Walter Becker: The mathematical wizard of the scoresheet

The fandom of Walter Becker was rather obscure, but his death has left a huge void in the music industry

On any other day, I would have welcomed the sounds and aroma emerging from the kitchen. But on one rainy day somewhere in the mid-1980s, when I was still in college, it was as if they were interfering with my limited ability to decipher what exactly Walter Becker and Donald Fagen were delivering on the 33 rpm vinyl playing in the living room.

It wasn’t my first tryst, if you will, with Steely Dan’s magic on 10 or 12 tracks that make up their compilation of Greatest Hits. The song playing was Josie, an iconic narrative about a hippie or