One of Southern rock's best-kept secrets during its golden age in the 1970s,
Cowboy were formed by songwriters
Tommy Talton and
Scott Boyer in Jacksonville, Florida in 1969. Playing a kind of acoustic country-rock similar to contemporaries
Pure Prairie League,
Cowboy had their own twist on the formula, thanks to
Talton and
Boyer's sharp, focused songwriting and a distinguishable Muscle Shoals flair. After hearing the band,
Duane Allman passed the word along to Phil Walden at Macon, Georgia's Capricorn Records, who offered the group a recording contract. The band's membership was pretty fluid during this time, other than
Talton and
Boyer, both of whom became de facto members of the Capricorn house band, playing with
the Allman Brothers,
Gregg Allman,
Alex Taylor, and
Bonnie Bramlett, among others. In all, four albums were released under the
Cowboy name on Capricorn Records, 1970's
Reach for the Sky and 1971's
5'll Getcha Ten (combined into the two-disc compilation Why Quit When You're Losing in 1973), 1974's Boyer & Talton, and 1977's
Cowboy. Also, the 1976 album Happy to Be Alive, attributed to the trio of
Tommy Talton,
Bill Stewart, and
Johnny Sandlin (but minus
Scott Boyer), might be considered a
Cowboy album in all but name. That was it, though, until 30 years later when
Talton and
Boyer put
Cowboy back together in 2007, recording tracks at
Sandlin's Duck Tape Studio in Decatur, Alabama, although none of those tracks were released at the time. After battling peripheral artery disease,
Scott Boyer died in Muscle Shoals in February 2018; he was 70 years old. ~ Steve Leggett