The song features Jim Gordon on drums, as does the bulk of the Pretzel Logic album. The guitar solo is by Jeff “Skunk” Baxter who would soon go on to join The Doobie Brothers. It is the most successful single for Steely Dan. It peaked at #4 on the Billboard Hot 100 in the summer of 1974.

According to a 2006 interview, the Rikki of the title is Rikki Ducornet, a New York writer and artist. Steely Dan co-front Donald Fagen met her while both were attending Bard College, a small liberal arts school located in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York. Ducornet said they met at a college party, and even though she was both pregnant and married at the time, he gave her his number, although not in the same context as the song. Ducornet was intrigued by Fagen and tempted to call him, but she decided against it.

Victor Feldman’s flapamba (a rare and unusual instrument that is a variant of the marimba) introduction to the song, which opens the album, is cut from the original ABC single version. The MCA single reissue (backed with “Pretzel Logic”) includes the flapamba intro but fades out just before the actual end of the track. The introductory riff is an almost direct copy of the intro of Horace Silver’s jazz classic “Song for My Father”.

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