Scaggs’ Roots Still Resonate as He Brings Back the ‘70s

Boz Scaggs is the kind of singer who can make the banal soulful, and he’s performed that feat time and again over his 30-plus years in the music business.

His voice is a throaty, resonant croon that can either slice through a phrase or coddle it, and his innate feel for soul and R&B; idioms redeems even his most desultory material.

At the Greek on Thursday, Scaggs leaned heavily on his biggest hits from the 1970s, reminding the crowd of how he once made adult contemporary pop sound hip.

Now, he’s content to showcase that sound on tour and make solid if unspectacular back-to-my-roots albums like 1997’s R&B; exercise “Come on Home.”

Scaggs opened his set with a couple of ambling R&B; songs that allowed him to flash some clean, laconic guitar work and sneak in an epic version of his inconsolable blues classic “Loan Me a Dime” midway through the set.

But the crowd was hungry for the hits, so like all dutiful Heritage Rock acts, Scaggs delivered. With their call-and-response choruses and gently assertive beats, Scaggs hits such as “Lowdown” and “Breakdown Dead Ahead” lost none of their luster.

And Scaggs was in great voice, squeezing every drop of pathos out of “Harbor Lights” and even infusing some depth of feeling into a clunker like “Look What You’ve Done to Me.”