Ravinia 2019, Issue 7, Week 13

7:30 PM SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 1, 2019 PAVILION 7:30 PM MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 2, 2019 SWEET TOUR DINOSAUR EXHIBIT FEATURING JERRY GOODMAN –Intermission– STEELY DAN STEELY DAN While attending Bard College in the late ’60s, Donald Fagen and Walter Becker discovered common interests not only in jazz, blues, and popular music but also contemporary literature, and they soon began writing songs and joining local bands together. At the close of the decade the duo relocated to the heart of New York, where they caught the interest of a publish- ing company owned by the group Jay and the Americans, which they briefly joined as tour- ing members. Through this association, Fagen and Becker met Gary Katz, who hired the duo as songwriters for ABC Records in Los Ange- les and began producing their first album under the name Steely Dan. Released in 1972, Can’t Buy a Thrill made an immediate splash—reach- ing number 17 on the Billboard chart and going platinum—cementing the partnership between the group, Katz and engineer Roger Nichols for many years to come. Pretzel Logic (1974) cracked the top 10, and its single “Rikki Don’t Lose That Number” became the group’s highest-charting hit at number four. In 1975 Steely Dan became purely a studio recording band, recruiting a diverse group of acclaimed session players for Katy Lied , The Royal Scam , and Aja in succes- sive years. Gaucho (1980) was the group’s final album until 2000’s Two Against Nature , which won Album of the Year honors at the Grammys. Around the same time, Fagen and Becker were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and received ASCAP’s Founder’s Award and honorary doctorates from the Berklee School of Music. Everything Must Go (2003) became Steely Dan’s fourth straight top-10 album, and the group has since focused solo projects—Fa- gen’s Morph the Cat (2006) and Sunken Condos (2012) and Becker’s Circus Money (2008), each critically acclaimed—and touring. In 2010 Aja was added to the Library of Congress’s Nation- al Recording Registry. Donald Fagen played Ravinia in 2012 with the Dukes of September Rhythm Revue has brought Steely Dan to the festival in 2011, 2013, and 2015. This is the band’s first return to Ravinia since the death of Walter Becker in 2017. DINOSAUR EXHIBIT Chicago has long been famous as a hotbed for the blues, giving rise to artists like Muddy Wa- ters, Junior Wells, Bo Diddley, Howlin’ Wolf, and Buddy Guy, as well as several record labels that specialized in the big city sound—Delmark, Alligator, Bluebird, Cobra, and Chess. Then, as rock and roll gave way to straight-ahead rock, artists looking for fresh hooks to define their own sounds found a wealth of inspiration in the urban blues, and another musical revelation took shape. The Mauds, part of a burgeoning garage band scene in the early ’60s, found its stride with blue-eyed soul and a classic cover of the Sam & Dave hit “Hold On,” made—where else?—at Chess Records. After several more hits that became regular spins on Chicago radio, in- cluding “Knock on Wood,” The Mauds hit it big again with “Soul Drippin’,” which featured a horn section that would some time later simply be known as Chicago. Not to be outdone by the addition of a dominating horn line to this new jazz-rock, The Flock soon flew around the Chicago airwaves and on international tours with the addition of electric violin, provided by Jerry Goodman (who would later become a founding member of the influential fusion band Mahavishnu Orchestra). Hits like “Clown,” “Big Bird,” and other cult classics led English bluesman John Mayall to call The Flock the best American band he’d ever heard in the liner notes for the group’s first of three albums. Original members of both of these bands, as well as Mercury Records labelmates Aura, have joined together as Dinosaur Exhibit to unearth the bones of Chicago jazz-rock. The group is making its first return to Ravinia following its 2017 debut. AUGUST 26 – SEPTEMBER 2, 2019 | RAVINIA MAGAZINE 111