“I’m tired of that.” The line of work did not come naturally: He had already quit playing guitar in the studio, turning his parts over to more qualified session musicians he didn’t enjoy life on the road and resisted embarking on major tours. “Maybe people need heroes?” he offered in 1978. In his early 30s when it was released, he quickly grew tired of giving interviews and presenting himself as the sleek, solitary, well-dressed icon from his album covers. Within five years of the release of Silk Degrees, he would retire from the music industry-and not in the casual sense of working behind the scenes, making quieter records for smaller audiences, but in the more literal sense of retreating, spending time with his family, starting that restaurant and concert venue he’d always dreamed about.Įven as Silk Degrees slowly took over the world, casting Scaggs as one of the most successful figures in pop music in the late ’70s, he never had much interest in fame. Before its release, he was largely a critical favorite, first for his contributions to an early, underrated iteration of the Steve Miller Band, and later for the solid if slightly anonymous albums under his own name. If you know Silk Degrees but don’t know much about Boz Scaggs, it is at least partially by design. “It was an enormous satisfaction to have a hit record,” he would say decades later, “and I wish it at least once for every musician.” None of his albums before or after reached the same level of success, and while he’d have his share of hits (especially on 1980’s Middle Man) and artistic achievements (2001’s Dig, 2013’s Memphis), his career in the mainstream is largely defined by the meticulous, glimmering sound of these 10 songs. After it hit, the Ohio-born, Texas-bred, California-based songwriter described his ascent to stardom with the quiet contentment one finds after a long vacation, or a particularly inspiring ayahuasca trip. Some albums belong to everybody.īoz Scaggs’ seventh solo album, released just after Valentine’s Day 1976, is one such album. There are certain albums that go down so smoothly-inhaling the busy sounds of pop radio and exhaling their own cool, irresistible blend-that they seem to open a permanent slot in the greater public consciousness, sailing like a ship into a harbor in the clouds. It is not in great condition, and it is not expensive, and it was first owned by someone at a time when a lot of people owned vinyl records-and a lot of those people owned Silk Degrees. Whoever you are, wherever you are, as you read this sentence, a used vinyl copy of Silk Degrees is sitting in the closest record store to you.
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