If you were going to make a list of albums that define the Yacht Rock aesthetic, Silk Degrees by Boz Scaggs would have to rank way up there near the top. And it’s likely that album wouldn’t have made anywhere near the impact it did if it weren’t for the smash single “Lowdown.”
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What is “Lowdown” about? How did Scaggs bring the song and album to life with the finest session players on the West Coast? And why was this song almost overlooked as a single? Let’s get the truth, or as the song says, the dirty lowdown, about this Yacht Rock must-have.
Degrees of Success
At the beginning of 1976, Boz Scaggs wasn’t someone you would have predicted would release one of the most impactful albums of the upcoming year. After getting his start in the ’60s working with Steve Miller, Scaggs had moved on to a solo career in the following decade. But he was a bit hard to categorize, falling somewhere in between rock, soul, and singer/songwriter.
Although he built up a nice fan following, sales on his solo albums were weak. He wondered at times if he would better off doing something else as a career. A 1974 album entitled Slow Dancer, which found him working with Motown pros, was a hoped-for breakthrough. But that didn’t happen.
Still, the experience of working on that record with top session players had inspired Scaggs. He decided to do that again for his next LP, only this time he’d change his base of operations to the West Coast. His label, Columbia Records, pared him with the cream of the crop of session pros for the record.
Scaggs took to writing with keyboardist David Paich. The pair co-wrote half of the tracks on Silk Degrees, including “Lowdown.” Paich’s various synthesizer textures give “Lowdown” much of its musical flavor, along with the dance floor-ready rhythm served up by bassist David Hungate and drummer Jeff Porcaro. Paich, Hungate, and Porcaro would soon start up their own band, a little outfit called Toto that would soon become a hitmaking machine in its own right.
With Silk Degrees, Scaggs floated between genres, sometimes mashing them up from moment to moment. While that was once perceived as a career weakness, he made it into a strength on that album with the help of these studio pros. But the album’s massive success almost didn’t happen.
Although Scaggs and his studio cohorts loved “Lowdown,” they didn’t hear it as a single. The first single off the record, “It’s Over,” barely cracked the Top 40, and it looked like Scaggs was headed for another disappointment. Luckily, a Cleveland DJ locked onto “Lowdown,” playing it often. That convinced the record company to send it out as a single, and its success (No. 3 on the Billboard pop charts) opened up the floodgates on the album’s popularity.
What is the Meaning of “Lowdown”?
The title “Lowdown” serves a dual purpose. On the one hand, it reflects the narrator’s willingness to give frank advice to the person he’s addressing. But it also refers to this person’s proclivity for trying to buy his way to happiness. That includes trying to win over a girl by showering her with expensive gifts: Sayin’ you bought her this and that and how much you done spent / I swear she must believe it’s all heaven sent.
All along, the narrator hints that this dude can’t see the mistakes he’s making: Turn on that old lovelight and turn a “Maybe” into a “Yes” / Same old schoolboy game got you into this mess. He lacks the perspective to see how deep he’s getting: Got to have a jones for this, jones for that / This runnin’ with the Joneses, boy, just ain’t where it’s at.
Only when it all blows up in his face will he realize the error of his ways: You’re gonna come back around / To the sad, sad truth / The dirty lowdown. Scaggs sings it all with a mix of hipster cool and soulful emotion. That formula carried him an awful long way on “Silk Degrees,” and “Lowdown” served as the smooth springboard.
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