Song of the Day 3/31: Steely Dan, “My Old School”

Only the good die young, they say, which is probably why G. Gordon Liddy, mastermind of the Watergate break-in, lasted 90 years before he shuffled off this mortal coil Tuesday. Several years before he made his mark on history with CREEP (note for the kidz: that was the incredibly apt acronym for the Committee to Re-Elect the President), he served as an assistant district attorney in Dutchess County, N.Y., home to Bard College, where Donald Fagen and Walter Becker were matriculating. That’s where he made his mark in popular music after masterminding a 1969 drug bust at Bard that was memorialized in Fagen and Becker’s 1973 song from “Countdown to Ecstasy.” Liddy is immortalized as Daddy G.

The American listening public, displaying the discerning taste for which it’s famous, responded to its release as a single with a collective yawn; it peaked at No. 63. It became a favorite of Dan fans anyway. Skunk Baxter’s spiky solos are among the best in his long career, but the song’s secret weapon is one of the snappiest horn charts in rock, courtesy of legendary Hollywood composer/arranger Jimmie Haskell — check out that baritone sax honk when California tumbles into the sea.