“Lowdown” by Boz Scaggs

Boz Scaggs wrote "Lowdown" with keyboard man David Paich for Silk Degrees, and in 1976 the pair came up with a groove smooth enough to slide straight onto the disco floor. Joe Wissert produced it for Columbia, and the session crew reads like a blueprint for Toto: Paich, bassist David Hungate and drummer Jeff Porcaro would later form that band. Hungate's bass sits right up front, fat and rubbery, while Paich arranges the thing and colors the corners with Minimoog and ARP synthesizer, and a horn section with Tom Scott and Plas Johnson in it fills out the brass.

Then there's Louie Shelton's guitar solo, which nobody planned: a Telecaster run through a '69 Fender Princeton Reverb and a cheap Boss distortion box, sounding like a man having more fun than the song strictly allows. Scaggs sings it low and knowing over the top.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.