Silk Degrees

Silk Degrees is the seventh solo album by Boz Scaggs, released on Columbia Records in February 1976. The album peaked at No. 2 and spent 115 weeks on the Billboard 200. It has been certified five times platinum by the RIAA and remains Scaggs's best selling album.

Silk Degrees spawned four singles. "It's Over" (No. 38), "Lowdown" (No. 3) and "Lido Shuffle" (No. 11) made the Top 40, while "What Can I Say" peaked at No. 42.

Production
The album was recorded at Davlen Sound Studios and Hollywood Sound Recorders in Los Angeles. Among the accompanying musicians, David Paich, Jeff Porcaro, and David Hungate became members of Toto, while Fred Tackett became a member of Little Feat. The album marked Scaggs's commercial zenith, a mix of pop rock ("Jump Street" and "Lido Shuffle"), soul ("What Can I Say" and "Lowdown"), and ballads ("Harbor Lights" and "We're All Alone", which became a hit for Rita Coolidge). Scaggs wrote "Jump Street" 10 minutes before recording it, only having a rough idea of the lyrics. He stated he'd scream out words that "worked phonetically".

Title and cover art
Scaggs recalled that the album's title "was just something I had scribbled on the side of a page. The last thing I do after I record an album is name it. Silk Degrees doesn't mean anything specifically. It's just an image I couldn't get out of my head."

The front cover photograph was by Moshe Brakha of Scaggs at Casino Point, Avalon, California.

Release and reception
"Lowdown" reached the top 5 on the club play, black, disco, and pop charts and also did respectably on the AC chart, with its peak at number 3 on the pop chart. The song is an airplay staple to this day, particularly on AC, oldies, and smooth jazz radio stations. "It's Over", "What Can I Say", and "Lido Shuffle" reached numbers 38, 42 and 11, respectively, on the pop chart. At the Grammy Awards of 1977, "Lowdown" won the Grammy for Best R&B Song. Scaggs also received nominations for Album of the Year, Best LP Package, Best Pop Vocal by a Male, and Best R&B Vocal Performance by a Male for "Lowdown" and Joe Wissert received a nomination for Producer of the Year.

Reviewing for The Village Voice in 1976, Robert Christgau praised the album as "white soul with a sense of humor that isn't consumed in self-parody." The Leader-Post determined that, "occasionally, the melodies and arrangements ... are rather too perfected, and fall into soulful anonymity." Alex Henderson of music database website AllMusic wrote that Scaggs "hit the R&B charts in a big way with the addictive, sly 'Lowdown' [...] and expressed his love of smooth soul music almost as well on the appealing 'What Can I Say'", nonetheless noting that "Scaggs was essentially a pop/rocker, and in that area he has a considerable amount of fun". Henderson found that while the more adult contemporary-leaning ballads are less remarkable, they "have more heart than most of the bland material dominating that format."

On February 27, 2007, Silk Degrees was reissued by Legacy Records with three bonus tracks recorded live at the Greek Theatre on August 15, 1976.

Track listing
Side one

Side two

Personnel

 * Boz Scaggs – lead vocals, guitars, backing vocals (4, 7, 8)
 * David Paich – arrangements, acoustic piano (1-4, 7-10), Hohner clavinet (2), Fender Rhodes (5-8), Moog synthesizer (5, 6, 9), ARP synthesizer (6), Minimoog (6, 8, 9), Hammond organ (6, 9), Wurlitzer electric piano (7, 8), harpsichord (7)
 * Fred Tackett – guitars
 * Les Dudek – slide guitar (3)
 * Louis Shelton – guitars, slide guitar (8), acoustic guitar (10)
 * David Hungate – bass
 * Jeff Porcaro – drums, percussion (4), timbales (8)
 * Joe Porcaro – percussion (1, 3)
 * Plas Johnson – tenor saxophone solo (1), saxophone (8)
 * Jim Horn – tenor saxophone (4)
 * Bud Shank – saxophone (8)
 * Chuck Findley – flugelhorn solo (5)
 * Sid Sharp – string conductor and concertmaster
 * Vincent DeRosa, Jim Horn, Paul Hubinon, Dick Hyde, Plas Johnson, Tom Scott and Bud Shank – horns
 * Jim Gilstrap – backing vocals (1, 6),
 * Augie Johnson – backing vocals (1, 6)
 * Marty McCall – backing vocals (1, 6)
 * Carolyn Willis – backing vocals (1, 6)
 * Maxine Green – backing vocals (4, 7, 8)
 * Pepper Swenson – backing vocals (4)

Production personnel
 * Joe Wissert – production
 * Tom Perry – engineering
 * Doug Sax – mastering at The Mastering Lab (Los Angeles, CA).
 * Ron Caro – design
 * Nancy Donald – design
 * Moshe Brakha – photography