“My Old School” by Steely Dan

"My Old School" is Steely Dan at full strut, a 1973 cut from Countdown to Ecstasy with Donald Fagen pounding piano and sneering the lead vocal, Walter Becker on bass, Jim Hodder on drums, four saxophonists (Lanny Morgan, Bill Perkins, Johnny Rotella and Ernie Watts) blowing hard, and Patricia Hall with Myrna and Sherlie Matthews hollering back. Becker and Fagen wrote it; Gary Katz produced and Roger Nichols engineered for ABC Records.

The fireworks belong to Jeff "Skunk" Baxter, who plays every one of its four guitar solos on a Stratocaster he made by hand, carving the maple body, doing the frets and winding his own pickups, and wrapped up in the Valley Sound parking lot 3 hours before the session. He plugged it straight into the console. As a single it stalled at No. 63, a letdown after the hits from Can't Buy a Thrill, but FM radio adopted it for keeps.

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