The song that inspired the Steely Dan classic ‘Rikki Don’t Lose that Number’
There are few groups as intrinsically connected to the nerdier side of musical creation than the duo of Steely Dan. Donald Fagen and Walter Becker did away with the term aficionado and hid jazz in plain popified sight for all of us sinners uninitiated in the ways of augmented 7ths and the circle of fifths. To the ear, ‘Rikki Don’t Lose that Number’ might seem like a soft rock classic, but under the surface is a jazz structure more akin to a simplified Miles Davis than the pop titans Hall and Oates.
The keyword, however, is simplified. In fact, Fagen thinks that it was almost too simple, once famously critiquing one of their most beloved tunes for being a little too accessible for their tastes. “Walter and I aren’t fond of ‘Rikki Don’t Lose That Number’. It’s not a bad song. I think it’s ‘well-written,’ but it’s so simple,” he told Rolling Stone back in 2013. “I just have listening fatigue. It’s been played so much. Same with ‘Reeling in the Years’.”
It’s very natural for artists to find their songs a little tiresome after a while. Nirvana, REM, Oasis, Radiohead and countless others have all found themselves on the wrong end of their own creations following a boom in popularity. But Steely Dan’s issue always seemed to be more rooted in the track’s departure from its most integral inspiration.
While their tune had been taken into the pop realms of rock radio with the gleeful open arms of a chubby kid being handed their second slice of birthday cake, the original song that inspired their smash hit was a simplified form of jazz that wasn’t quite so sugary. The introductory riff of the track doesn’t just hide jazz in plain sight, it also hides theft. For the classic Pretzel Logic opener in 1974, the Dan delved into their roots and repurposed the Horace Silver piano composition ‘Song for My Father’ from 1964.
With a classic 24-bar AAB structure, Silver transposed South American rhythms into the song, and this transposition was rooted in a direct inspiration itself. As Silver once explained, the tune was a derivative of his time in the continent and was “in part inspired by our Brazilian trip. We got the Brazilian rhythm for this tune from that trip, and the melodic line was inspired by some very old Cape Verdean Portuguese folk music.”
Low and behold, ten years and a few thousand miles later, that culturally ingrained rhythm was making its way into Steely Dan’s surprisingly most accessible song, and almost as a result of that alone, their biggest commercial hit. What’s perhaps even more indicative of the band is the simple way that they just slapped Silver’s piece straight onto the song. Their liberal appropriation of influences is a central tenet of their work—even their name was lifted straight from a William S Burroughs novel. However, there were so many influences in the welter of their work that even the direct theft of a piano signature is lost amid the swirl of other sounds, themes and everything else that they throw in.
Of course, jazz wasn’t the only inspiration for the number. With a tango-like feel, the song of love to an old college flame who later became the successful writer Rikki Ducornet, is Dan at their most danceable, and yet it still says a lot that the initial sonic inspiration was an old jazz piece.
In 2006, Donald Fagan told Entertainment Weekly confessed to the song’s titular character. The co-frontman met Ducornet at a Halloween Party party at Bard College in 1967, the school where Steely Dan formed in 1971. Then known as Leather Canary, the band were invited to provide music for the night’s celebrations. After delivering a raft of new originals alongside covers such as The Rolling Stones’ ‘Dandelion’, Moby Grape’s ‘Hey Grandma’, and Willie Dixon’s ‘Spoonful’, Fagan, Becker and company sank into the crowd – the majority of which was high on LSD – to grab a well-earned drink.
Sweeping past Leather Canary drummer and future SNL star Chevy Chase, Fagen found himself face-to-face with Ducornet. The pair spent the majority of the night without moving from each other’s side. Even though she was both pregnant and married at the time of their meeting, Fagen decided to give Ducornet his number, presumably urging her not to lose it. Ducornet didn’t heed his warning and never picked up the phone, adding perhaps another layer as to why the creator of the tune felt so let down by its success.
On reflection, jazz, pop music and unrequited love are the exact combinations one might expect to form the basis of a classic Steely Dan song.
