Remembering When a Trio of Future Toto Members Helped Boz Scaggs on His Breakthrough Album in 1976

Boz Scaggs came seemingly out of nowhere when he stormed the music world with the 1976 album Silk Degrees. In actuality, he was on his seventh album by the point in his career, the first six of which didn’t do anywhere near as well.

What changed? Scaggs found a collaborator who brought a couple of friends along to help with the tracks. These guys would eventually splinter off to help form one of the most successful arena rock bands ever.

Smooth as ‘Silk’

Boz Scaggs worked for a while with the Steve Miller Band in the late 60s before striking out on his own. Starting with a self-titled album in 1969, he churned out five albums in a six-year stretch. The best performance of those albums came from Slow Dancer in 1974, a record that topped out at No. 81 in 1974.

Scaggs also struggled to get any airplay for his singles. He generally wrote his own material, with the help of the occasional co-writer. For his 1976 album Silk Degrees, Scaggs connected with David Paich. By that time, Paich had already amassed an impressive list of credits as a session keyboard player and writer.

Paich worked closely with Scaggs. He co-wrote six of the album’s ten songs and received the sole writing credit on the track “Love Me Tomorrow”. He was heavily involved in arranging the material as well. Perhaps most important of all, in terms of how it affected music history, he brought in a pair of players who’d remain connected to him in his next endeavor.

Toto Origins

David Hungate played bass, and Jeff Porcaro handled drums on Silk Degrees. The band leaned into the innate soulfulness that Scaggs brought to the table with his vocals. By combining that with soft rock melodies and just a hint of disco via the beats and strings, Scaggs and company created a fascinating new hybrid.

The public certainly ate it up. Silk Degrees went multiple platinum and spun off hit singles “Lowdown” and “Lido Shuffle”. Based on those fantastic results, you might think that Scaggs and Pauch would have continued working together. But it didn’t work out that way.

A Lucrative Promise

Paich was disappointed when Scaggs didn’t grant him the co-producer credit on Silk Degrees. When Scaggs’ follow-up album Down Two Then Left appeared in 1977, Paich wasn’t involved. That album failed to come anywhere near the same level of success as Silk Degrees. As Paich told author Paul Rees for the book Raised On Radio, something good came out of it all:

“When Silk Degrees started selling like hotcakes out the door, CBS had begun courting us, suggesting we put a band together. Now, we didn’t tell them that we were already going to do it. We were like, ‘Hey, that’s a great idea! We’ll think about it.’ Then we made our demos. The president of the West Coast of CBS signed us. That was the start of Toto.”

Paich, Jeff Porcaro, and Hungate joined with Steve Porcaro, Steve Lukather, and Bobby Kimball to form Toto. Their debut album arrived in 1978. It’s doubtful the band would have ever launched in the same way with Silk Degrees as the proving ground.

(Photo by: NBCU Photo Bank)

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