Explore popular quotes and sayings by an American musician Boz Scaggs.
Last updated on December 18, 2024.
William Royce "Boz" Scaggs is an American singer, songwriter, and guitarist. An early bandmate of Steve Miller in The Ardells and the Steve Miller Band, he began his solo career in 1969, though he lacked a major hit until his 1976 album Silk Degrees peaked at number 2 on the Billboard 200, and produced the hit singles "Lido Shuffle" and "Lowdown". Scaggs produced two more platinum-certified albums in Down Two Then Left and Middle Man, the latter of which produced two top-40 singles "Breakdown Dead Ahead" and "Jojo". After a hiatus for most of the 1980s, he returned to recording and touring in 1988, joining The New York Rock and Soul Revue and opening the nightclub Slim's, a popular San Francisco music venue until it closed in 2020. He has continued to record and tour throughout the 1990s, 2000s, and 2010s, with his most recent album being 2018's Out of the Blues.
As far as other instrumentalists, I used to love mellow sax players like Paul Desmond. I love piano.
I felt that, in retrospect, there was a time in the late Seventies, after I had a string of hits and successes, as a performer and a recording artist, that I wasn't saying anything.
My parents were music lovers and collectors. It was around.
I really just followed my musical instincts every step of my life.
I think the women - Lauryn Hill, Mary J. Blige, Erykah Badu - are doing new conceptual things and using their voices to create new American music.
There is not a lot that keeps me glued to the radio as I used to be.
My songwriting and my style became more complex as I listened, learned, borrowed and stole and put my music together.
My earliest influences were things I heard in my household.
I am not a jazz singer. I wouldn't place myself on that footing. I wouldn't even enter that arena.
I'm easily distracted by other things in the world around me.
The short answer is, yes, I think I have become a better singer.
I was a guitar player first off.
I think that it can be said of a lot of artists, and myself included, that we made the same record over and over from the beginning.
I'm not a jazz singer.
I'm still trying to re-create a Ray Charles concert that I heard when I was fifteen years old, and all my nerve endings were fried and transformed, and electricity shot through me.
I listened to classical guitar and Spanish guitar, as well as jazz guitar players, rock and roll and blues. All of it. I did the same thing with my voice.
I would say that I'm finding my voice in more ways than one.
My first love was the sound of guitar.
This is a cause that musicians can take to heart because one of our main reasons for being is to share our music with other people, and this takes us to people who probably wouldn't otherwise get to hear music on quite this level.
Quite frankly, I've always listened to the black side of the radio dial. Where I grew up, there was a lot of it and there was a lot of live music around.
I feel fortunate that I was able to step away from it when I wasn't interested.
There's a whole lot of songs that men just can't do. The words are from another time and represent too much of an emotional commitment, whereas women can say that because of who they are.
A lot of what I have always done is do other singers.
From the time I moved to San Francisco in 1967 to play with the Steve Miller Band, there was a lot of support in the music community for one cause or another, but this one was special because it was put on by people who understood where musicians' hearts are.
I love all kinds of music.
As a guitar player, you can gravitate to the blues because you can play it easily. It's not a style that's difficult to pick up. It's purely emotive and dead easy to get a start with.
I love working with the quartet. I have more freedom and flexibility.
From the time I moved to San Francisco in 1967 to play with the Steve Miller Band, there was a lot of support in the music community for one cause or another, but this one was special because it was put on by people who understood where musicians hearts are.