Phil Wood's beautiful alto saxaphone solo on Steely Dan's Dr. Wu

By Jack Brummet, 20th Century Music Ed.

I know people have a lot of other candidates, and that a group of folks can't countenance the saxaphone at all,  but the sweetest sax solo I've heard in a rock song is Phil Woods' turn on the Steely Dan song Dr. Wu.  The solo kicks in at 1:30 and runs to 2:12.  a) it's sweet the Dan gave Woods a 40 second solo on a four minute song; b) I just love the alto anytime at all; and c) the Dan were a spotty group, and while I held them on a pedestal for a few years in my youth, really, what they did was deliver four great songs on every album (some with, say, six) and then a handful of what you might charitably call less stellar tunes ('though perhaps not in the realm of Phil Spector's legendary "two hits and eight pieces of s**t."

---o0o---