He is a guitarist and singer-songwriter who was born William Royce Scaggs in Canton, Ohio.
He learnt to play the guitar with the help of Steve Miller, who he met at school in Dallas, Texas, when he had asked him to be in his band, The Marksmen, followed by The Ardells.
He went to London for a short time around 1965 where he recorded a solo album and sang with the bands The Wigs and Mother Earth. On his return to the United States he joined The Steve Miller Band and performed on the albums Children of the Future and Sailor.
He went on to pursue his solo career in 1968, though, after he had been spotted and offered a contract with Atlantic. His first few albums were not very successful but in 1976 he met up with a group of session musicians that would become the band Toto, and it was with them that he found success after releasing the album Silk Degrees that contained several hit singles.
He would continue to see success for the next few years and then he faded out of the music industry for about 7 years until returning in 1988 when he achieved his last chart hit. He carried on touring and recording for the next 10 years and currently tours every summer.
In the movies he has contributed songs to the soundtracks of the Urban Cowboy, Two of a Kind and FM, and on television he has made a cameo appearance in Ally McBeal, and the album The Complete Boz Scaggs was used as a present for someone in The Family Guy.
Of his children, Austin is a music journalist for Rolling Stone and sadly Oscar, another son, died of a heroin overdose when he was just 21. He has gone into semi-retirement and owns Slims, which is a nightclub in San Francisco.
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