As you may have heard, Scottish singer and songwriter Gerry Rafferty passed away earlier this week. Though I cannot purport to be familiar with much of his work beyond his two most famous songs — “Stuck in the Middle” and “Baker Street” — a Wikipedia tangent this morning led to the uncovering of a bunch of interesting trivia about those two songs.

“Stuck in the Middle” was actually written as a Bob Dylan parody, which makes the lyric, “clowns to the left of me, jokers to the right” make a whole lot more sense, since it’s unbelievably Bob Dylany sounding.

Another fun fact about “Stuck in the Middle” that’s not listed on the Wikipedia is that no one who has ever seen Reservoir Dogs can ever again hear that song without thinking about one particular scene. (That movie was awesome, FWIW.) Also, the Moo Shoo Porkestra covered “Stuck in the Middle” twice, but it didn’t really fit our style and never went over that well so we bailed on it.

“Baker Street,” best known for its absurdly triumphant saxophone riff, was actually supposed to have an absurdly triumphant guitar riff but the guitar player didn’t show up to the studio that day. Saxophonist Raphael Ravenscroft, who was in the studio to record a soprano sax part on a different song and may very well have written his own Wikipedia page, suggested he record the part on the alto sax he had in his car. Thus spake the Wikipedia: “The solo led to what became known as “the ‘Baker Street’ phenomenon”, a resurgence in the sales of saxophones and their use in mainstream pop music and TV advertising.”

Furthermore, Slash has cited Baker Street as an influence on his guitar part in “Sweet Child o’ Mine,” which seems to make sense because everything Slash plays is also absurdly triumphant.

Lastly, my friend Bill has an apartment with a deck overlooking bustling Dupont Circle in Washington, D.C., and has been known to bust out an alto sax, go outside, and honk out a brutal rendition of the Baker Street theme in the evening, out into the night air. That’s also not on the Wikipedia page.