Lowdown

Scaggs wrote this song with the keyboard player David Paich, who would later form the band Toto and write many of their hits. "Lowdown" was the first song that Scaggs and Paich wrote together; it was Silk Degrees producer Joe Wissert who put them together. In a Songfacts interview with Boz Scaggs, he explained: "We took off for a weekend to this getaway outside of LA where there was a piano and stayed up all night banging around ideas. We hit on 'Lowdown,' and then we brought it back to the band and recorded it. We were just thrilled with that one. That was the first song that we attempted, and it had a magic to it."

This was the second single released from Silk Degrees. The first was "It's Over," which charted at a modest #38 in May 1976. Scaggs had little name recognition at the time, and sales were stagnant for the album until an R&B radio station in Cleveland started playing "Lowdown." Other stations followed suit, and it quickly became clear that the song had crossover appeal and hit potential. Scaggs' label, CBS, released it as a single and it climbed to #3 on the Hot 100 in October, spurring sales of the album along the way.

The song is about a girl who doesn't appreciate what her man gives her. The "dirty lowdown" is the honest truth - what Scaggs is encouraging this poor sap to face. The word "Lowdown" was popular slang meaning a summary of what's going on for real. The first Hot 100 entry with the term in the title came in 1969 with the instrumental "Lowdown Popcorn" by James Brown (#41, 1969). Next came Chicago's song "Lowdown" (#35, 1971).