For a few years now, I’ve been a big fan of Brazilian jazz vocalist Luciana Souza (see also wikipedia).
The other day, I happened to listen to the old Steely Dan album Gaucho, and noticed that the melody of Third World Man was somehow very familiar. As a “kid”, I didn’t listen to that album so much, and Third World Man wasn’t really one of the “radio songs”. I’m sure I knew the tune, but my familiarity seemed much more recent…
Eventually, I realized that Third World Man is the same tune as the song Were you blind that day? on Luciana Souza’s album The New Bossa Nova with different lyrics. You can hear her tune here. I believe that is Chris Potter playing tenor sax in the tune. At any rate, I liked Souza’s song enough to put it in one of my yearly play lists (if you click that link, you’ll find the tune in gmcd-2013-12).
A good bit of Luciana Souza’s discography is available on bandcamp, but apparently (?) not The New Bossa Nova.
Anyhow, back to the point. Some googling led to still more details. This reddit thread, explains that:
Were you blind that day? was originally a Steely Dan tune intended for their album The Royal Scam. For some reasons, plans change; meanwhile the song evolved to be Third World Man on the later Gaucho album.
The tune with Were you blind that day? lyrics was never released on an album by Steely Dan, though it can be heard here: out-takes.
There is at least some sort of connection between Souza and Steely Dan. E.g. Luciana Souza’s album The New Bossa Nova was produced by her husband, Larry Klein. And Klein worked with Walter Becker e.g. on Becker’s 2008 solo album.
Anyhow, fun to learn this trivia. And: it is a beautiful tune!