Sorry I Shocked You!

Tweet

Yesterday I posted a discussion in which I praised Steve Miller to the moon and the stars for calling out the Schlock and Bowl Hall of Shame for the way they've treated commercially successful but critically panned acts, female artists, and the people who are inducted. In the course of the discussion I mentioned something that I thought was common knowledge: Boz Scaggs, of "Lowdown" and "Lido Shuffle" fame, was a member of the Steve Miller Band. Nope, that's not common knowledge. Sorry I shocked you with that piece of trivia! Boz, who was born in Ohio, and Steve, who was born in Milwaukee, met up when they both attended St. Mark's High School in suburban Dallas. They were in a band together called the Marksmen. Steve (who's a year older than Boz) graduated and went back to Wisconsin to go to college for a year. Boz went to Scandinavia and made an album that still hasn't "officially" seen the light of day in the U.S. Boz moved back to the US in 1967 and went to San Francisco, where he hooked up with Steve. Steve formed the "Steve Miller Blues Band," later just the Steve Miller Band. As many of the acts in the San Francisco music scene in the mid-60s did, Miller got a record deal and began releasing albums. His first two albums, Children of the Future and Sailor, featured Boz on guitar and lead vocals on a total of four songs. Even after Boz left the Steve Miller Band he had an influence. Boz and Steve wrote a song together, "Going to Mexico," which ended up on Miller's album Number 5. How ironic that these two former band mates ended up with two of the biggest albums of 1976! Miller's Fly Like an Eagle is perhaps his defining album, and Scaggs' Silk Degrees was his breakthrough album, featuring the Grammy-winning "Lowdown." Here's one of my favorite Boz Scaggs songs, recorded in 1968 while he was part of the Steve Miller Band.