If all you know of William Royce “Boz” Scaggs is his 1970’s dance/groove music like “Lido Shuffle” and “Lowdown” (as excellent as that is), you’re missing a gigantic chapter of his life as a musician and performer.
Boz first hit the music radar screen as a result of his boyhood friendship with none other than RARHOFer Steve Miller. The boys met at, of all places, a Dallas prep school, where Steve taught Boz how to pay guitar. The two became such good friends that they attended college together (University of Wisconsin-Madison. Go Badgers!)
Boz dropped out of school and traveled throughout Europe, supporting himself by busking is such cities as London, Amsterdam and Stockholm. He even recorded his debut album, entitled, naturally, Boz.
Steve tracked him down, sending him a postcard to come join his band in San Francisco. After just about year as bandmates, the two no longer saw eye to eye or heard ear to ear, so Boz went back on his own. But, during his SF days, he made an important and powerful friend: Mr. Jann Wenner, who you know, of course, as the founder of Rolling Stone.
Wenner arranged for Boz to record with the legendary Muscle Shoals rhythm section. Wenner was also able to convince Duane Allman to come back to Alabama to join the band. (He was living in Macon, Georgia, getting the Allman Brothers Bank ready to record their debut). The resulting collaboration, released the day after Woodstock, was his second eponymous album, Boz Scaggs.
The album, like many of its time, is a warm, rocking grab bag of styles and genres. While never a big seller, the album has always been a critics’ darling. In 2012, it even snuck into the very bottom of Rolling Stone’s list of top 500 albums, at 496.
The song that really makes this album a classic, though, is the cover of “Somebody Loan Me a Dime” by Mississippi-to-Chicago blues guitar man Fenton Robinson.
On the album, “Loan Me a Dime” clocks in around 12 minutes…boiled down from the over 40-minute jam session that birthed it. The song previews some of the hallmarks of the earlier, more blues-based albums of the Allman Brothers. It starts with an extended organ solo courtesy of Muscle Shoals’ Berry Beckett, playing off and dueling with some strong piano chords. Duane Allman checks in at the 1:20 mark, soft and gentle, giving us a preview of coming attractions. (He dominates the final third of the song with some of his best-ever session work … right up there with his work for Aretha Franklin and Wilson Pickett’s cover of “Hey Jude”.)
Boz largely completes his singing at around 7:30—but his rhythm guitar work is essential to the rest of the song. The band keeps things at a steady tempo … giving Duane the foundation he needs to gradually increase his attack. Other great things are happening, swirling around Allman – most notably the steady, insistent repetition of the horn riff.
Everything kicks into overdrive at around the 10-minute mark. As great as his playing was up to this point, this is where Duane Allman really makes his mark as perhaps the best white blues guitarist we’ve ever had. As the song fades out, the band is still blazing, making us feel that, even at 12 minutes, the song is much too short.
“Loan Me a Dime” is, quite simply, one of the best “blues rock” songs ever recorded. It’s also one you’re very likely never to have heard. The picture of Boz Scaggs as a musician’s musician has been supplanted by that of the slick crooner of Silk Degrees, so his blues work doesn’t fit the frame
But “Loan Me a Dime”? Well, that can be our little secret.