{"id":15683,"date":"2023-07-20T07:00:00","date_gmt":"2023-07-20T06:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/?p=15683"},"modified":"2023-07-11T15:11:08","modified_gmt":"2023-07-11T14:11:08","slug":"steely-dan-whats-in-a-name","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/index.php\/2023\/07\/20\/steely-dan-whats-in-a-name\/","title":{"rendered":"STEELY DAN: WHAT\u00b4S IN A NAME?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

STEELY DAN: <\/strong>WHAT\u00b4S IN A NAME?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

asks Norman ooh ooh oohooh oohhoo hoo Warwick<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

“Norman<\/strong>” is a popular song written by\u00a0John D. Loudermilk<\/a>. Recorded by\u00a0Sue Thompson<\/a>\u00a0in 1961, the song reached No. 3 on the\u00a0Billboard<\/em>\u00a0Hot 100<\/a>.\u00a0The next year,\u00a0Carol Deene<\/a>\u00a0released her\u00a0version<\/a>\u00a0of the song (left)<\/em><\/strong> in the United Kingdom, where it reached No. 24 on the\u00a0UK Singles Chart<\/a>, and made my life a misery ! \u00a0Guy Lombardo<\/a> later apparently \u00a0recorded a version of the song for his 1962\u00a0Decca<\/a>\u00a0LP\u00a0By Special Request<\/em><\/a>..<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The nine year old man I had become when Carol Deene enjoyed her minor hit single, at my expense,  squirmed back into being an embarrassed little boy as his three favourite female pup\u00ecls in Miss Lightbowne\u00b4s class at Rectory Lane Primary School became The Beverley Sisters or The Andrews Sisters, as they sang the soppy song to me, with its horrible chorus, a hundred times a day for the three or four weeks the song was played almost constantly on the BBC light programme.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Of course, as soon as the song peaked and then dropped from the charts, the girls, Angela James, Kay Charnock and Marilyn Stewart found another poor boy to torment and returned to treating me with same disdain they always had done previously.  The damage was done though. I came to detest the name Norman, which  now sounded  soppy. I tried to become known as Paul, my middle name, but that only Miss Lightbowne to call out my name of Norman with what seemed to me an especially unpleasant elongated way. I suppose I probably only imagined that however.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Carol Deene\u00b4s next hit, in 1962 was another belittlement of men as she urged her latest flame to Hold The Ladder Steady, James ! If there any guys out there of my generation called james, who are still traumatised by the song or their primary school classmates, I can recommend a good counsellor !<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For a reason no more mature than that I think they sound literary, I occasionally write under my father\u00b4s Christian names as Ralph Dent even though I know that, if he is looking down on me he will be furious. The real Ralph Dent Warwick was a brewer and proud of it and writing would never be a proper job for his eldest son. But dad never had to put up with his name being sung on the radio for a year of his young life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Later on I married a girl, who at school and later at work had been called by her Christian name of Elizabeth but was always called by what felt a much cooler title of Dee by her family for some reason. Having a wife called Dee was<\/em> cool until The Pink Ladies greased up Sandra Dee ! Then my brother-in-law, christened Christopher, married a girl called Erica, and called her Rikki, an even cooler, classier name made even cooler a couple of years or so later by Steely Dan.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So come follow your art down sidetracks & detours to a time when having a cool name meant everything.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00a8It always comes back to jazz,\u00b4 Sam Long opined when writing the story behind the song Rikki Don\u00b4t Lose That Number, for American Songwriter recently.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

That Steely Dan song has remained a permanent tile on my playlists ever since it was first released as a single. I\u00b4m not sure, though, whether my colleagues and friends at The Hot Biscuits Jazz Programme would agree that the song is \u00b4jazz\u00b4 in any way at all. However, I support Sam Long because that record has a rock-steady vibe that is the kind of jazz I love !<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As Sam reminds us, it was in the \u2019seventies when experimental, prog-jazz rock slithered into popular music, Steely Dan found their way into the Billboard Hot 100 charts<\/a> with the single Rikki Don\u2019t Lose That Number in 1974.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Coming in as a top-five hit for that year, Rikki Don\u2019t Lose That Number eventually became the group\u2019s highest-charting single. The Rikki in the title is thought to be Rikki Ducornet, a New York writer and artist. Steely Dan co-founder Donald Fagen met Ducornet while attending a small event at a liberal arts school, Bard College. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

While the lyrical message might be obscure, the musicality of the single is clear. The keyboard riff was taken from 1964\u00a0\u201cSong For My Father\u201d<\/a>\u00a0by jazz composer and pianist Horace Silver, a name recently re-eva\u00f1luated ion The Horace Silver Project, as mentio0ned in xxxx still available in our archives of over 950 articles. Just tape his name into the search in our archives area.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 \u201cSong For My Father\u201d influenced many in popular music over the years, including the opening horn riff for Stevie Wonder\u2019s \u201cDon\u2019t You Worry \u2018Bout a Thing\u201d and Earth Wind & Fire\u2019s opening bass notes for the song \u201cClover.\u201d  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

It all comes back to jazz.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After Fagen gave Rikki his number he was subsequently inspired to write the iconic lyrics below: <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rikki, don\u2019t lose that number<\/em> 
You don\u2019t wanna call nobody else<\/em> 
Send it off in a letter to yourself<\/em> 
Rikki, don\u2019t lose that number<\/em> 
It\u2019s the only one you own<\/em> 
You might use it if you feel better<\/em> 
When you get home<\/em> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Rikk (left)<\/em><\/strong> herself, however, commented in 1998 on the meaning behind the song and offered a more philosophical approach rather than assuming the single to be just an unrequited love song. \u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cPhilosophically it\u2019s an interesting song; I mean I think his \u2018number\u2019 is a cipher for the self,\u201d she said.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

As for whether or not jazz purists like my mates Steve Bewick and Gary Heywood Everett might well be more receptive to Rikki Don\u00b4t Lost That Number than I imagine we should perhaps recall what the writers themselves said about the track at the time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

\u00b4In the band, (right<\/em><\/strong>) we\u2019re basically all jazz fans and most of the records we listen to are jazz\u00b4, Fagen said in 1975 about the group\u2019s jazz influence. \u201cThe people who made them are dead or they were recorded so long ago that they\u2019ve been forgotten. We\u2019re definitely pretty cold at the moment. We\u2019ve more or less abandoned hope of being one of the big important rock \u2018n\u2019 roll groups, simply because our music is somehow a little too cheesy at times and turns off the rock intelligentsia for the most part, and at other times it\u2019s too bizarre to be appreciated by anybody.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cSong For My Father\u201d influenced many in popular music over the years, including the opening horn riff for Stevie Wonder\u2019s \u201cDon\u2019t You Worry \u2018Bout a Thing\u201d and Earth Wind & Fire\u2019s opening bass notes for the song \u201cClover.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":15688,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[45],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15683","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-music"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15683","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15683"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15683\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15690,"href":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15683\/revisions\/15690"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15688"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15683"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15683"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15683"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}