Showing posts with label Phil Woods. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Phil Woods. Show all posts

Monday, March 10, 2014

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."


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