“Kid Charlemagne” by Steely Dan

"Kid Charlemagne" opens Steely Dan's 1976 album The Royal Scam, and it's the cynics' finest cautionary tale: Walter Becker and Donald Fagen have said Owsley Stanley, the San Francisco LSD chemist, and his boom-and-bust career gave them the loose outline, with the last verse nodding to his 1967 arrest, when his car reportedly ran out of gas.

Gary Katz produced, and the session crew is a killer's row. Bernard Purdie and Chuck Rainey lock into a slick, elastic funk groove, horns jab, Michael McDonald and a trio of backing singers sweeten the chorus, and Fagen sneers the story on top. Then Larry Carlton's guitar solo arrives, fluid and precise to the last note. An edited single only reached number 82 on the Hot 100, but Rolling Stone later ranked that solo among the greatest, at number 80 in 2008 and number 8 in its 2026 update.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.