Steely Dan is an American rock band founded in 1971 in New York by Walter Becker and Donald Fagen. Initially the band had a stable lineup, but in 1974 Becker and Fagen retired from live performances to become a studio-only band, opting to record with a revolving cast of session musicians. Rolling Stone has called them "the perfect musical antiheroes for the seventies".
Patrick Bruce Metheny is an American jazz guitarist and composer.
Walter Carl Becker was an American musician, songwriter, and record producer. He was the co-founder, guitarist, bassist, and co-songwriter of the jazz rock band Steely Dan.
Aja is the sixth studio album by the American jazz rock band Steely Dan, released by ABC Records on September 23, 1977. On the album, band leaders Donald Fagen and Walter Becker pushed Steely Dan further into experimenting with different combinations of session players, enlisting the services of nearly 40 musicians, while pursuing longer, more sophisticated compositions and arrangements.
Countdown to Ecstasy is the second studio album by American rock band Steely Dan, released by ABC Records in July 1973. It was recorded at the Village Recorder in West Los Angeles, California, except for Rick Derringer's slide guitar part for "Show Biz Kids", which was recorded at Caribou Ranch in Nederland, Colorado. After the departure of vocalist David Palmer from Steely Dan, the group recorded the album with Donald Fagen singing lead on every track.
Gaucho is the seventh studio album by the American rock band Steely Dan, released by MCA Records on November 21, 1980. The album marked a significant stylistic shift for the band, with more focus on rhythm and atmosphere than their earlier work, and fewer harmonically complex chord progressions, but the recording sessions demonstrated the group's typical obsessive nature and perfectionism, as they used at least 42 different musicians, spent over a year in the studio, and far exceeded the original monetary advance given by the record label. At the 24th Annual Grammy Awards, Gaucho won Best Engineered Recording – Non-Classical, and was nominated for Album of the Year and Best Pop Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocals.
Michael Leonard Brecker was an American jazz saxophonist and composer. He was awarded 15 Grammy Awards as both performer and composer, received an Honorary Doctorate from Berklee College of Music in 2004, and was inducted into the DownBeat Jazz Hall of Fame in 2007.
The Waitresses were an American new wave band from Akron, Ohio, best known for their singles "I Know What Boys Like" and "Christmas Wrapping." They released two albums, Wasn't Tomorrow Wonderful? and Bruiseology, and two EPs, I Could Rule the World If I Could Only Get the Parts and Make the Weather.
Chris Potter is an American jazz saxophonist, composer, and multi-instrumentalist.
Bob Sheppard is an American jazz musician who plays saxophone, clarinet, and flute. He has been a touring and studio musician for albums, film, and television and has released solo albums.
"Deacon Blues" is a song written by Walter Becker and Donald Fagen in 1976 and recorded by their group Steely Dan on their 1977 album Aja. It peaked at number 19 on the Billboard charts and number 17 on the U.S. Cash Box Top 100 in June 1978. It also reached #40 on the Easy Listening chart. In Canada, it peaked at #14, a position it occupied for two weeks, and #20 Adult Contemporary. In 2021, it was listed at No. 214 on Rolling Stone's "Top 500 Greatest Songs of All Time".
Mike Walker is a British jazz guitarist.
"Rikki Don't Lose That Number" is a single released in 1974 by rock/jazz rock group Steely Dan and the opening track of their third album Pretzel Logic. It was the most successful single of the group's career, peaking at number 4 on the Billboard Hot 100 in the summer of 1974.
"Aja" is a jazz rock song, with elements of jazz fusion and progressive rock, by the American rock band Steely Dan from the album of the same name, their sixth studio album, released in 1977. Composers Becker and Fagen play guitar and synthesizer, respectively, on the song, with various studio musicians playing the other parts; Fagen sings lead vocals. Production duties were handled by Gary Katz; the album was released through ABC Records. Musically, it is a tonally sophisticated and structurally complex work that was praised on its release as the most ambitious track the duo had ever attempted. The song's lyrics center around the interior monologue of a man who runs to the title character to escape the stresses of his life "up on the hill." Fagen claimed that it was inspired by a relative of someone he knew, who had married a Korean woman named Aja. He has described the song as being about the "tranquility that can come of a quiet relationship with a beautiful woman."
Gideon King is an American businessman, Art pop and jazz fusion musician. He is best known for his role as the CEO of Loeb King Capital Management. He is also a founding partner at Off Road Capital. King is the founder of Gideon King & City Blog, a critically acclaimed act.
Monkey House is a musical group founded by Don Breithaupt, a Canadian-born pianist, singer/songwriter, composer, arranger, producer and author. The group got its name from a 1970 book by Kurt Vonnegut.
Left is the title of a studio album by the music group Monkey House, released on June 3, 2016, on the Alma Records label, which is affiliated with the Universal Music Group. It was mainly recorded at the Drive Shed in Toronto. It was co-produced by Don Breithaupt and Peter Cardinali, and the engineer was John 'Beetle' Bailey. After the increased popularity of their previous album from 2012, entitled Headquarters, the leader of the band Don Breithaupt stated that "Part of the buzz for me on this album is that I sense a lot of people [were] waiting for it. I keep getting inquiries from people from all over the world giving me grief for taking so long, but that’s a fun situation to be in." Once again, this release has raised comparisons to the music group Steely Dan. "There's only one comparison really, and that's Steely Dan, and in particular, the Aja-Gaucho period", states jazzcorner.com. The album title Left is derived from the fact that Breithaupt made a big move from Toronto, to the "left coast", or west coast of the United States, setting up a new home in the Los Angeles, California area prior to the production and recording of the album. He states that some of the tunes originated on his long drive across the wide open spaces in North America. The album features contributions from Steely Dan veterans Michael Leonhart, Elliott Randall, Jay Graydon, and Drew Zingg, and includes background vocals from Lucy Woodward, as well as David Blamires.
Don Breithaupt is a Canadian pianist, singer/songwriter, composer, arranger, producer and author.
Brad Myers is an American jazz composer and guitarist.
