Early life 　　Loggins was born in Everett, Washington, the youngest of three brothers. His mother was Lina (née Massie), a homemaker, and his father, Robert George Loggins, was a salesman. Loggins is of Italian descent on his mother's side. They lived in Detroit and Seattle before settling in Alhambra, California. Loggins attended San Gabriel Mission High School, graduating in 1966. He formed a band, The Second Helping, that released three singles during 1968 and 1969 on Viva Records. Greg Shaw described the efforts as "excellent punky folk-pop records" that were written by Loggins who was likely to be the bandleader and singer as well; Shaw included "Let Me In" on both Highs in the Mid-Sixties, Volume 2 and the Pebbles, Volume 9 CD. 　　Loggins had a short gig playing guitar for the New Improved Electric Prunes in 1969 before writing four songs for the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band that were included on their album Uncle Charlie & His Dog Teddy. During his early twenties, he was in the band Gator Creek with Mike Deasy. The first recorded version of "Danny's Song" (later recorded by Loggins and Messina and a No. 7 Hot 100 hit for Anne Murray in 1973) was included on their only album, released on Mercury Records. 　　Loggins and Messina 　　Jim Messina, formerly of Poco and Buffalo Springfield, was working as an independent record producer for Columbia Records in 1970 when he was introduced to Loggins, then a little-known singer-songwriter who was signed to ABC-Dunhill. 　　The two recorded a number of Loggins's compositions in Messina's home living room. When Columbia signed Loggins (with Messina's help) to a six-album contract, recording began in earnest for Loggins's debut album, with Messina as producer. In addition to providing rehearsal space, equipment and amps, Messina worked long hours with Loggins and encouraged him to buy an electric guitar to play on his debut album. He also assembled The Kenny Loggins Band by summoning his old friends bassist Larry Sims and drummer Merel Bregante (both formerly of the Sunshine Company, a disbanded 1960s group from Los Angeles), violinist/multireedist Al Garth and multireedist Jon Clarke. Keyboardist Michael Omartian also played on the album, and despite dropping out at the start of the touring, continued to play keyboards on the next two albums. Los Angeles-based session percussionist Milt Holland, described by Messina as an ethnomusicologist, also contributed. 　　Messina originally intended to lend his name to the Loggins project only to help introduce the unknown Loggins to Messina's well-established Buffalo Springfield and Poco audiences. But by the time the album was completed, Messina had contributed so much to the album in terms of songwriting, arrangement, instrumentation, and vocals that an "accidental" duo was born. Thus the full name of their first album was Kenny Loggins with Jim Messina Sittin' In. The album's first single release, the Caribbean-flavored "Vahevala", found top 3 success on WCFL on May 18, 1972. 　　Although the album went unnoticed by radio upon release, it eventually found success by fall 1972, particularly on college campuses where the pair toured heavily. Loggins and Messina's vocal harmonies meshed so well that what was begun as a one-off album became an entity in itself. Audiences regarded the pair as a genuine duo rather than as a solo act with a well-known producer. Instead of continuing to produce Loggins as a sole performer, they decided to record as a duo, Loggins & Messina. 　　"When our first album, Sittin' In, came out, we started receiving a lot of excitement about the music and good sales," Messina recalled in 2005. 　　Both members of the duo were guitarists: Loggins played rhythm guitar, acoustic guitar, electric guitar and harmonica, and Messina played lead guitar, acoustic guitar, electric guitar, mandolin and Dobro. Over the next four years they produced five more albums of original material in the studio, plus one album of covers of other artists' material, and two live albums. They sold 16 million records and were the most successful duo of the early 1970s, surpassed later in the decade only by Hall & Oates. Their work also included Lynn Anderson's "Listen to a Country Song", which was released in 1972 and reached No. 3 on the charts, "Danny's Song", and "A Love Song", which reached No. 12 in March 1974. A greatest-hits album, The Best of Friends, was released a year after the duo broke up. 　　The later studio albums often found Loggins and Messina more as two solo artists sharing the same record than as a genuine partnership. As they both noted in 2005, their collaboration eventually became more a competition. The pair had by 1976 quietly but amicably parted to pursue solo careers, following the release of Native Sons and their final concert in Hawaii.