Lido Shuffle (1976) 9/23/20

Sometimes, inspiration for a “Great Song” can come from ANOTHER song.

In 1975, Boz Scaggs was tinkering with an old Fats Domino tune called “The Fat Man,” when he starting riffing around its “shuffle type” beat and making up some new lyrics. He thought he'd run it past his songwriting collaborator David Paich and together they came up with the “Lido Shuffle,” which first appeared on the album, “Silk Degrees” in 1976, and was released as a single in early 1977.

The song was about a drifter trying to make a score, and music critics loved the clever wordplay, featuring phrases like:

“At a tombstone bar, in a juke joint car he made a stop

Just long enough to grab a handle off the top...”

And...

“Lido will be runnin', havin' great big funnin' till he got the note

Sayin' toe the line or blow it and that was all she wrote...”

More importantly, fans and radio listeners also loved the lyrics—and the song as a whole—pushing it to #2 in Australia, #5 in Canada and #11 in the US!

Boz Scaggs...shuffling his way to a “Great Song of the '70s!

And here's the Fats Domino song that inspired it: