<P> Becker and Fagen joined the touring band of Jay and the Americans for about a year and a half . They were at first paid $100 per show, but partway through their tenure the band's tour manager cut their salaries in half . The group's lead singer, Jay Black, dubbed Becker and Fagen "the Manson and Starkweather of rock' n' roll", referring to cult leader Charles Manson and spree killer Charles Starkweather . </P> <P> They had little success after moving to Brooklyn, although Barbra Streisand recorded their song "I Mean To Shine" on her 1971 Barbra Joan Streisand album . Their fortunes changed when one of Vance's associates, Gary Katz, moved to Los Angeles to become a staff producer for ABC Records . He hired Becker and Fagen as staff songwriters; they flew to California . Katz would produce all their 1970s albums in collaboration with engineer Roger Nichols, and Nichols would win six Grammy Awards for his work with the band from the 1970s to 2001 . </P> <P> After realizing that their songs were too complex for other ABC artists, at Katz's suggestion Becker and Fagen formed their own band with guitarists Denny Dias and Jeff "Skunk" Baxter, drummer Jim Hodder and singer David Palmer, and Katz signed them to ABC as recording artists . Fans of Beat Generation literature, Fagen and Becker named the band after "Steely Dan III from Yokohama", an oversized, steam - powered strap - on dildo mentioned in the William S. Burroughs novel Naked Lunch . Palmer joined as a second lead vocalist because of Fagen's occasional stage fright, his reluctance to sing in front of an audience, and because the label believed that his voice was not "commercial" enough . </P> <P> In 1972, ABC issued Steely Dan's first single, "Dallas", backed with "Sail the Waterway". Distribution of "stock" copies available to the general public was apparently extremely limited; the single sold so poorly that promotional copies are much more readily available than stock copies in today's collectors market . As of 2015, "Dallas" and "Sail the Waterway" are the only officially released Steely Dan tracks that have not been reissued on cassette or compact disc . In an interview (1995), Becker and Fagen called the songs "stinko ." "Dallas" was later covered by Poco on their Head Over Heels album . </P>

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