Celebrity Watch!

I am heartbroken at this news.Rock and Roll Hall of Fame-inducted bassist-guitarist's partnership with Donald Fagen yielded classic LPs like 'Aja,' 'Katy Lied' and 'Pretzel Logic'

Read Donald Fagen's Moving Tribute to Steely Dan Partner Walter Becker
"I intend to keep the music we created together alive as long as I can with the Steely Dan band," Fagen promises of Becker's legacy

Becker's official site announced the death; no cause of death or other details were provided.

"Walter Becker was my friend, my writing partner and my bandmate since we met as students at Bard College in 1967," Donald Fagen wrote in a tribute to Becker. "He was smart as a whip, an excellent guitarist and a great songwriter. He was cynical about human nature, including his own, and hysterically funny."

Becker missed Steely Dan's Classic East and West concerts in July as he recovered from an unspecified ailment. "Walter's recovering from a procedure and hopefully he'll be fine very soon," Fagen told Billboard at the time. Becker's doctor advised the guitarist not to leave his Maui home for the performances.

Becker and Fagen first became collaborators when they were both students at New York's Bard College. After working as songwriters (Barbra Streisand's "I Mean to Shine") and members of Jay and the Americans' backing band, the duo moved to California in the early Seventies to form Steely Dan – named after a sex toy in William S. Burroughs' Naked Lunch – alongside guitarists Jeff "Skunk" Baxter and Denny Dias, drummer Jim Hodder and singer David Palmer.

Following the release of their debut 1972 LP Can't Buy a Thrill, the lineup would change again with Palmer's exit; while Steely Dan would routinely rotate musicians, Becker and Fagen remained the group's core members. Despite the ever-changing lineup, Steely Dan made their stamp on music with a string of pristine, sophisticated albums with "calculated and literary lyrics" that blurred the lines of jazz, pop, rock and soul.

"I'm not interested in a rock/jazz fusion," Becker told Rolling Stone in 1974. "That kind of marriage has so far only come up with ponderous results. We play rock & roll, but we swing when we play. We want that ongoing flow, that lightness, that forward rush of jazz."

He added, "I learned music from a book on piano theory. I was only interested in knowing about chords. From that, and from the Harvard Dictionary of Music, I learned everything I wanted to know."
With Becker on bass, Can't Buy a Thrill produced the hits "Reelin' in the Years," "Dirty Work" and "Do It Again." Countdown to Ecstasy followed in 1973 with Fagen now entrenched as lead singer. Following 1974's Pretzel Logic – which yielded the band's biggest hit, "Rikki Don't Lose That Number" – the band experienced a major upheaval as in-demand touring musicians Dias, Baxter and Hodder all exited the quintet. "It was unfair of us to spend eight months writing and recording when Jeffrey Baxter and others in the group wanted to tour," Becker told Rolling Stonein 1977. "We weren't making very much money and everybody wanted to be out touring a lot. We didn't. That was that."

For 1975's Katy Lied, the now-duo – with Becker also picking up guitar duties – surrounded themselves with a team of expert studio musicians that included Toto's Jeff Porcaro, guitarist Hugh McCracken and Michael McDonald. "We don't feel it's something to be ashamed of," Becker said of Steely Dan's "enlarged-band concept." "We had outside players on the first album. The Beatles did it quite a bit, by their own admission. A lot of things Eric Clapton played…everyone thought it was George Harrison."

With that "supergroup" structure in place – the album features contributions from McDonald, the Eagles' Timothy B. Schmit, drummer Jim Keltner and legendary saxophonist Wayne Shorter – Steely Dan released their masterpiece Aja in 1977. The album, one of Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Albums of All Time, features classics like "Peg," "Deacon Blues" and "Aja" and became the duo's first platinum album, selling over 5 million copies and peaking at Number Three on the Billboard 200.
As their manager Irving Azoff told Rolling Stone in 1977, "Think of the biggest American supergroups. Fleetwood Mac. The Eagles, Chicago... And Steely Dan. Everybody knows Steely Dan. They belong in that list. All we had to do was make it official." Despite the success, the duo would dissolve their partnership within three years, following the release of 1980's Gaucho.

It would be another 20 years – with the release of 2000's Two Against Nature – that Becker and Fagen would record another Steely Dan album. That LP ultimately won four Grammy Awards, including Album of the Year. The band would record one more studio album, 2003's Everything Must Go, with Becker making his Steely Dan lead vocal debut on the track "Slang of Ages."

When asked by Time Out in 2008 about "Deacon Blues" sneaking onto classic rock radio, Becker said, "That's sort of what we wanted to do, conquer from the margins, sort of find our place in the middle based on the fact that we were creatures of the margin and of alienation, and I think that a lot of kids our age were very alienated. To this day when I read some text that somebody writes about alienation, I always think to myself, 'Gee, they make it sound like it's a bad thing!' So yeah, I think that's great. Naturally that's very satisfying to us to hear that something has slipped through the cracks."

In 2001, Steely Dan were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. "The musical tradition that Steely Dan represent is certainly one that's more cerebral and intellectual and beautiful as well," Moby said in his induction speech for the duo. "Although they always seemed to approach popular culture with a certain sense of irony and distaste, they also clearly have a love for beauty and beautiful music."

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Famed stand-up comic Shelley Berman, who recently played Larry David's father on "Curb Your Enthusiasm," has died. He was 92.

Berman died early Friday morning due to complications from Alzheimer's Disease at his home in Bell Canyon, Calif., his publicist confirmed to Variety.
The Grammy winner and Emmy-nominated actor was one of the most successful stand-up comedians of the 1950s and '60s. His 1959 live record, "Inside Shelley Berman," was the first comedy album to be certified gold (with more than 500,000 sales) and was the first non-musical recording to win a Grammy Award. Two other albums, "Outside Shelley Berman" and "The Edge of Shelley Berman," also went gold.Berman was the first stand-up comic to perform at Carnegie Hall. He appeared on "The Ed Sullivan Show" more than 20 times and was a guest on shows hosted by Steve Allen, Jack Paar, Dinah Shore, Perry Como, Andy Williams, and Dean Martin.
The Chicago native trained as a serious actor before jumping into comedy as a nightclub performer. His signature bit was to sit cross-legged on a bar stool, act as if he were on the telephone, and improvise long, complicated, one-sided conversations.

Berman appeared as Nat David on HBO's "Curb Your Enthusiasm" between 2002 and 2009, and received an Emmy nomination in 2008. He retired from performing in 2014.

Berman broke into show business in 1943 after his discharge from the U.S. Navy and enrolled at Chicago's Goodman Theatre acting school. One of his routines involved portraying his own father when the then-18-year-old Shelley called home to ask for $100 for acting school.

While at Goodman, he met Sarah Herman and they were married in 1947. Berman worked a series of summer stock and odd jobs, and eventually sold a sketch to Steve Allen for his "Tonight" show. Through Martin Landau, Berman got a gig at Chicago's improvisational Compass Players group, working alongside Mike Nichols and Elaine May, where he began to develop his famous phone-call routines.

In 1962, Berman participated in NBC's documentary-style television show "Comedian Backstage," where cameras followed him as he prepared for and performed his nightclub act. The cameras caught Berman becoming angry when a telephone backstage started ringing during his act, which dimmed his popularity for quite some time. But he was able to cross over into film and TV, compiling an extensive resume during the next five decades.

Berman appeared in the 1964 film, "The Best Man" with Henry Fonda, followed by "Divorce American Style," "Every Home Should Have One," "Teen Witch," "The Last Producer," "Meet the Fockers," "The Aristocrats," "The Holiday and "You Don't Mess With the Zohan."
TV credits included "Peter Gunn," "The Twilight Zone," "Rawhide," "Bewitched," "The Man From U.N.C.L.E.," "The Mary Tyler Moore Show," "Adam-12," "MacGyver," "L.A. Law," "Friends," " The Bernie Mac Show," "Grey's Anatomy," "Entourage," and "Hawaii Five-0" for his final credit in 2012. He made numerous recurring guest appearances as the semi-senile Judge Robert Sanders on "Boston Legal" between 2004 and 2008
Berman said in his introduction to his 2013 poetry book, "To Laughter With Questions," "I have always written. As a kid growing up in Chicago, I wrote stories for my own amusement. Along the way, I read and appreciated poetry, but never really tried my hand at writing it until late in my 'other' career, teaching writing in USC's master of professional writing program."

Berman taught at USC for more than 20 years with producer-director Jason Reitman among his students. He also volunteered at the Motion Picture & Television Fund in Woodland Hills, Calif., teaching a poetry class. His class was documented in the 2007 short film "It Ain't Over 'til It's Over."

Berman is survived by his wife of 70 years; his daughter Rachel Berman; and two grandsons.

Here's the Facebook post announcing the news of Berman's death on his official Facebook fan group page:

Shelley passed away this morning at 1:24 a.m., at his home in Bell Canyon, CA, due to complications from Alzheimer's. He was 92 years old. He slipped away peacefully, in his sleep, with no pain, as far as his hospice care workers could tell.

Right now, I'm a bit of a wreck, having spent much of the last couple of hours crying, pacing, being unable to concentrate, and, frankly, being conflicted as to how I should feel about all of this. I will have more to say in this group in the days ahead, but Sarah (who I just spoke to) wanted me to let all of Shelley's Facebook fans know about Shelley's passing. Sarah loves the fact that Shelley has so many devoted followers on social media.

There will be a private service for family and close friends, followed by a public memorial. I will provide details as they are finalized.

I'm going to leave it here for now, and I want all of you to please enjoy one of my favorite photos of Shelley, taken in Palm Beach, Florida, in the early '60s — a star in his dressing room before showtime!

I love you, Shelley.

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