Melodic snippit7/5/2023 ![]() ![]() Fagen himself made light of this in the 1999 Classic Albums series documentary on the making of Aja, rapping from Lord Tariq and Peter Gunz's "Déjà Vu," for its memorable sampling of the Dan's "Black Cow." Fagen could joke, perhaps, because after 1992's landmark legal case, Grand Upright Music vs. The Fagen-Becker hit " Peg" featured prominently, for instance, in the early De La Soul cut, "Eye Know" from 1989's Three Feet High and Rising 3rd Bass borrowed significantly from the Dan's " FM (No Static At All)" on their 1991 tune, "No Static at All." A myriad of Dan-samples have turned up in hip-hop in the years since. Ironically, by the end of the 1980s and the turn to the 1990s, Steely Dan's catalogue of funky jazz-inflected pop music was emerging as fertile ground for hip-hop's sample-heavy aesthetics. Quoting is all part of the jazz musician's bag, and if, say, the estate of Jerome Kern sued every time a saxophone player snuck in a melodic snippet from "All the Things You Are," there'd be an endless series of copyright infringement suits showing up on dockets. While a borrowing in rock and roll may be cause for litigation, jazz musicians frequently reference other works of music in moments of improvisation. But Silver didn't sue the Dan - perhaps recognizing the jazz ethos to which they claim in interview after interview. Listen to the opening riff of their 1974 hit, " Rikki Don't Lose That Number" back-to-back with the intro to Horace Silver's 1965 number, "Song for My Father," and you'd be hard-pressed to tell the difference between the two. Interestingly, this wasn't even the first time Steely Dan had self-consciously alluded to a jazz recording on one of their tracks. ![]() He sued the songwriters for creative theft, and successfully earned himself a writing credit for "Gaucho." Confronted with the overwhelming musical similarities between their song and a half-decade old tune called "Long As You Know You're Living Yours" by jazz pianist Keith Jarrett, the ironic songwriters quipped, dismissively: "We're the robber-barons of rock and roll." Fans of Steely Dan might have been charmed by Fagen and Becker's usual flair for the wisecrack, but Jarrett wasn't amused. ~ Michael Borshuk In a 1980 Musician magazine interview, Steely Dan co-founders Donald Fagen and Walter Becker got themselves into a bit of hot water with a sarcastic answer to a question about the title track to their new LP, Gaucho. The line between theft and homage is indeed blurred, but there is a long history of plagiarism in music. In many cases, the artist makes his case in court - Thicke's testimony included a piano medley where he played other songs that sound like "Blurred Lines." These cases rarely go all the way to a jury, but when they do, those eight people have to rely on intuition and musicologist testimony to decide if a song infringed copyright. On March 10, 2015, a Los Angeles jury ruled that Robin Thicke's hit " Blurred Lines" copied elements of Marvin Gaye's 1977 song " Got to Give It Up" and awarded Gaye's estate $7.3 million in damages. ![]()
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