"Rikki Don't Lose That Number" is a single released in 1974 by rock/pop/jazz group Steely Dan and the opening track of their third album Pretzel Logic. It was the most successful single of the group's career, peaking at #4 on the Billboard Hot 100 in the summer of 1974.
The song features Jim Gordon on drums, as does the bulk of the Pretzel Logic album. The guitar solo is by Jeff "Skunk" Baxter.
Victor Feldman's flapamba (a variant of a marimba) introduction to the song (opening the album) is cut from the original ABC single version. The MCA single reissue (backed with "Pretzel Logic") includes the flapamba intro but fades out just before the actual end of the track. The introductory riff is a direct nod to Horace Silver's jazz classic, "Song for My Father".
In the March 24, 2006 (2006-03-24) issue of Entertainment Weekly, in an article titled "Back to Annandale", it was revealed that Rikki Ducornet was the apparent inspiration for the song due to a friendship songwriter Donald Fagen had with her while attending Bard College. Ducornet was pregnant and married at the time, but recalls that Fagen did give her his phone number at a college party while attending Bard and said that she believed she was the subject of the song. Fagen would not confirm the story.
Read more about Rikki Don't Lose That Number: Personnel, Cover Versions
Famous quotes containing the words lose and/or number:
“The perception of the comic is a tie of sympathy with other men, a pledge of sanity, and a protection from those perverse tendencies and gloomy insanities in which fine intellects sometimes lose themselves. A rogue alive to the ludicrous is still convertible. If that sense is lost, his fellow-men can do little for him.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“The basis of successful relief in national distress is to mobilize and organize the infinite number of agencies of self help in the community. That has been the American way.”
—Herbert Hoover (1874–1964)