Aja Tracklist
Steely Dan’s sixth album Aja is a jazz fusion of elements from rock, funk, and R&B. The album features contributions from several notable jazz musicians, such as Joe Sample, Lee Ritenour, Dean Parks, Tom Scott, and Wayne Shorter, while Michael McDonald also sang background on a couple of tracks.
The album reached the top 10 in several countries, including the US and the UK where it remains their highest-charting in both. “Peg,” “Deacon Blues,” and “Josie” were released as singles from the album, and all reached the top 30 in the US.
The album won a Grammy Award in 1978 for Best Non-Classical Engineered Recording, and it was later inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 2003. The album was featured on several “best of” lists, including a rank of #145 on Rolling Stone’s list of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time, as well as a spot in the Library of Congress' National Recording Registry.
Several hip-hop artists have sampled tracks from this album such as MF DOOM, De La Soul, as well as Lord Tariq & Peter Gunz, who famously sampled the opening track “Black Cow” for their 1997 hit “Deja Vu (Uptown Baby).”
“Aja” Q&A
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What have the artists said about this album?
Jazzwax: What haven’t you ever told anyone before about the album Aja?
Donald Fagen: Wow. Well, I know that halfway through we decided we wanted to go back to NY and do some tracks with some of the people we knew in the city. We felt that although there were great musicians in L.A., we were missing a little bit of soul from the days we were doing New York sessions. Half the album was done in L.A. and half was done in New York. We brought Larry Carlton back with us to New York to supervise. Other than Larry, we used New York players. It gave the album soul. We were able to use Paul Griffin and Don Grolnick on keyboards and engineer Elliot Scheiner—guys we knew from the early days. Also drummers like Rick Marotta and Bernard Purdie.
