Boz Scaggs

For his first album in five years, San Francisco blues/soulman Boz Scaggs traveled to Tennessee’s Royal Recording Studios, where Al Green and the late producer Willie Mitchell worked, to record “Memphis.” It’s a sweet and soulful tribute to the city and Southern soul sounds in general. Scaggs’ “Gone Baby Gone” is a pure Green tribute, complete with surging B-3 organ. There’s a caressing warmth to “Rainy Night in Georgia,” “Love on a Two-Way Street” and the gently bluesy “Corinna Corinna.” Scaggs exercises his blues muscles on the swampy “Cadillac Walk” and the Meters’ raw “Dry Spell,” featuring Charlie Musselwhite on harmonica and Keb Mo on dobro. “Memphis” is a savvy late-career move for the silky soul man Scaggs. Jon Bream