For the Sake of the Song: Boz Scaggs “Loan Me A Dime”

When most people hear the name Boz Scaggs, the stylish singer who recorded multi-platinum albums “Slow Dancer” in 1974 and “Silk Degrees” in 1976 for Columbia Records, songs like ‘Lowdown,’ ‘What Can I Say’ and ‘Lido Shuffle’ come to mind. They became huge hits, vying for top chart positions with Springsteen’s ‘Born to Run,’ Fleetwood Mac’s ‘Rhiannon’ and other radio staples of the mid-1970s such as ‘Fame,’ ‘Someone Saved My Life Tonight,’ ‘Magic Man’ and ‘Tush.’ His slick soul grooves were on constant play mode in my head back then.

In July of 1977, I travelled from Massachusetts to New York City to see Scaggs perform, backed by the same impeccable band that had recorded those classic albums at Hollywood Sound Studios. David Paich, David Hungate and the late drummer Jeff Porcaro brought in Steve Porcaro, named the band Toto and parlayed that success into a contract with Columbia. The show was being held at the Lincoln Center’s Avery Fisher Hall, however, the lights went out after just three songs and stayed out like one of then heavyweight champion Muhammad Ali’s challengers taking a 10-count. Fifteen minutes later in inky darkness, Boz came back on stage following the flame of a cigarette lighter and announced that the show was over and would be rescheduled. But the night of the New York City blackout belongs to a story for another time.

Back it up to 1968 when Scaggs parted ways with the Steve Miller Band after their second album (“Sailor”) was finished. In his words from an interview: “It wasn’t a band, which is why I became a bit disenchanted working in it. I didn’t play on any of Steve’s songs and on my songs, Steve didn’t even bother to come into the studio.”

Scaggs stuck around San Francisco biding his time until the next opportunity knocked on his door, which literally happened when a neighbour, Jann Wenner, who was in the process of starting up “Rolling Stone”, suggested making a record together. Atlantic Records signed Boz to a contract and packed he and Wenner off to a recording studio located in Sheffield, a northwestern Alabama whistle-stop town along the Tennessee River. That’s where they sent many of their top hitmakers: Aretha Franklin, Wilson Pickett, Sam & Dave and Percy Sledge, who recorded his smash hit ‘Take Time to Know Her’ just a few weeks before Scaggs and Wenner showed up. The aged concrete block building had once been a showroom for coffins. For reasons too complicated to explain here, the studio was named Muscle Shoals, another small town less than a mile down Jackson Highway from Sheffield.

I used to wonder how the notoriously laconic Scaggs got along with the energetic Wenner, who was juggling the production of an album with several other projects besides getting Rolling Stone off the ground. Apparently Scaggs was something of a procrastinator, so Wenner needed to find ways to move things along. The studio had been pushing out one album a week. Time is money and Jerry Wexler, one of the partners at Atlantic, hadn’t handed him a blank check.

Pairing Scaggs with the tight as Spandex on a fast-food junkie Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section was a genius move. Keyboard player Barry Beckett co-wrote two of the nine tracks on Scaggs’ eponymous album. The other session musicians were bassist David Hood, drummer Roger Hawkins, fiddler Al Lester, and guitarists Eddie Hinton and Jimmy Johnson. Four tracks (‘Finding Her’ and the three covers) featured dobro and slide guitar by the extraordinary Duane Allman. It was his innate talent for choosing notes carefully while being capable of mashing the accelerator when necessary that enhanced any song he played on.

The week of recording sessions blew by like a high school party, where you piece together the events afterwards from blurry photos scattered over the floor. Scaggs recalled that their studio time was nearly up and they were strapped for a ninth track. He suggested a song he once heard from Chicago bluesman Fenton Robinson on an Alligator Records album. It was the only song on the album that was recorded totally live.

The small studio was crowded because all the players including the horn section were there for overdubbing. According to Scaggs’s account of the final day, “Duane was in the restroom with his amplifier because he played louder than everybody else. To get the tone he wanted, the amplifier had to be cranked up to the max. He was crammed in there with his headset on and just wailed away. Man, could that cat ever play slide. I stood by a Coke machine near the front door in a makeshift isolation booth to do the vocal. It was the culmination of a week of hard work and a magical thing that you just can’t plan.”

My first issue LP has been played several times but hardly shows any sign of wear. Late last night, I slid the record out of its protective polyethylene sleeve and placed it carefully on the turntable, lowered the stylus onto the vinyl and listened. ‘Loan Me A Dime’ begins with notes sweet as ripe Georgia peaches from Barry Beckett’s organ before Allman kicks in with some nuanced fills. It’s nearly three minutes in before you hear Boz, who slows the pace to draw out “I know she’s a good girl, but at that time I just didn’t understand, oh no I didn’t”. The languorous groove fashions a totally different resonance than Robinson’s midtempo blues shuffle. It still retains that formally elegant structure with those descending seventh chords sounding like rainwater being collected in a barrel during a sultry summer afternoon shower. Hawkins weighs in, overlaying congas on high hat, keeping time better than a Rolex. Hood thumps the bass into the mix. The juxtaposition of Skydog’s swaggering slide with Hinton’s simmering licks converses like two neighbours saying hello to each other from opposite sides of a picket fence.

Boz, Duane and the Muscle Shoals crew sustain that slow, sensual, hypnotic pace for a solid 7 1/2 minutes – “Now I cry, I just cry, Just like a baby all night long ….. oooh”. Approaching the end of the song, they break into a slow boogaloo, go to a slow shuffle and fade out. That’s what I hear, although during the actual recording they didn’t end there and instead continued on and on with solos for forty-some minutes. It had to be cut back to 12:36 for the album, but Scaggs has said the long version is tucked away in the Muscle Shoals Studio vaults.

I’m thinking this could be a good reason to contact a Carmen Sandiego type and plot a clandestine caper to retrieve that priceless piece of musical history. Dangle before me an unheard 30 minutes of Duane Allman’s stupendous slide guitar and I’ll be all over it.

They had enough to fill an album, press it on plain old black vinyl with an A side and a B side. The artwork for the jacket was bland. “Boz Scaggs” is imprinted in dull blue over a brownish monochrome. The gatefold is interesting, though, with photos of the musicians plus a nude outdoor pic of Allman.

Atlantic didn’t promote it much, and the record sold only around 20,000 copies. It was mostly either overlooked or reviewed as an afterthought. The most influential of music critics, Robert Christgau, writing in the “Village Voice” thought it was worth only a couple sentences while managing to include a barb for Jan Wenner – “BOZ SCAGGS (Atlantic) Duane Allman’s guitar offsets the fact that Jann Wenner was associated with the production, and Scaggs himself comes through as a solid, pleasant, soulful white boy. A nice tribute to American music. B PLUS”

Hearing ‘Loan Me A Dime’ is like finding a sizable nugget while panning for gold. Disregard the fact that fifty-five years of inflation later, Scaggs would be asking for a half-dollar to place a call, though it’s doubtful he could find a public phone booth. But back in the day, “Somebody better loan me that dime, I need to call my old time used to be …. . oooh yeah”.