Donald Fagen’s favourite Ray Charles records
For a moment, Donald Fagen looked set to dominate the 1980s pop charts on a parr with David Bowie’s superstar Let’s Dance ascendency and Bruce Springsteen’s stadium monster Born in the USA.
Following former band Steely Dan’s run of jazzy prog-pop records, including Pretzel Logic and Aja, Fagen parted ways with partner Walter Becker to produce the slick 1982 solo debut The Nightfly, swapping the duo’s penchant for irony-drenched lyrics for a more wistful indulgence in the late night radio DJs that soundtracked his adolescence across the 1950s and early ’60s.
Released to acclaim and second-single ‘New Frontier’ doing the rounds on the fledgling MTV channel, a period of depression dashed any further success his debut promised, releasing a handful of singles and not following up with a sophomore LP til 1993’s Kamakiriad.
However, it is The Nightfly that would define Fagen’s solo output, hailed as a landmark milestone in digital recording, being one of the first mainstream LPs to be produced with the 3M 32-track recorder at New York’s Soundworks studios.
In keeping with the record’s late-night radio theme, Fagen promoted The Nightfly with an appearance on London’s Capital Radio, speaking to host Charlie Gillett and selecting some of his favourite songs. With his collation guided by the nostalgia informing his solo effort’s conceptual bent, Fagen reels off the hits of yesteryear across Shirley Bassey, Frank Sinatra, and Clyde McPhatter & The Drifters, but only one artist in his list has the distinction of featuring twice.
“He’s always been one of my favourites. He’s kind of legendary, and the track I selected is basically a blues with a big band arrangement.” Picking Ray Charles‘ ‘I’ve Got News For You’ from his 1961 collaboration with Quincy Jones Genius + Soul = Jazz, Fagen reveals an insight into the subtle humour that hides in his lyrical bite. Originally written by Tin Pan Alley songsmith Roy Alfred, the tune explores the creeping suspicions of a lover’s infidelity, detailing the various clues and alibies that just don’t add up, all sung with Charles’ arrestingly soulful command.
This was followed by Charles’ duet with jazz singer Betty Carter on ‘Ev’ry Time We Say Goodbye’, as he explained: “This is a beautiful record. Oh, I must have bought this when I was 14 or 15 years old and it’s extremely romantic, and it’s also an illustration of what Betty Carter sounded like when she was very young.” One of the 1940s’ contributions to the great American songbook, the jazz standard was written by Cole Porter and explores the passionate love between a couple and the pain that’s endured when they’re apart, an enduring song that many an artist keeps going back to, from John Coltrane to Lady Gaga.
Charles would prove to be a perennial theme for Fagen, penning Morph the Cat‘s ‘What I Do’, an ode to his favourite big band pianist. Speaking to GQ in 2014 about his impact, Fagen expressed the spell Charles had cast: “Just watching him, the way his body moves – for a kid from New Jersey to see that kind of passion, that was really revelatory for me.”
He added: “At that point I was living in the suburbs, and even though I was a jazz fan when I was very young, and used to hearing passionate performances on records, the general tendency of jazz in the Fifties was cool, so seeing Ray Charles, who had that much gospel in his style, you could tell he was utterly authentic.”
