Chuck Rainey

And then there was the rebel bass track.

Session bassist Chuck Rainey wanted to bring a fashionable slap and bass feel into the chorus, but Donald Fagen and Walter Becker were as direct as they could be in their reply to Chuck.

"None of that junk is gonna be on our record." That's what they said.

But Chuck Rainey persisted.

On a later take, he turned back to the control booth and slipped the slap bass in anyway, and it sounded so good they couldn't deny it.

The band kept it.

They're all ITG approved.

Larry Carlton on guitar, Steve Gadd on drums, Jeff McCall, drums, verse three onwards, and Chuck Rainey on bass.

Yep.

That just reaffirms our belief and mantra, great music comes from great musicians.

And he played on Asia and he played on all the Steely Dan stuff for Walter's parts, you know, I mean, uh, Donald's part, excuse me.

And, uh, They liked the way we played, you know, and they always had Chuck Rainey was always on bass on all their tracks, you know, so they would switch drummers and switch keyboard players.

But it was always fun and interesting with Donald and Walter making records.

Yeah, absolutely.

That was the recommendation system, people.

and going back to steely dan's asia album is a great record for this because donald fagan and walter becker surrounded these songs with musicians chosen for very specific jobs you start reading the names and suddenly this one album points in a dozen directions steve gadd wayne shorter chuck rainey larry carlton And that's only part of the trail.

If I follow even one of those names, my record collection gets bigger.

And here's how I like to do this.

It's crazy.

You got Steve Gadd, Chuck Rainey, David Sanborn, Steve Lukather, Donald Fagan, Dean Parks, who also played on one of my records, one of the best guitarists, Randy Brecker, Victor Feldman, Lenny Castro.

I mean, it was a veritable who's who.

And you didn't say who's on Flugelhorn on this.

Yep.

Chuck Rainey.

Exactly.

And then we had a lot of the Muscle Shoals people came up, and I met all of them.

It's just so great to hear these names, because I think people forget-

You had everybody.

We had Chuck Rainey, of course.

Yeah.

So until my ship comes in, I'll live night by night.

And finally, I just wanna say on the kind of studio musicians who become a part of the Steely Dan lore, this is the first album we hear Chuck Rainey on bass.

Mm-hmm.

He's a huge part of the Asia and, um, [smacks lips] Royal Scam records.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So Chuck Rainey [laughs] sits and he's playing Josie.

It's either Josie or Peg, and the rule was because everything in 1977 is like slap bass.

It's a really early one after their Jazz Crusaders period, an album called Hollywood, which was, uh, released on the Motown subsidiary, MoWest.

The full quartet lineup, of course, Sticks Hooper, Joe Sample, Wilton Felder, and trombonist Wayne Henderson, plus Chuck Rainey and a couple of others on this particular album called Hollywood, and you heard the track Try a Little Harder from 1972.

So have you been enjoying the hot weather? Let's have some Love From the Sun [gentle music].

Two versions of this exist.