Wiki
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Release Date
1980
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Length
7 tracks
Aja is the sixth studio album by the American jazz rock band Steely Dan, released by ABC Records on September 23, 1977. On the album, band leaders Donald Fagen and Walter Becker pushed Steely Dan further into experimenting with different combinations of session players, enlisting the services of nearly 40 musicians, while pursuing longer, more sophisticated compositions and arrangements.
The album peaked at number three on the Billboard Top LPs & Tape chart, and number five on the UK Albums Chart, ultimately becoming Steely Dan's most commercially successful release. It spawned the hit singles "Peg", "Deacon Blues", and "Josie".
At the 20th Annual Grammy Awards, Aja won Best Engineered Recording – Non-Classical, and was nominated for Album of the Year and Best Pop Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocals. It has appeared on many retrospective "greatest albums" lists, with critics and audiophiles applauding the album's high production standards. In 2010, the album was recognized by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or artistically significant" and selected for preservation in the National Recording Registry.
The album was produced by Steely Dan's longtime producer Gary Katz, and their longtime master engineer Roger Nichols and features contributions from numerous leading session musicians. The eight-minute-long title track features a jazz-based chord progression and a solo by saxophonist Wayne Shorter. Co-composer and co-band leader Walter Becker did not perform on the tracks "Black Cow" or "Peg".
The title of the album is pronounced "Asia" (like the continent). Donald Fagen has said Aja was the name of a Korean woman who married the brother of one of his high-school friends. The album cover features a photograph by Hideki Fujii of Japanese model and actress Sayoko Yamaguchi, and was designed by Patricia Mitsui and Geoff Westen. The inside photos of Fagen and Becker were taken by Becker and Dorothy A. White.
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