Excellent & appealing steely again, Benny. Happy New Year to you!

Download the album here...
Pssssst! D'ya wanna know what makes a Steely Dan Guitar solo? http://www.bennysutton.com/Music/Steely-Dan-Guitar-Solos.aspx

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Steely Dan

Clarence Carter, "Back Door Santa" (Original)

Dan D. always loved this track and thought it was a pity it was to slow to dance to. Fixed!


Aretha Franklin - Angel (Dan D. & Chevalier Touch)

Here's a release from the Baltic Soul Weekender Charity Project. Take an amazing song and a great singer and you have a proper choon. But add a remix from legendary Tom Moulton and authentic Salsoul design to it and you have real collectors item. Check on Ebay and grab one fast... 

Gloria Scott - That s the way love is 12" (A Tom Moulton mix)

My smooth jazz guitar version of the Steely Dan classic. I play all instruments except drums.

Hey! Why not visit http://www.bennysutton.com to hear and download many more great sounds like this?

I've got a page devoted to Steely Dan where I talk about how to play their great guitar solos 
http://www.bennysutton.com/Music/Steely-Dan-Guitar-Solos.aspx


Steely Dan ---- Peg (free download by clicking the 'buy' button)

I love this track and the debut album made in collaboration with (by then) ex-husband Stevie Wonder - more about the album at http://lostrecordcoversclub.blogspot.com/2011/06/syreeta-1972.html

similar stuff at http://picknmixed.blogspot.com/

and 45Cat entry for Syreeta at http://www.45cat.com/artist/syreeta

see

Syreeta - To Know You Is To Love You (1972) feat. Stevie Wonder

HEY! Like this? Then why not visit 
http://www.bennysutton.com 
to hear and download many more great sounds like this?

I've got a page devoted to Steely Dan where I talk about how to play their great guitar solos 
http://www.bennysutton.com/Music/Steely-Dan-Guitar-Solos.aspx

'Josie' is another Steely Dan classic off the 1977 album 'Aja'. 

Steely Dan ---- Josie

HEY! check out my website. I have a page devoted to Steely Dan
 http://www.bennysutton.com/Music/Steely-Dan-Guitar-Solos.aspx


Deacon Blues is another classic Steely Dan track off the Aja album.

Guitarists love Steely Dan because they integrated the instrument into their studio productions so beautifully. In the process they gave the world at least 10 of the top 50 guitar solos of all time!

What's the secret of a Steely Dan guitar solo? Find out at http://www.bennysutton.com/Music/Steely-Dan-Guitar-Solos.aspx 

download

Steely Dan ---- Deacon Blues

This is the first of several Steely Dan tracks that I will be releasing in 2016. 
Plenty of melody and emotion to hang your hat on in this tune. I opt for a nice clean 'American' sound to get my Ovation Breadwinner over. Another from the Aja album. 
The Steelys are nothing, if not commercial. "Black Cow" was written by Donald Fagen and Walter Becker, the co-front, core members of the band Steely Dan. It was released as the B-side of the single version of "Josie," which reached #26 on the US Hot 100. Two other singles released from the same album charted even better.
Note the deceptively simple disco-era instrumental starting out with a bass line and drums, then sneaking in layers of complexity with saxophone accompaniment and an electric piano solo. Steely Dan made a name for themselves for having highly polished productions. It was considered nothing special for them to take a year and dozens of session musicians to produce an album of less than ten songs.
Lord Tariq & Peter Gunz sampled the intro for their rap "Deja Vu (Uptown Baby)"
Speaking extra praise for Aja's perfectionism, it won the 1978 Grammy Award for Best Engineered Non-Classical Recording. Not only was Aja certified platinum, it was also one of the first to go platinum.
Theories as to what this song means: Take your pick of a troubled relationship, an ode to self-doubt, a commentary on nightlife, a reference to Hindu culture (cows are sacred), or it could be about Thelonious Monk, the American jazz composer who is often regarded as the father of bebop.
Do you have the multitrack masters for "Black Cow"? If so, Donald Fagen will apparently give you a $600 reward, since their copy went missing. For this reason, remastering the album as a Super Audio CD has been put on hold indefinitely. Sounds cheap to me!


download album

Steely Dan ----- Black Cow

This track, when the Steelies first released it, was marked by its distinctive 'voicebox' guitar, quite an innovation at the time when it was initially released Technology has moved on so much since the original track was recorded. 
The original voice box was a tube attached to your amp the sound from which went up a plastic tube and you mouthed vowels etc with your mouth close to a microphone. I have a pedal with a superb setting that does in digitally! I don't use it often but when I do I love it. So you get a clean guitar solo and a voice box one too for the same money! 
I always wondered why the almost reggae beat - that would mean it was called Jamaican Divorce! Slick move Donald to not do the obvious).
source http://www.songfacts.com
The lyrical meaning of the original refers to the odd practice of going to Haiti for a quickie divorce. You could go to Vegas for a quickie marriage, but what if you want a quickie divorce? In the early '70s, Haiti made it easy, allowing foreigners to divorce with hardly any restriction; the big sell was that only one member of the married party had to be present and request it.
For Haiti, this was a tourism ploy, as travel agents would send Americans looking for a quick and easy divorce to the island, where they would often spend some time on a resort. In many cases, these divorces were requested so that the person could immediately get remarried - a service Haiti also provided. So it was not uncommon for a married man to show up in Haiti with his mistress, get a divorce, and marry the new girl all in the course of a weekend. .Donald Fagan talked about the Haitian divorce in a 1976 interview with Sounds. Said Fagen: "It's a fierce and terrible ritual. I'll tell you that. You wouldn't want your sister to have a Haitian divorce, believe me. It was the quick 'divorce, without too much red tape. If you can say 'incompatibility of character' in French you're as good as gold. But we added a few elements to the ceremony itself."
In this song, it's the woman who goes to Haiti for her divorce. She has some fun while she is there, and presumably hooks up with a local - their sex scene is implied in cinematic terms in the lines:

    Now we dolly back
    Now we fade to black

    When she returns to America, she is pregnant, as Fagen sings, "Some babies grow in a peculiar way."
    The girl in this song drinks a zombie from a coconut shell, which at the time was a very typical island experience. A zombie is a rum-based cocktail that was popular at the time - an alternative to the Pina Colada.


Steely Dan ---- Haitian Divorce

Linda Clifford - Runaway Love (DJM Re - Edit)

HAL is a great little groove. Very typical Steely Dan chord progressions. I manage to play a lot of the melody on guitar during this track. Some Steely tracks melodies can be limited to a couple of notes for the vocals (e.g. Black Friday). This one has a beautiful melody, complete with those odd little passing notes and key changes we know and love (Becker/Fagen for).
I'm very pleased with the solo on this one. You can't beat the Steelies to improvise over. It's tough to play with such a clean sound and guitar tone but this you can get #in the pocket' of. It's bluesey, it's jazzy, and, as you know, I'm sparing with the number of notes I play per musical bar. I'm out to be the most expressive I can be - and that means making the most you can of the notes  you've got (and the silences between them).
At over five minutes this is one of the longest Steely track I have done!
Steely Dan Trivia... Apparently, this song is based lyrically on the epic novel The Odyssey by Homer. The hero, Ulysses, is trying to get home across the ocean after the Trojan War, but the gods keep making it difficult:
It's off the Aja album


Steely Dan ---- Home At Last

Carol King - It's Too Late (DJM Long Build Chillout Re - Edit)

Original version appears on their 1985 album "Blue"

Enjoy

Double - The Captain Of Her Heart (Ole Smokey's Ships In The Night Edit)

Disco Divas

Get up and Boogie

An edit i made for the opening song of All That Jazz

George Benson - On Broadway Watch TV edit

DIRECT CURRENT - Everybody Here Must Party (12" 1979)

Check out my Soundcloud channel for my latest music releases. 
Love Guitar? You're in the right place!
I'm different! I play melodies - even when improvising!  
I'm really not interested in impressing other musicians. I'm creating music for everyone.
I'M ALSO HERE...
http://www.bennysutton.com
MY VIDEOS http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL5TJp0GyhYOnusiCGB8z4fG0T8G35gTTi
https://soundcloud.com/bennysutton_covers


ABOUT ME
I play the music I like to listen to. 
As a guitarist I like to think I have my own style.
Harmony, and the groove is what I'm chasing, hopefully with a tasteful, nuanced, and distinctive presentation. 
I don't have a genre as such. I could sort of call myself a smooth Jazz 'n' Blues guitar 'thang' but in reality every track crosses over multiple strands of R&B/Jazz/Funk/Pop. Don't be put off by my use of the "J" word. Jazz to me is anything unpredictable and I'm nothing if not contemporary. 
Rhythm playing is as much a part of my "game" as lead soloing. I love the Funk!
My main instrument is guitar. I play a 1973 Ovation Breadwinner, an Ibanez nylon stringed and a Yamaha keyboard loaded with Keyscape. Unless stated I play all the other instruments too (mostly Bass), and sequence MIDI and arrange/produce. 

MY JOURNEY
I was signed with Fresh Air records and EMI in the 1980's creating Jazz/funk dance tracks but things were just as challenging then as they are now for musicians so I got a 'proper job' for 20 years! During all that time my guitar was in the loft! I rediscovered music in 2010 and Soundcloud in 2014.


MY SOUNDCLOUD
I am grateful to Soundcloud listeners who take the time to press |>Play - and especially if you give me some feedback :-)
I hope what you hear will draw you in sufficiently to explore on my own website. Nearly all my original stuff (6 albums worth) are on www.BennySutton.com and all are downloadable.
Please don't follow me in hope of getting to get an automatic follow back. I don't do that because I only follow the smallest number of people I can keep track of. I'll have a look at your page but will only follow back if you are really of interest to me. See my follow list, you'll discover some very talented artistes, many of whom I have been lucky to Collab. Soundcloud really is the place to find the real innovators these days - not the music industry approved channels, especially MTV!
If you want to get my attention, send me a PM.

Steely Dan ----- Black Cow

Benny Sutton

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