Steely Dan’s affinity for jazz is palpable in nearly all of their songs, but oftentimes in concert they like to make that affinity more direct by tossing an old, instrumental blues-jazz tune into their setlist of otherwise Becker/Fagen originals. For 2021’s Northeast Corridor, that tune is the one that closes the album, “A Man Ain’t Supposed to Cry.”
“A Man Ain’t Supposed to Cry” was written by Irving Reid, Frankie Laine and Norman Gimbel, and first recorded by jazz singer Arthur Prysock in 1951. The more popular version came seven years later by another singer, Joe Williams, and that’s the version that probably connected with a certain “young man growing up in the remote suburbs of a northeastern city during the late ’50s and early ’60s, i.e., one of my general height, weight and build” (quoting Donald Fagen’s liner notes on The Nightfly).
You got a four-man horn section and an entire band full of crack jazz musicians, so why not put those skill sets to serious use? Trumpeter Michael Leonhart devised a horn arrangement that does the song justice and if you listen closely enough you’ll hear some great piano out of Jim Beard.
Coming on the heels of show-stopping rocker like “Reelin’ in the Years,” this genteel performance seems aimed at bringing the whole show to a soft landing but it also functions to serve notice that unlike their ’70s contemporaries, Steely Dan drew their influences from far more than Chuck Berry, Elvis Presley, the Beatles and Bob Dylan.
Indeed, it’s much easier to trace the lineage of “Deacon Blues” back to Joe Williams than it is to Dylan. Perhaps that’s the parting thought that Donald Fagen wanted to leave with his audience.
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