Steely Dan would hire as many session musicians as necessary.
That's amazing! Did they have people who were repeat hires?
Michael McDonald and Jeff "Skunk" Baxter were a couple of the best who worked on multiple albums.
I didn't realize there was so much overlap with members of the Doobie Brothers and Steely Dan. Which album is your favorite?
Probably it's between Aja and the debut Can't Buy a Thrill.
They may have spent more money on recording a single track on Aja than some artists did on an entire record. Elliot Scheiner says they wouldn't settle for anything less than perfection.
With the way music is distributed these days, nobody is going to spend that kind of money producing music anymore.
Agreed. It's heartbreaking that they haven't been able to find the masters for Black Cow and Aja. 
Yeah, but the copies that we have are still pretty good!  If your new to Dan, I suggest listening to them on the many musician reaction channels on Youtube.
That's good to hear! If you had to pick one song to get someone hooked on Steely Dan, what would it be?
That's hard!  But I'd go with my favorite, Deacon Blues.
Looking at the lyrics to that song, I'm impressed with how much thought they put into writing them. They really seemed to put their heart and soul into the songwriting process.
Yeah, a lot of their songs are poetry.  They took on may dark themes in their music, I kind of wish they'd had more happy songs.