Song of the Day 4/6: Steely Dan, “Home at Last”

This song from the 1979 album “Aja” is unique in Steely Dan’s catalog: It’s the only one with solos by both Donald Fagen, on synthesizer, and Walter Becker on guitar. So it might be the only time they trusted themselves and each other simultaneously.

Lyrically about an interstate Ulysses, “Home at Last” is revered by Dan fans and musicians for another reason: Drummer Bernard “Pretty” Purdie lays down a magnificent example of the beat he’s famous for, the Purdie shuffle.

Purdie, who recorded several songs for Fagen and Becker, is probably the most recorded drummer in history. He has appeared on something between 2,000 and 4,000 records with hundreds of artists in a 60-year career. Dizzy Gillespie, Aretha Franklin, James Brown, Nina Simone. Cat Stevens, Hall & Oates, Todd Rundgren, Tom Rush. Purdie could play anything, and did.

He was born in Elkton, Md., in 1939, and though he left for a professional career when he was still in his teens, it was a childhood memory made him immortal. Purdie was the 11th of 15 children, and the family lived near the railroad tracks through town. Every night as he lay in bed he heard the boxcar caravan rattling along the tracks. That was the sound that inspired the Purdie Shuffle. You can hear it today when the B&O trains rumble through Newark.

Elkton is justifiably proud of its native son, most recently honoring him with a giant mural at the community center in 2022. Somebody took this video from his visit a decade ago, when he played an instrumental “Home at Last” with a couple of local musicians. The spare trio gives him a lot more leeway for fills.