Audio Archaeology, 1960s-1971: The Steely Dan & Becker/Fagen Songwriting Team Origin Story
Producer Richard Perry, leaning Barbra Streisand into a decidedly rock arena, discovers a song by a new duo that'll fit perfectly on an LP with songs by fellow rockers Carole King & John Lennon!
Streisand Sings Steely Dan: When Barb Met the Duo From Bard
This is the story of how a mainstream belter came to record a song in 1971 by two fledgling (and quite unlikely) songwriters in their early 20s, a year before they began their own multi-decade, Award-winning rocket to rock and hit stardom as Steely Dan.
To watch their career lift off the ground, an eye-opening music-making journey takes us from Elvis-era ‘50s to ‘60s pop chart-toppers, from a future film comedian to a young, unknown singer whose promising career debut is tangled up in legalities for over half-a-century, as she is forced to sit by and watch a legend take off with what should have been “her song.” We start here, with the superstar.
In 1967, Barbra Streisand was already eight albums into her singing career with Columbia Records when the label actually released two Babs albums in October of that year: Simply Streisand and A Christmas Album, the first of many Streisand holiday vinyls the label would see fit to release in the ensuing decades.
Confident they’d both meet with eager buyers, it’s still astounding to contemplate the dual release by a label of any artist!
As it happens, though, Simply was Streisand’s first LP that failed to chart in the Top 10 of the Billboard 200 Albums when it peaked at the lowly-for-her #12. The album, nevertheless, sold a quarter-of-a-million units in its first week in stores.
This Hugh Martin/Ralph Blane standard, “The Boy Next Door,” made its 1944 debut with Judy Garland in her Meet Me in St. Louis film musical.
Streisand was seen, early on, as the new belter-of-standards, as Judy passed that mantle to the 25-year-old Brooklynite. Judy would be gone two years later. Two years before, in December 1965, I saw Judy (with The Supremes opening) in concert at The Astrodome:
Conversely, A Christmas Album is one of Streisand’s best-selling albums, and is ranked as one of the best-selling Christmas albums of all time. A year-end conference-table confab at CBS Records (aka “Black Rock”) in NYC, though, might have yielded the observation that dueling artist releases might chew into corporate profits over time, at least where La Streisand is concerned.
In other words, release Simply in July, have it do what it’ll do (likely Top 10), then be all about A Christmas Album come autumn. Fifth floor Sales and Promotion will thank you, and both albums’ sales can be maximized with fewer perceived choices to be made by consumers.
The Road From Barb to Bard
That same year, 1967 (while Babs was perusing charts for two albums), fledgling New York-based songwriters Walter Becker (17) and 19-year-old Donald Fagen, met at The Red Balloon coffee house while attending Bard College.