Here are Steely Dan’s five best bass performances, selected in tandem by our panel of Steely Dan authorities.

I was quite active in the early days of live television, most of which was shot in Hollywood, California. Sometime in the latter part of 1951, I got a call from the director and producer of many teen-oriented TV shows. You May Also Like: How Pee Wee Ellis Finally SteppedRead More

An exploration of the more notable hidden surprises in jazz.

Walter Becker once called himself as a “B+” guitarist. He’s certainly underrated there but as a bassist, I’d rate him even higher. Nonetheless, Becker had a history of making way for another bassist to play on a Steely Dan tune if he thought if that person was the better manRead More

What was cool about Lester Young was that he kept evolving. All “Pres” did was: — Pave the way for bebop in the 1930s. — Presuppose, while playing clarinet with Basie back in the day, the cool California sound of Paul Desmond in Dave Brubeck’s 1960s band. — Later findRead More

Those looking to get a groove going inside Count Basie’s sprawling, soul-deep catalogue should start with his 1970s stuff — where, more often than not, you find Basie in accessible, small-group settings. Here’s my favorite, a trio recording originally issued by Pablo that was reissued in 2006. I immediately connectedRead More

by Nick DeRiso Though not the hoped-for third-act triumph, Ella and Oscar still has its enduring charms. See, Oscar Peterson, a hard-banging piano genius as bluesy as he was inventive, should have made the perfect foil for Ella Fitzgerald on this stripped-down date, set for reissue on March 15 byRead More

“Jazz is the sound of surprise”–jazz critic Whitney Balliett, 1926-2007 Sometimes you think you know a musician and his tendencies, or that he’s always played the kind of music you’ve known him to play. Over the course of pursuing my curiosity about certain artists, I’ve stumbled upon some rather peculiarRead More

Ray Brown is one of those underrated guys who kept on producing important work well past his so-called prime, because he remained such an in-the-pocket guy. You can’t go wrong with the old Jazz at the Philharmonic stuff, of course. But I also typically recommend his late-period work on Telarc,Read More