Silky soul man Boz Scaggs has two outside projects: a bluegrass band (really!) and a jazz combo.
After doing his "Lido Shuffle" R&B act this summer at Lumberjack Days in Stillwater, Scaggs will focus on standards next week at the Dakota Jazz Club.
Although he just released his second consecutive jazz album, "Speak Low," this week, he doesn't claim that label for himself. "I'm not a jazz singer; I'm not a jazz musician." While the songs are arranged for a jazz combo, "I don't possess the super-musicality and the complexity of harmonic knowledge that would make me a jazz singer by any means."
The new disc was hatched after Scaggs happened to walk past the famous Blue Note Jazz Club in New York City.
"It was January or February and I heard this music coming out the door that really captured my imagination," he said recently from his San Francisco home. "I went into the club and it was as if my dreams of my new record had come true. The ensemble seemed just right for what I was searching for."
He chatted up some players in the band he knew and ended up in conversation with keyboardist Gil Goldstein, whose work he knew from the San Francisco Jazz Collective and saxophonist Michael Brecker. Goldstein wound up producing and arranging the new album.
"Speak Low" travels softly, with more obscure ballads -- including Bronislaw Kaper's "Invitation" and Duke Ellington's "Do Nothing Till You Hear From Me" -- than his 2003 album "But Beautiful," featuring the familiar likes of "Sophisticated Lady" and "Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered."
Finding songs -- especially uncommon ones -- was a challenge.
"There are a lot of beautiful songs out there," Scaggs said, "but they were often written for stage musicals or films and they express sort of emotional things that are very difficult to make believable in today's world."
Jazz validation
Scaggs, 64, felt he needed permission to go in this direction. "It's sacred ground as far as I'm concerned," he said. About seven or eight years ago, he lent his recording studio to the late saxophonist Cornelius Bumpus, who was working with a jazz quartet. Pianist Paul Nagel encouraged Scaggs to try singing with the combo.
"There was a benefit concert I was asked to do and I played a few song with this quartet of jazz musicians," Scaggs recalled. "And it felt right and I was sort of validated by their encouragement."
Vocally, Scaggs takes a different approach to this material than he does with his R&B-tinged pop, according to his producer. "He uses the lower part of his voice for standards; for rock and pop, he often goes up in the upper register of his tenor voice," Goldstein told the San Francisco Chronicle. "He tries to be faithful to the melody and not jazz it up so much, which is very nice to hear in this day and age, with everybody messing a little bit too much with the song that the composer wrote."
On his current tour, Scaggs will be joined by Goldstein, bassist Steve Rodby, drummer Richie Morales and reedmen Bob Sheppard and Paul McCandless (of Oregon fame).
Will he attempt some of his radio hits?
"There will be a smattering," Scaggs said. "We're going to try out a few things arranged for this little ensemble. But it's primarily material from the new record and some odds and ends."
From blues to bluegrass
Last year at the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass festival in San Francisco, Scaggs fronted the Blue Velvet Band, which included a host of Americana heavyweights: guitarist Buddy Miller, keyboardist Jon Cleary, drummer Ricky Fataar and pedal steel guitarist Greg Leisz. The singer/guitarist put together the group because one of his business partners runs the festival, which draws more than 700,000 people for the weekend.
"That's another animal," Scaggs said of the Blue Velvets. "We did Hank Williams, early Elvis, some rockabilly, Jerry Lee Lewis, some Bill Monroe, that kind of stuff. It was fun. I hope to be able to make some more music with that band."
But first he'll return to what he's best known for.
"An R&B/blues album is sort of the next stop for me," he said. "I'd like it to be mostly original [songs] but I haven't written much. I'd like to get it done within the next year."
Scaggs started playing the blues in high school in Texas with schoolmate Steve Miller. He followed Miller to the University of Wisconsin in Madison and then to San Francisco in 1967. After working on two albums with the Steve Miller Band, Scaggs landed a solo contract in 1969 with the help of his neighbor, Rolling Stone publisher Jann Wenner.
After an electric-blues-oriented debut featuring Duane Allman on guitar, Scaggs went in a more R&B direction. In 1976, he reached commercial heights with "Silk Degrees," backed by the studio musicians who would become Toto. "Lowdown" and "Lido Shuffle" from that LP became radio staples. In the 1980s and '90s, he went into semi-retirement from performing, co-owning two San Francisco nightclubs. He is still involved with the clubs as well as a vineyard and his own line of wine.
With such a colorful career, who would he prefer to pen a profile of him -- Wenner or Scaggs' son Austin, who is an associate editor at Rolling Stone?
"Austin," Scaggs said. "He has a perspective and point of view that I find interesting. Not that I don't find Jann's perspective interesting. But Austin is more engaged in my world."
Jon Bream • 612-673-1719
