Friday March 25, 2022 “Rikki Don’t Lose That Number” Steely Dan

‘Send me a text so I have your telephone number’ doesn’t seem quite as lyrical as today’s song title.

Steely Dan is the sort of band that thinks nothing of enlisting forty studio musicians and eleven engineers for a 7-song record. They're perfectly fine making top-notch session guitarists do forty takes of a solo.

So let’s get to a few pieces of Steely Dan rumors out of the way: Steely Dan is named after a sex toy referenced in William Burroughs’ book Naked Lunch, yep;  the ‘number’ that Rikki shouldn’t lose is marijuana, nope;  Rikki is actually singer Rickie Lee Jones, nope but the actual story is way more interesting;  band founders Donald Fagen and Walter Becker were unlikely players in a back-up band for pop stars Jay & the Americans, yep’;  Donald Fagen wrote a song for a Barbra Streisand album, yep;  Chevy Chase once played drums in an early Fagen and Becker band, weirdly yes.

Steely Dan may be an acquired taste, the band not the sex toy just to clarify, in that there are as many listeners who just don’t like them as there are fans who think everything they create is a mysterious masterpiece. And an odd band they are, successfully releasing album after album that would create top twenty charting hits but not touring for nearly twenty years at the height of their career.

Notorious for the many remarkable musicians who wandered through their albums like Jeff Porcaro (Toto), Michael McDonald (Doobie Brothers), Jeff ‘Skunk’ Baxter (Doobie Brothers), Rick Derringer (McCoys/Johnny Wnter) and Timothy B. Schmitt (Eagles) among so many others.

Steely Dan was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2001, has sold more than forty million albums and has had thirteen top twenty singles including five top ten hits…not bad for a band that didn’t tour for nearly twenty years.

Stay safe and well…and the keyboard riff for “Rikki Don’t Lose That Number” released in 1974 was lifted from "Song For My Father," which was recorded in 1964 by jazz composer and pianist Horace Silver, that’s a definite yes.

We hear you're leaving, that's OK

I thought our little wild time had just begun

I guess you kind of scared yourself, you turn and run

But if you have a change of heart:

 CHORUS:

Rikki Don't Lose That Number

You don't wanna call nobody else

Send it off in a letter to yourself

Rikki don't lose that number

It's the only one you own

You might use it if you feel better

When you get home

 I have a friend in town, he's heard your name

We can go out driving on Slow Hand Row

We could stay inside and play games, I don't know

And you could have a change of heart

 CHORUS

 You tell yourself you're not my kind

But you don't even know your mind

And you could have a change of heart

 CHORUS