Everything You Did: The Music of Walter Becker & Donald Fagen
Downbeat
November 2013
By Kirk Silsbee
Steely Dan, co-piloted by composer-instrumentalists Walter Becker and Donald Fagen, has made good, jazz-informed pop music for 40 years. Jazz orchestrator Mark Masters has taken some of the group’s obscure early tunes and turned a clutch of great soloists loose on his charts: Tim Hagans, Billy Harper, Oliver Lake, Gary Foster, Gary Smulyan and Sonny Simmons.
Masters is chameleonic as a writer. Steely Dan tunes typically have compelling rhythmic vamps, played by tight ensembles, but Masters opens up the tunes from their harmonic strictures. Fans will have to listen hard to discern the underpinnings of “Bodhisattva,” “Chain Lightning” and “Aja,” but Masters leaves markers, like Gene Cipriano’s English horn on the snaky melody of “Do It Again.” Tim Hagans pulls a free trumpet solo out of the air for “Show Biz Kids” and tangles with Harper on “Kings.”
Harper’s masculine tenor speaks with robust authority throughout. Foster’s buttery solo on “Fire In The Hole” is pure ambrosia in its richness. Percussionist Brad Dutz’s well-considered mallet percussion is one of the unifiers in these ensembles, and Erskine’s playing, though largely tied to timekeeping duties, is full of shadings, layers and textures. Masters has carefully considered the Steely Dan songs for many years, yet he never lets his brain get in the way of good soloists or fertile settings. Becker and Fagen should be gratified by this sincere tribute.
