Walter Becker

Walter Becker spent his career within Steely Dan, the pioneering jazz-rock band he formed with Donald Fagen. Becker and Fagen shared a prickly sense of humor and bohemian sensibility, a combination that owed debts to hard bop, uptown R&B, Bob Dylan, and the Brill Building. Steely Dan had a handful of big hits in the early '70s, yet it was when they retired from the road and indulged in studiocraft that their personality emerged: they wrapped their barbed satire in smooth grooves. A variety of personal and professional problems led the pair to spend the 1980s apart. They reunited in the early '90s, with Fagen producing 11 Tracks of Whack, the 1994 solo debut from Becker. From there, Steely Dan worked regularly, with Becker stepping away from the group to release Circus Money in 2008 but otherwise staying on the road with the band until his death in 2017.