#gary katz

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Thomas Jefferson Kaye - Learning How To Fly (1973)

Thomas Jefferson Kaye was more famous as a producer (Gene Clark, Loudon Wainright, Link Wray) but he wrote and recorded his own songs as well. Sadly he’s also known more for his eccentricity, his Steely Dan connections, and drug problems.

[krispyweiss]

Rewind: Donald Fagen - The Nightfly (1982)

After Steely Dan split in 1981, Donald Fagen continued down the jazzy path his group cleared on Aja and Gaucho with his 1982 solo debut The Nightfly.

Although it’s not a Steely Dan record, The Nightfly might be Sound Bites’ favorite Steely Dan record. It’s been so impactful, the blog still remembers exactly where he was and what he was doing (it’s a secret) the first time he heard it and still revisits it at least once - sometimes twice or thrice - annually.

Like Steely Dan LPs, this one is produced by Gary Katz and features a who’s-who of studio musicians including horn players Michael Brecker and Randy Brecker, guitarist Larry Carlton, drummers Steve Jordan and Jeff Porcaro ans keyboardist Greg Phillinganes among many others.

The two things that make it different from a Steely Dan album are Walter Becker’s absence and the dearth of debauched but elegant outlaws in the lyrics. In their place are autobiographical songs about “a young man growing up in the remote suburbs of a northeastern city in the late ’50s and early ’60s, i.e., one of my general height, weight and build,” as Fagen writes in the liner notes.

Bright and sparkling, the music takes the listeners from post-World War II American optimism of “I.G.Y.” - we’ll be eternally free, yes, and eternally young, Fagen sings - to dreams of young love growing old on “Maxine” to a party in a fallout shelter - it’s just a dugout that my dad built in case the Reds decide to push the button down - on the “New Frontier.”

With seven originals and one cover, an irresistible version of “Ruby Baby” replete with saxophone and party sounds, The Nightfly is joy in music, even as Fagen sings of heartbreak on the penultimate, samba-flavored “The Goodbye Look.”

Like all good fairly tales - musical or otherwise - this one has a happily-ever-after ending in the form of the strutting “Walk Between Raindrops,” which finds the title character in love in Miami.

And all is right with the world once again - just as it is every time The Nightfly starts buzzing around the Sound Holes.

Grade card: Donald Fagen - The Nightfly - A

3/10/19

[mugems]

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Prosumer | Rearranged by Gary Katz (1992)

[desertsoap]

Steely Dan article, Sounds magazine (c.1973)

[mugems]

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Prosumer | Rearranged by Gary Katz (1992)

[c-40]

A-T-3 111 Diana Ross - That's How You Start Over 

Opening track on 1983s Ross album, co-written by Michael McDonald and his regular writing partner Ed Sanford, and produced by Steely Dan producer Gary Katz

That's How You Start Over Michael McDonald on keyboards

Love Will Make It Right written and keyboards by Donald Fagen

[gachael]

Showbiz Kids / Steely Dan

Rikki Don't Lose That Number

[complexdistractions]

"Drink scotch whiskey all night long, and die behind the wheel"

“Drink scotch whiskey all night long, and die behind the wheel”

I grew up hearing Steely Dan on the radio. I’d hear songs like “My Old School”, “Rikki Don’t Lose That Number”, “Do It Again”, “Hey Nineteen”, and of course the classic AOR rock standard “Reelin’ In The Years” and I’d cringe as a kid. It sounded like old man rock. I could picture some grey-haired cats looking like Cheech and Chong drinking fortified wine on a back porch talking about “the man”…

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