By the Numbers - "Rikki Don't Lose That Number"

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In this day and age of cell phones, it seems impossible to lose someone’s phone number. There was a time when we had to write them down, on a napkin or something (unless you were handing out business cards like some Yuppie or something,) where they could easily become “lost.” Which brings us to today’s number song, made back in the napkin days: “Rikki Don’t Lose that Number” by Steely Dan, a 1974 hit for the group, from their album, Pretzel Logic. At this point, Steely Dan was still an actual band, but their love of using session musicians started around this time - more session players appear on this tune than band members. Speculation about the band’s biggest hit (#4 on the Billboard Hot 100) being about a drug dealer, or an undercover operative, or even a homosexual affair, ran rampant amongst fans, but it’s actually much simpler (though not as exciting!) than that. Donald Fagen has said it’s merely about a woman he had a crush on in college. This was first confirmed by Rikki (Ducornet) herself, who acknowledged she knew Fagen at Bard College (she was a faculty wife.) Smitten, Fagen had given Ducornet his phone number, which, of course, she “lost.” When the song was released, she was living in France and didn’t hear the song for ten years; she came forward as being “Rikki” in 2006. And that’s all the song is. A crush, and a “lost” phone number. Phone numbers are a numbers game, anyway. Give yours out enough, and eventually someone is bound to give you a call. The law of averages. In this case, it didn’t work out for Fagen. But the band got their biggest hit out of it, so it all worked out in the end. Since you’ve undoubtedly heard the studio version a thousand times, the link is to a live performance from 2018: