( link to full album playlist )
There are many reasons to post this tribute to Steely Dan today, not least of which is to note the unfortunate passing of Walter Becker three weeks ago, but it’s really most appropriate because today September 23 marks exactly 40 years since this truly great studio album was released in 1977. If you’re not completely familiar with the record, it’s top hits were “Peg”, “Deacon Blues”, and “Josie”, also released in that order as singles from late 1977 into summer 1978.
Coincidentally, yesterday Sept. 22nd, Trump the Dotard decided to hold a rally in Alabama. If this helps you recall the famous lyric from “Deacon Blues” :
They call Alabama the Crimson Tide, Call me Deacon Blues
of course that famous line is prefaced by
They got a name for the winners in the world, And I want a name when I lose
How fitting (!), but I digress. It’s a beautifully written and scored song, like so much of the incredible music on this record. I found a quite wonderful review of the album on ultimateclassicrock.com with such take-to-the bank quotes as this:
‘Aja’ (which won the 1978 Grammy for Best Engineered Non-Classical Recording) is indeed a triumph of engineering. The surfaces sparkle with sophistication, capturing every performance in full clarity. Listening to ‘Aja’ now, it still sounds like the greatest album ever recorded — as if you’re hearing the music from inside the amps and drum heads. But ‘Aja’ is also a masterpiece of performances, and of the nitty-gritty details (like Rainey’s slap-bass harmonics on ‘Peg’ or the subtle, steady climb of horns and synths on ‘Black Cow‘).
The sentiment that AJa “sounds like the greatest album ever recorded” is not an uncommon one. Becker and lifetime song writing partner Donald Fagen really slaved over this masterpiece. As also noted in the same review, the reason was as Fagen notes:
“By the time we did ‘Aja,’ we’d figured out sort of what it was we sort of wanted to do, musically, I think the ‘Aja’ album has so much great playing in terms of what we were trying to do with combining session players and soloists and so on to produce these little ideal tracks for our songs,” Becker reflected. “That was sort of the best, most consistent, and most successful example of that.”
Like so many musicians before them, Becker and Fagen realized that live touring and performance was a distraction and obstacle to their creative efforts in the studio, so at the end of 1974 they stopped touring. Their first product of this studio-only phase was “Katy Lied”, which includes among my favorites from it “Dr. Wu” and “Black Friday”. But really, it was the next album which indicated the fruition of their efforts was approaching perfection.
“Royal Scam” opens with the powerful (both musically and lyrically) “Kid Charlemagne”, a sordid tale of a high flying drug dealer’s fall from grace. This song really is a gem of production, with SD’s jazz/rock amalgam really coming together, so smoothly anchored by the super funky (but not overly so) synth-keyboard work, and perfectly complimented by the electric guitar work. Ohh and the lyrics (!) … “those test tubes and the scale, get it all out of here”. Some more fun and smooth songs from this album are “The Fez” and “Haitian Divorce”, but again, this precursor album to “Aja” indicated ever higher levels of studio perfection were in sight for SD and I see it as their penultimate achievement.
September 23, 1977
Aja opens with “Black Cow” which as already noted above, has a wonderful horn component which, as beautiful as it is, ultimately gives way to the most lovely lead and backing vocals. The harmonization is so perfect it almost feels indulgent, like- how can this be so perfect?!??
Next is the title track which confirms that “Aja” indeed connotes something Asian: Chinese music always sets me free
This song naturally includes SD’s own version of the cliched “Oriental Riff”, but what they created here is in fact mesmerizing and iconic. This passage starts at 2:15 of the track and lasts almost two full minutes.
There isn’t really an “Asian” theme to the album, however, from wikipedia we learn:
Donald Fagen has said the album was named for a Korean woman who married the brother of one of his high-school friends. The cover photo by Hideki Fujii features Japanese model and actress Sayoko Yamaguchi.
And in fact the song “Aja” is bifurcated, with a distinct modern jazz sound and rhythm (complete with sax solo) closing out the song after the opening and central “Chinese” parts.
On the next track “Deacon Blues”, we return to the carefully constructed mix of vocals and instrumention we heard on “Black Cow”. As already noted, the lyrics in this song are famous and iconic. The chorus (all the lyrics really), and the accompanying music, is for lack of a better word haunting:
I'll learn to work the saxophone I play just what I feel
Drink Scotch whiskey all night long And die behind the wheel
They got a name for the winners in the world And I want a name when I lose
They call Alabama the Crimson Tide Call me Deacon Blues
And again, SD is hitting perfection with the instrumentation, with the outro at the end including appropriately melancholic horn passages which want to make you cry.
Side 2 of the record offers some unbridled joy (if you felt it lacking in the first three songs) with “Peg”. This is a truly upbeat tune where SD again shows the deftness they were bringing to reinforcing their music with sophisticated layering and filtering of vocal harmonies as we already got a taste of in “Black Cow”. The chorus of “Peg” is a tour-de-force of this technique, and while we’re certain we’re hearing the printed lyrics: Peg it will come back to you…. the backing vocals are another matter altogether, as there are only snippets of lyrics we can discern. In fact it was all about the desired aesthetic effect Becker was going for as vocalist Michael McDonald explains in this “making of” video. SD was so satisfied with the result that they repeated it in a fade, something they don’t often to do in their work. This is testament itself to the song’s brilliant achievement. Beyond this, “Peg” has pretty much everything else: great bass, great lead guitar, even great drums. The song became the first and best selling single from the album, peaking at No. 11 on the charts.
The next track is more standard SD fare, with a decidedly heavy jazz/blues feel. “Home at Last” which features nice lead guitar. It’s easily the least adventurous song of the album.
"I Got the News" is next and back to an upbeat tone, with a nice bouncy piano lead.
”Josie” closes out the album and it’s a rocker. It begins with another signature/iconic riff which can again be heard as vaguely Eastern sounding. It’s really hard to describe though as it’s the product of a synthesizer tuned to a truly unique and enigmatic sound, and it breaks the silence as jarring as an alarm. However, the balance of the song is unmistakably SD’s very polished jazz/rock sound, with a fantastic rolling keyboard accompaniment to the chorus:
When Josie comes home So good She's the pride of the neighborhood
It also features Becker himself on lead guitar. The song’s lyrics finish and again those jarring opening chords are repeated and signal the beginning of an instrumental fade out. Again this is another iconic and unforgettable sound Steely Dan created on the album.
And so that is “Aja”, one of the signature musical accomplishments of our time.
And thank you Walter Becker for all that great music.