Steely Dan Katy Lied 1975 ABC Records Original Vinyl LP w/Insert

$

40

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Katy Lied Studio album by  Steely Dan Released March 1975 Recorded November 1974–January 1975 Studio ABC, Los Angeles, California Genre Jazz rock Length 35:20 Label ABC Producer Gary Katz Steely Dan chronology Pretzel Logic
(1974) Katy Lied
(1975) The Royal Scam
(1976) Singles from Katy Lied

1. "Black Friday"
   Released: May 1975
2. "Bad Sneakers"
   Released: September 1975

Katy Lied is the fourth studio album by American rock band Steely Dan, released in March 1975, by ABC Records; reissues have since been released by MCA Records due to ABC's acquisition by the former in 1979. It was the first album the group made after they stopped touring, as well as their first to feature backing vocals by Michael McDonald.

In the United States, the album peaked at number 13 on the Billboard Top LPs & Tape chart, and it has been certified Gold by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). The single "Black Friday" charted at number 37 on the Billboard Hot 100.

Recording

The album was the first one recorded by Steely Dan after guitarist Jeff "Skunk" Baxter and drummer Jim Hodder left the group as a result of Walter Becker and Donald Fagen's decision to stop touring and focus solely on recording with various studio musicians. Guitarist Denny Dias, a founding member of Steely Dan, contributed to the album as a session musician, as did singer Michael McDonald and drummer Jeff Porcaro, who were both members of Steely Dan's final touring band. Then only 20 years old, Porcaro played drums on every track on the album except "Any World (That I'm Welcome To)", which features session drummer Hal Blaine. Larry Carlton, who became a regular collaborator of the group, made his first appearance on a Steely Dan album playing guitar on "Daddy Don't Live in That New York City No More".

Band leaders Becker and Fagen said they were dissatisfied with the album's sound quality because of an equipment malfunction with the then-new dbx noise reduction system. The damage was mostly repaired after consulting with the engineers at dbx, but Becker and Fagen still refused to listen to the completed album.

Critical reception

Reviewing the album in 1975 for The Village Voice, Robert Christgau said that, while Katy Lied might be Steely Dan's "biggest" album to that point, he found it "slightly disappointing" on a musical level, citing the loss of lead guitarist Baxter and what he perceived as "cool, cerebral, one-dimensional" jazz guitar influences. Nonetheless, Christgau admitted that he played the album frequently, and he voted it the third-best album of the year on his ballot for the 1975 Pazz & Jop critics poll, on which it placed sixth. John Mendelsohn was more critical in Rolling Stone, writing that "however immaculately tasteful and intelligent" Steely Dan's music may be in theory, it did not register with him emotionally and remained "exemplarily well-crafted and uncommonly intelligent schlock". Mendelsohn found the lyrics interesting, but inscrutable, the musicianship tasteful and well-performed, but not stimulating, and Fagen's singing unique-sounding, but seemingly passionless. In a review in Rolling Stone from 1977, Cameron Crowe called the album "anonymous, absolutely impeccable swing-pop" with "no cheap displays of human emotion".

Retrospectively, Stephen Thomas Erlewine of AllMusic described the album as "a smoother version of Pretzel Logic" and "another excellent record" by Steely Dan. Travis Elborough wrote in his 2008 book The Long-Player Goodbye: The Album from LP to iPod and Back Again that Katy Lied, while not on par with Pretzel Logic (1974) or Aja (1977), was still "up there as jazz rock staples go". In The Rolling Stone Album Guide (2004), Rob Sheffield said the album completed a trilogy of Steely Dan albums (the other parts being Countdown to Ecstasy (1973) and Pretzel Logic) that is "a rock version of Chinatown, a film noir tour of L.A.'s decadent losers, showbiz kids, and razor boys". Jazz historian Ted Gioia cited the album as an example of Steely Dan "proving that pop-rock could equally benefit from a healthy dose of jazz" during their initial tenure, which coincided with a period when rock musicians frequently experimented with jazz idioms and techniques.

Of lead single "Black Friday", Cash Box said that it contains elements that made earlier Steely Dan singles successful, such as "Hot Fender Rhodes piano tracks, lead guitar work, rhythm that won't stop cooking and identifiable vocals and mix that lets you know Gary Katz has been hard at work on the knobs."

Track listing

All tracks are written by Walter Becker and Donald Fagen.