After learning guitar at the age of 12, Scaggs met Steve Miller at St. Mark's School of Texas in Dallas. In 1959, he became the vocalist for Miller's band The Marksmen. The pair later attended the University of Wisconsin together, playing in blues bands like The Ardells and The Fabulous Knight Trains. Leaving school, Scaggs briefly left Texas to join the burgeoning rhythm and blues scene in London. After singing in bands such as The Wigs and Mother Earth, he recorded his first solo album Boz in 1965, which was not a commercial success. He traveled to Sweden as a solo performer and did a brief stint with the band The Other Side with fellow American Jack Downing and Brit Mac MacLeod.
Returning to the US, Scaggs promptly headed for the booming psychedelic music center of San Francisco in 1967. Linking up with Steve Miller again, he appeared on the Steve Miller Band's first two albums Children of the Future and Sailor, which won over critical reviews. After being spotted by Rolling Stone publisher Jann Wenner, Scaggs secured a solo contract with Atlantic Records in 1968. Despite good reviews, his first Atlantic album was met with lukewarm sales, as were followup albums on Columbia Records. In 1976, he linked up with session musicians who would later form Toto and recorded his smash album Silk Degrees. The album reached number 2 on the US charts and number 1 in a number of countries across the world, spawning three hit singles: "Lowdown", "Lido Shuffle", and "What Can I Say", as well as the MOR standard "We're All Alone", later a hit for Rita Coolidge. A sellout world tour followed, but his follow-up album, the 1977 Down Two Then Left, lacked the cohesion of Silk Degrees.
Scaggs' 1980 album Middle Man would spawn two top 20 hits, "Breakdown Dead Ahead" and "Jojo," and Scaggs would enjoy two more hits over 1980 and 1981 ("Look What You've Done to Me" from the Urban Cowboy soundtrack, and "Miss Sun" from a greatest hits set).
Scaggs continued to record and tour sporadically throughout the 1980s and 1990s, although he semi-retired from the music business and turned owner of the San Francisco nightclub Slim's. His lengthy hiatus from the music industry slowed his chart career down dramatically.
Scaggs recorded Other Roads in 1988, took another hiatus, and then came back in 1994 with Some Change. In the late 190s he released Come On Home, an album of blues, and My Time, an anthology. He garnered good reviews with Dig, although the CD, which was released on September 11, 2001, was lost in the post-911 melée. In May, 2003, Scaggs released But Beautiful, a collection of jazz standards that debuted at number 1 on the jazz charts.
In 2013 he released the album Memphis
Georgia
Boz Scaggs Lyrics
Jump to: Overall Meaning ↴ Line by Line Meaning ↴
Gorgeous enough to make an angel's heart run wild
Your lazy eyes and small-town lies
Have got me in your spell
Your drive-in boys and back-seat noise
And oh, you learned so well
Oh, oh, oh, so how was I to know
Georgia, your daddy was high the night he dreamed up you
Georgia, the stars were flyin' the night that you came through
Christmas in your eyes
Oh, what a nice surprise
Oh, oh, oh, and now I miss you so
But baby, I'm comin' back to you
Georgia, we will be together, dear
If they ever let me out of here
They will say that it's not true
But I did it all for you
Georgia, won't you tell them for me, dear?
Georgia, girl I never lived through a night like that
Sure enough got your lovin' where I like it at
Moonlight through the pines
Oh, oh, oh, but how were we to know
That wasn't moonlight, they were searchlights, oh no
Georgia, we will be together, dear
If they ever let me out of here
They will say that it's not true
But I did it all for you
Georgia, won't you tell them for me, dear?
Georgia, we will be together dear
Oh, my dear
If they ever let me out of here
The lyrics to Boz Scaggs's song Georgia follow a man’s journey of falling in love with a small-town girl named Georgia. He describes her smile as one that can make an angel's heart run wild, and her eyes as lazy, but charming. There's something about her small-town lies that has him under her spell. Even her drive-in boys and back-seat noise leave him enamored. The man reminisces about the night he met her under the stars that were flying, and how Christmas in her eyes was a nice surprise. But, the lyrics take a dark twist towards the end, as the man talks about being locked up, and how he did it all for Georgia. Even so, he declares that they will be together if they ever let him out, and asks Georgia to tell everyone that it’s true.
Boz Scaggs takes us on an emotional roller coaster with the song Georgia. It's a classic love story with a gritty, somewhat criminal twist. The song starts with something as innocent as Georgia's smile and ends up with the singer being incarcerated, all for the love of a small-town girl. It's a story of sacrifice; how far one is willing to go for love. The song's tone and lyrics show that what starts as a sweet, innocent romance can twist and turn when deeply passionate love enters the picture.
Line by Line Meaning
Georgia, I swear I never seen such a smile
I had never seen such a beautiful smile before in my life.
Gorgeous enough to make an angel's heart run wild
Your beauty is extraordinary that it can make even an angel go crazy.
Your lazy eyes and small-town lies
Have got me in your spell
Your deceitful eyes and untruthful words have a hypnotizing effect on me.
Your drive-in boys and back-seat noise
And oh, you learned so well
You are a master at getting what you want from men, particularly those who like meeting secretly in backseats.
Oh, oh, oh, so how was I to know
You got me, you got me right now
I wasn't aware that I was falling for you until it was too late, and now you have me completely under your control.
Georgia, your daddy was high the night he dreamed up you
Georgia, the stars were flyin' the night that you came through
Your father must have been high on something when he imagined you, and the night you arrived, even the stars couldn't resist shining brighter.
Christmas in your eyes
Oh, what a nice surprise
Oh, oh, oh, and now I miss you so
But baby, I'm comin' back to you
Your eyes have a magical quality, like Christmas morning, and I miss you so much that I will do anything to be with you again.
Moonlight through the pines
Oh, oh, oh, but how were we to know
That wasn't moonlight, they were searchlights, oh no
The romantic moonlight we were enjoying turned out to be just searchlights from the authorities looking for us.
Georgia, we will be together, dear
If they ever let me out of here
They will say that it's not true
But I did it all for you
Georgia, won't you tell them for me, dear?
I will do whatever it takes to be with you, even if it means going to jail. Please tell everyone that it was all for you.
Georgia, girl I never lived through a night like that
Sure enough got your lovin' where I like it at
I have never experienced a night like the one I spent with you, and I got your love just where I wanted it.
Lyrics © CONCORD MUSIC PUBLISHING LLC, Kobalt Music Publishing Ltd.
Written by: William R. Royce Scaggs
Lyrics Licensed & Provided by LyricFind