Was his voice still strong? Yes, yes, and yes (considering how high a vocal range he employs). Probably the biggest surprise was that he did not play nor promote his entirely new foray into jazz standards, and only pulled one song (“Thanks to You”) from the outstanding 2001 release “Dig.”
“Jo Jo” got things under way, and it seemed for a moment that the singer, band and crowd all needed to get settled in a bit. The only real stage energy came from Scaggs’ outstanding female backup vocalist. “Hercules,” written by Allen Toussaint, was surprising; we wondered whether Scaggs knew Toussaint had just been here at the Discover Jazz Festival. “Slow Dancer” was another low key choice, but evoked the lovely visual associations of that songwriting period.
Scaggs showed throughout that he still has guitar chops that are easy to call on, and stepped up the tempo as he lit into “Lowdown” and “Miss Sun” before relenting to the romantic “Look What You’ve Done to Me.” It seemed he had conserved his vocal energy for the finale and nailed the top end in a blistering version of “Breakdown Dead Ahead.” This song had the challenge of standing up to the multiple hits that originated with “Silk Degrees.” The crowd was on its feet, and Scaggs obliged with a two-part encore, including mega hits “What Can I Say” and “Georgia” before returning the music full circle to his very first solo release. Back then, he was dueling with Duane Allman in a session down in Muscle Shoals — and he has never really stopped ascending since.
Scaggs has evolved from simply a blues guy (early days) to a notable songwriter/hitmaker (mid-career), and then made not one but two big comebacks late in his career. There are very, very few musicians who have pulled that off. And, in Vermont for the first-time ever, Scaggs slowly yet steadily set the night on fire. The embers will glow long past morning.
