Walter Becker

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Walter Becker
Background information
Birth name Walter Carl Becker
Born 20 February 1950
Origin Queens, New York
Genre(s) Rock, Jazz fusion
Years active 1971 – present
Label(s) MCA Records
Giant/Reprise/Warner Bros. Records
Reprise/Warner Bros. Records
Website Official Site

Walter Becker (born Walter Carl Becker, 20 February 1950, in Queens, New York) is the guitarist (and sometimes bassist) half of the duo at the core of the jazz-rock band Steely Dan.

[edit] Career

Becker grew up in Westchester County and Forest Hills and is a graduate of Stuyvesant High School in Manhattan, (class of 1967). After starting out on saxophone, he switched to guitar and received instruction in blues technique from neighbor Randy Wolfe who, as Randy California, was soon to found the group, Spirit.

He met his long-time musical partner, the other half of Steely Dan, Donald Fagen, while attending Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York. Becker and Fagen's youthful career included a stint with Jay and the Americans under pseudonyms, and in the early 1970s, as pop songwriters, prior to forming Steely Dan.

Following Steely Dan's breakup in 1981, Becker moved to Hawaii, and began a career as a record producer, producing artists as diverse as Rickie Lee Jones, China Crisis and Michael Franks. He reunited with Fagen briefly to collaborate on the debut album of U.S. singer, former fashion model Rosie Vela. Their partnership resumed in the mid-1990s as they undertook a tour under the Steely Dan moniker in 1993, and Becker produced Fagen's album Kamakiriad in that year as well. In turn, Fagen co-produced Becker's belated solo debut album, 11 Tracks of Whack (1994).

Becker and Fagen reunited again in 2000 to release the first Steely Dan studio album in two decades, Two Against Nature, which won the Grammy Award for Album of the Year. Everything Must Go followed in 2003.

Becker is currently working on another solo album in New York.

He will be inducted into the Long Island Music Hall of Fame [1] in 2007.

[edit] Other works

Walter produced Fra Lippo Lippi's 1987 Norwegian single, "Angel", as well as the 1985 China Crisis album, Flaunt The Imperfection. In 2005, Becker co-produced and played bass on the Krishna Das (singer) album All One. Becker played solo guitar on the title track of the 2005 Rebecca Pidgeon album Tough on Crime. Madeleine Peyroux's 2006 album Half the Perfect World featured a single, I'm All Right, that was co-written with Peyroux and producer Larry Klein.

[edit] External links

Steely Dan
Walter Becker - Donald Fagen
Jeff "Skunk" Baxter - Denny Dias - Jim Hodder - Michael McDonald - David Palmer
Discography
Studio albums: Can't Buy a Thrill - Countdown to Ecstasy - Pretzel Logic - Katy Lied
The Royal Scam - Aja - Gaucho - Two Against Nature - Everything Must Go
Live Albums: Alive in America - Plush TV Jazz-Rock Party
Compilations: Greatest Hits - Steely Dan - Gold - Gold (Expanded) - A Decade of Steely Dan
Reelin' In The Years - Do It Again - Citizen Steely Dan
Then and Now - Showbiz Kids - Definitive Collection
Also featured on: Marian McPartland's Piano Jazz
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