Love Quote by Boz Scaggs

There is something quietly revealing in how Boz Scaggs frames his influences: not as a museum list of “greats,” but as a mood board. “Mellow sax players like Paul Desmond” isn’t a flex; it’s a tell. Desmond’s cool, airy tone (the anti-showboat sax) signals a particular kind of taste: restraint over bravura, melody over muscle. Scaggs is pointing to an aesthetic lineage that runs through West Coast jazz and into the sleek, late-night sophistication of his own blue-eyed soul. He’s basically naming the temperature he prefers.

The phrasing “as far as other instrumentalists” also matters. It positions Scaggs, a vocalist and songwriter, as someone who listens sideways - to texture, voicing, atmosphere. He’s not talking about chops or theory; he’s talking about the emotional behavior of an instrument. “Mellow” is doing a lot of work: it implies intimacy, polish, and control, but also a kind of adult realism. This is music for rooms with dim lamps, not arenas with pyrotechnics.

Then the pivot: “I love piano.” No qualifier, no named idol, just devotion. That bluntness hints at piano’s centrality as a harmonic engine - the instrument that can carry the whole emotional architecture of a song. In context, it reads like Scaggs tipping his hand: sax is the color, piano is the foundation. The subtext is craft. He’s telling you where his sensual sheen comes from, and where his songs are built.