Deacon Blues (7:37)

“Deacon Blues” is a song by Steely Dan from their 1977 album Aja.

“Deacon Blues” was Steely Dan’s fifth Top 20 hit on the Billboard Hot 100 chart in the US, where it peaked at #19 in 1978. The song remained in the Top 40 for eight weeks.

It was originally speculated that the song was written about the losing Wake Forest University Demon Deacons, and the NCAA Division I championship Crimson Tide football teams, which was confirmed in a Rolling Stone interview, when group member Donald Fagen said, “Walter and I had been working on that song at a house in Malibu. I played him that line, and he said, “You mean it’s like, ‘They call these cracker assholes this grandiose name like the Crimson Tide, and I’m this loser, so they call me this other grandiose name, Deacon Blues?’ ” And I said, “Yeah!” He said, “Cool! Let’s finish it!”

In a 1994 AOL chat interview with Becker, someone asked him about the inspiration for “Deacon Blues”. He answered, “It was an outgrowth of a specific mood that pertained at a given time,” and later added, “…I remember the night that we mixed that one thinking that it was really good and wanting to hear it over and over which is never the case.”[2]