Boz Scaggs -- Lowdown

 

Ahhh...1976! The year of the Montreal Olympics, one of the very few things that I remember fondly from that year (school was definitely not one of those things).

Boz Scaggs and his "Lowdown" were one singer and one song that I had heard before in the ancient past but neither of them were entities that I had associated with 1976, and yet the latter by the former was released for the first time in June of that year. For me back then, as a whelp large enough to generate my own source of gravity, Scaggs was this fellow with this unique voice who came up with these soul songs such as "We're All Alone" and "JoJo". Little did I know that he was also the voice behind "Lowdown", and the one thing that I remembered from that single was the horns blasting in twice in the song in places where I had assumed that the singer would be crooning out the main refrain. I knew about genres like pop and disco when I was in elementary school but I didn't appreciate them, and wouldn't for several more years.

For the past number of years now, though, Boz Scaggs' "Lowdown" is one of my prized aural jewels in the crown, and not just for the horns. It starts off with the coolest intro riff comprised of bass, percussion, keyboards and flute all coming together to express something like downtown's baddest dude doing his usual weekend cruise in the convertible. Then comes Scaggs' buttery vocals which actually tell a guy the gosh-darn lowdown about how horribly the lady that he adores is treating him. Seems like the idea for a rom-com is right here.

However, it's that music that gets me every time. It feels like that convertible coming in from out of the suburbs, slowing cruising through the city limits until those horns explode right when it hits the gleaming skyscrapers of downtown, whether it be New York or Los Angeles. There are good times coming tonight. 

According to the Wikipedia article on "Lowdown", Scaggs and keyboardist David Paich created the song, and session musicians including bassist David Hungate and drummer Jeff Porcaro were in the recording booth. Paich, Hungate and Porcaro would all collaborate with others to form the band TOTO in 1977, and the latter two would also help out on Mariya Takeuchi's（竹内まりや）"Miss M" LP, her most City Pop release, in 1980.

Not sure how "Lowdown" or the album which includes the single, "Silk Degrees" did in Japan, but the single did very well in the United States and Canada. It hit No. 3 on US Billboard while getting up to No. 2 on the RPM charts in my country.

Being a June 1976 release, what were three of the kayo that got released as well in that month?

1. Hiromi Ohta -- Akai High Heel（赤いハイヒール）[June 1]

2. Momoe Yamaguchi -- Yokosuka Story （横須賀ストーリー）[June 21]

3. Teruhiko Aoi -- Anata dake wo (あなただけを) [June 25]

Thanks very kindly to Amigo Lovepop for the stats. Also, I should also confess that due to my dotty memory, I had already written up "Lowdown" less than a year previously as a ROY article but just plain forgot. Still, I had three different kayo kyoku up there due to different criteria.