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Zoot Allures

Zoot Allures is the 22nd album by the American rock musician Frank Zappa, released in October 1976 and his only release on the Warner Bros. Records label. Due to a lawsuit with his former manager, Herb Cohen, Zappa's recording contract was temporarily reassigned from DiscReet Records to Warner Bros.

Title

The title is a pun on the French expression "Zut alors!", which conveys "dammit".

Album information

The album was originally conceptualized as a double LP, but Zappa rearranged, edited, and shortened the track listing to what was eventually released as a single album. Zappa played a test pressing of the original album for Circus magazine in 1976, which reported a radically different, though slightly erroneous track listing that included "Sleep Dirt", "The Ocean Is the Ultimate Solution", "Filthy Habits", and "Night of the Iron Sausage". The former three tracks eventually surfaced on the 1979 Sleep Dirt and the posthumous Läther; "Night of the Iron Sausage" remains unreleased, but was seemingly intended to be a guitar solo of fair length. Early German copies of the album had an incorrect early tracklist on the back cover including "Filthy Habits" along with six of the nine tracks from the released album.

Zappa recorded the album after completing a world tour with a band including Napoleon Murphy Brock on tenor sax and vocals, Andre Lewis on keyboards, Roy Estrada on bass and Terry Bozzio on drums. However, this band appeared only on the live track "Black Napkins" with only Bozzio retained to play on the sessions, although Lewis and Estrada contributed backing vocals.

By the time Zoot Allures was finished, Zappa had formed a new band, including Bozzio, bass player Patrick O'Hearn and keyboardist Eddie Jobson. This group was pictured on the cover with Zappa, although the latter two did not perform on the album.

Posthumous releases

In 2002, his family posthumously released a January 1976 concert from Australia as FZ:OZ, followed in 2022 by another archival release titled Zappa '75: Zagreb/Ljubljana, edited from two concerts in Yugoslavia in November 1975 when alto saxophonist and vocalist Norma Bell was temporarily added to the band.

Songs

"Black Napkins", one of several guitar-driven pieces on Zoot Allures, began life accompanied by themes that would later make up "Sleep Dirt". The performance heard on the album was culled from Zappa's February 3, 1976 performance in Osaka, Japan, though it was edited for the official release. Along with "Zoot Allures" and "The Torture Never Stops", "Black Napkins" became a signature piece for Zappa, featuring heavily in nearly every subsequent tour and several official releases.

"Wonderful Wino" was originally released on Jeff Simmons' 1970 album, Lucille Has Messed My Mind Up. Zappa later attempted the song with the Mothers in a London June 1970 session released in 2020 on The Mothers 1970. Zappa reworked this recording in 1973 for a version that was eventually released on The Lost Episodes, while the Zoot Allures version includes an uncredited horn section apparently retained from the 1973 session.

On the liner notes to 1979's Sheik Yerbouti, Zappa noted that "Friendly Little Finger" (from Zoot Allures) was created using xenochrony. Zappa provided further details in the liner notes of The Guitar World According to Frank Zappa, mentioning that his guitar and Roy Estrada's "drone bass" (not credited on the original album) were recorded at a dressing room in Long Island in a two-track recording that Zappa later combined with a drum track outtake from "The Ocean is the Ultimate Solution."

The album's sound is influenced by heavy metal music, particularly on the song "Ms. Pinky".

CD releases

The first CD edition of Zoot Allures, released by Rykodisc, has different mixes and edits than the original vinyl LP. The vinyl contains a longer edit of "Disco Boy" including a count-off by a drum machine (the first three seconds) and a longer fade-out making the track's duration 5:27, instead of the original CD duration of 5:11. The 2012 remastered CD version from Universal Music uses the original vinyl mixes and edits, with improved sound quality over the original CD.

Track listing

All tracks written by Frank Zappa, except "Wonderful Wino", written by Zappa and Jeff Simmons.

Personnel

Musicians

Frank Zappa – guitar (all tracks), bass (1, 3–7, 9), lead vocals (1, 3, 4, 5, 7, 9), synthesizer (1, 4, 5, 9), keyboards (3, 5, 7, 9), director of recreational activities (3)
Terry Bozzio – drums (all tracks), backing vocals (5, 9)

Also featuring

Davey Moiré – lead vocals (1), backing vocals (1, 9), engineer
Andre Lewis – organ (2), vocals (2), backing vocals (5, 9)
Roy Estrada – bass (2), vocals (2), backing vocals (4, 5, 9), drone bass (6)
Napoleon Murphy Brock – vocals (2)
Ruth Underwood – synthesizer (4, 6, 7), marimba (6, 8)
Captain Beefheart – harmonica (4, 5) (credited as "Donnie Vliet")
Ruben Ladron de Guevara – backing vocals (5)
Ian Underwood – saxophone (6, 7)
Bruce Fowler – trombone (6, 7)
Sal Marquez – trumpet (6, 7)
Dave Parlato – bass (8)
Lu Ann Neil – harp (8)
Miss Sparky [Linda Sue Parker] (credited as "Sparkie Parker") – backing vocals (9)