 Walter Becker, the guitarist and songwriter who made suavely subversive pop hits out of slippery jazz harmonies and verbal enigmas in Steely Dan, his partnership with Donald Fagen, died on Sunday. His official website confirmed the news without a cause of death — although his health had been declining in recent months due to an unspecified illness, as he was unable to join Steely Dan for their summer Classic West and Classic East sets. Last month, Mr. Fagen told Billboard, “Walter’s recovering from a procedure and hopefully he’ll be fine very soon.” 
 
 As Steely Dan, Mr. Becker and Mr. Fagen changed the vocabulary of pop in the 1970s with songs like “Do It Again,” “Reelin’ in the Years,” “Rikki Don’t Lose That Number” and “Peg.” Mr. Becker and Mr. Fagen were close collaborators on every element of a song: words, music, arrangement.
– Walter Becker, one half of the legendary rock duo Steely Dan, died Sunday at the age of 67, the New York Times reports. Becker, a guitarist, bassist, and vocalist, formed the band with Donald Fagen in 1972 after the two men met at Bard College in the late 1960s. Together they became one of the most successful rock acts of the 1970s, creating a sound that owed as much to jazz as rock and roll. Since forming, the band has sold more than 40 million albums worldwide and was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2001. After breaking up for most of the 80s the band re-formed in 1993 and won the Grammy award for album of the year that year. While the cause of Becker's death has yet to be announced, he had been suffering from an undisclosed illness in recent months that kept him off recent Steely Dan shows, Vulture reports. In a statement released Sunday, Fagen says he intends to "keep the music we created together as long as I can with the Steely Dan band."