There are many bands with deserved reputations for making exquisitely-produced records, but if you’re looking for the final boss of sonic perfection, Steely Dan can’t be beaten.
Steely Dan were formed in 1971, but within three years the band’s only permanent members, founders Walter Becker and Donald Fagen, had decided to give up playing live and become full-time studio dwellers.
From 1974’s Katy Lied onwards, the pair scoured the United States for session musicians who were capable of bringing their sophisticated compositions to life. With The Royal Scam, released half a century ago this month (yes, it shares the same big 5-0 birthday with What Hi-Fi? this year), they set themselves a lofty new standard to beat.
The Larry Carlton Show
Most Dan aficionados will tell you that Aja, which came along just a year later in 1977, is the album to choose if you want to hear the band at their absolute peak, and I’m not here to start an argument.
Aja is the record that was added to the USA’s National Recording Registry in 2010 for being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant", and the one that has an absolutely brilliant episode of Classic Albums dedicated to it. Both accolades are very much deserved.
Aja has Deacon Blues, it has Home At Last, it has the title track, and it has arguably Steely Dan’s most famous song, Peg (sampled by De La Soul for their song Eye Know), but what it doesn’t have is Kid Charlemagne, one of the greatest songs in the band’s extensive repertoire of great songs.
The Royal Scam’s opening track is built around Fagen’s organ and Don Grolnick’s Fender Rhodes piano, but it’s also home to some of the most impeccable guitar-playing you’ll find, well, anywhere.
Larry Carlton, who contributed to just one track on Katy Lied after the departure of original guitarist Jeff ‘Skunk’ Baxter, had obviously impressed Becker and Fagen, because his workload goes up fourfold here.
Carlton’s multiple solos on Kid Charlemagne are a masterclass in restrained virtuosity, played purely to serve the song and not his own ego. It’s complex but not needlessly complicated, and you’ll need a suitably competent system to reproduce the wonderful tone and texture they captured in the studio.
His playing on Don’t Take Me Alive is almost equally brilliant, leading you through a song about a lone wolf with “a case of dynamite” who also may or may not be an android. And while Carlton isn’t the only incredible guitarist to appear on the album, it’s his playing that stands out the most.
Shuffle your beat
Steely Dan’s search for the crème de la crème of session musicians also led them to Bernard Purdie, a drummer whose CV includes work with Aretha Franklin, Nina Simone, James Brown and Frank Sinatra, but is perhaps most well-known in musical circles for his trademark ‘Purdie Shuffle’ beat.
Purdie plays on every track on The Royal Scam bar Don't Take Me Alive and Everything You Did, so his laidback vibe is all over the record. There’s often a loose but still very precise feel to what he plays, and with a lot of prominent hi-hats it’s an album that will really test your system’s ability to reproduce treble without sounding harsh.
Purdie’s partner in groove is bassist Chuck Rainey, who also played with him on Aretha Franklin’s Young, Gifted And Black and With Everything I Feel In Me, and it’s hard to imagine a better pairing.
Just listen to this isolated rhythm section from Kid Charlemagne to hear two artists meshing absolutely seamlessly. They’re not perfectly in time, but the whole thing has so much more life as a result. A good system will be able to really communicate that wonderfully organic feel.
Listen to the intro to Haitian Divorce, and while the piano and distinctive talk-box guitar dominate it, you should also be able to hear Purdie’s delicate cymbals in the background just before Rainey’s reggae-infused bass comes in.
Play it on a good enough system and you can almost taste the Zombie cocktail “in the coco shell” that Donald Fagen sings about in the song’s second verse (although the less said about the slightly dodgy accent he occasionally affects the better).
Sing on stranger
Fagen was a reluctant lead singer, only taking on the role after failing to find a suitable alternative earlier in the band’s career, but you’d never know it – he’s not afraid to have his vocals front and centre in the mix.
Whole books have been written about the shady characters you’ll encounter in Steely Dan songs – well, one, the excellent Quantum Criminals by Alex Pappademas and Joan Lemay – and the occasional sneer in Fagen’s voice makes him the perfect narrator for their tales.
You can hear it when he sings about extraterrestrial fixers with scars “from ear to ear” on Sign In Stranger, and a “wooly man without a face” on Caves Of Altamira, while Kid Charlemagne describes an in-demand drug dealer who has to make a quick getaway (inspired by a chap called Owsley Stanley who supplied LSD to California’s chemically curious in the ‘60s).
It’s not just Fagen’s voice you’ll hear either. Michael McDonald, who is most famous for being an on/off member of the Doobie Brothers, sings backing vocals on Kid Charlemagne, and good midrange performance from your system will ensure his distinctive voice sounds its very best.
Elsewhere there’s an ensemble cast of backing vocalists, including Clydie King, Sherlie Matthews, Venetta Fields and Timothy B. Schmit, whose other credits include Stevie Wonder, Ray Charles, The Rolling Stones and the Eagles. So while Fagen might not be the strongest singer on the record, there are plenty of legendary voices you’ll want your system to do justice to.
- Listen to The Royal Scam on Tidal
- Buy The Royal Scam by Steely Dan at Amazon
By royal appointment
You could pick almost any Steely Dan album to give your hi-fi a proper workout. The band's meticulously crafted songs are a particularly good test of transparency and how well your system organises its soundstage, but if you’re looking for a record that has more of the rock and less of the jazz that defined their later releases it’s hard to look beyond The Royal Scam.
While it’s easy to see why some people think of their music as being overly polished and clinical – although I've never thought the ‘yacht rock’ tag fits them – there’s more of an edge to The Royal Scam. It’s probably Steely Dan’s most energetic album, it’s definitely the darkest, and almost certainly the one that’s most fun to play air guitar along to.
Aja remains the ultimate Dan record, but the 50th anniversary of The Royal Scam presents the perfect opportunity to lose yourself in the band’s seedy world.
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