Jeff “Skunk” Baxter not only made his mark with some memorable guitar leads for Steely Dan. He was also very adept at working the pedal steel guitar into rock, not making it sound hick in the least.
Just put an ear on the Doobie Brothers’ “South City Midnight Lady” sometime to understand how he can add a subtle mood to a song and make it deeper. He first picked up this instrument (a Fender 400) while in Ultimate Spinach in the late ’60s and brought that skill with him into Steely Dan.
I would argue that Steely Dan got better overall after Skunk left it in ’74, but that was in spite of his departure – not because of it. When he played the steel guitar for couple of tracks on each of their first three albums, it brought out the folk/country elements in Walter Becker’s and Donald Fagen’s songs. In retrospect, those songs were surprisingly well developed by guys who obviously knew the stuff inside and out.
When they got into that mode, you could tell that the Boys from Bard weren’t just listening to Charles Mingus and Sonny Rollins records in their formative years. After Skunk, that part of Steely Dan died. Baxter’s pedal steel first appeared for the band on “Fire In the Hole,” which became a requiem in the wake of engineer Roger Nichols’s death. Now it’s time to give the droopy ‘stached dude his due.
I never really understood the lyrics (“Brooklyn owes the charmer under me”?) nor do I need to, but this time I have to give the guy who sang them – David Palmer – his due, too. That smooth, unforced croon didn’t have a whole lot of R&B soul to it, but its easygoing manner was better suited for country music, and Steely Dan’s “Brooklyn” is an easygoing, country type tune. I couldn’t see Donald Fagen pull it off nearly this well, and even he would have to concede that point: After David Palmer left the band, others like percussionist Royce Mills sang it in concerts.
I don’t know how many people who are Steely Dan fans are also country music fans, but “Brooklyn” is one of those early songs where two seemingly opposed passions co-existed quite nicely.
- Claudio Scolari Project – ‘Opera 8’ (2024) - April 25, 2024
- Nick Millevoi – ‘Moon Pulses’ (2024) - April 23, 2024
- Cannonball Adderley – ‘Poppin’ in Paris: Live at L’Olympia 1972′ (2024) - April 20, 2024
