Lumpy Gravy

Recording

Following the release of Freak Out!, the debut album of the rock band the Mothers of Invention, Capitol Records A&R representative Nick Venet commissioned an album of orchestral music composed by the Mothers of Invention's leader, Frank Zappa, a self-taught composer. Venet spent $40,000 on the album. Because Zappa's contract with Verve and MGM Records did not allow for him to perform on albums recorded for any other label, he could not play any instrument on the proposed album, and instead served as the conductor of an orchestra consisting of session musicians hired for the recording. Zappa states that "my contract [with MGM] did not preclude me from doing that. I wasn't signed as a conductor."

Lumpy Gravy was conceived as a short oratorio, written in eleven days. John Cage served as a major influence on the album. Zappa named the group assembled for the sessions the "Abnuceals Emuukha Electric Symphony Orchestra".

Percussionist Emil Richards recalled that he did not know who Zappa was and did not take him seriously as the recording sessions began, believing that Zappa was merely the guitarist for a rock band. However, upon meeting them, Zappa handed the musicians the scores for the pieces, which were dense, complex and varied in time signatures. Richards' close friend, guitarist Tommy Tedesco, was another member of the recording sessions. Tedesco mocked Zappa, believing that Zappa did not know what he was doing. The bassoonist and bass clarinetist hired for the sessions refused to perform their parts, declaring them impossible to play. Zappa responded, "If I play your part, will you at least try it?" Zappa then played the notes for the musicians, who agreed to perform their assigned parts. By the end of the recording sessions, Richards and Tedesco became convinced of Zappa's talent, and became friends with the composer. Richards later performed on sessions which appeared on Zappa's album Orchestral Favorites.

Release, lawsuit and reediting

Capitol released Lumpy Gravy on August 7, 1967. Capitol intended to release a single consisting of the pieces "Gypsy Airs" and "Sink Trap" to promote its release. In response to the album's release, MGM threatened a lawsuit, claiming that its release violated Zappa's contract.

During the litigation, Zappa reedited the album while recording in New York City for a project called No Commercial Potential, which ended up producing four albums: We're Only in It for the Money, the reedited second version of Lumpy Gravy, Cruising with Ruben & the Jets and Uncle Meat, which served as the soundtrack to the film of the same name, which was ultimately not completed until 1987.

Zappa stated, "It's all one album. All the material in the albums is organically related and if I had all the master tapes and I could take a razor blade and cut them apart and put it together again in a different order it still would make one piece of music you can listen to. Then I could take that razor blade and cut it apart and reassemble it a different way, and it still would make sense. I could do this twenty ways. The material is definitely related."

The reedited Lumpy Gravy contained dialogue segments recorded at Apostolic Studios after Zappa discovered that the strings of the studio's grand piano would resonate if a person spoke near those strings. The "piano people" experiment involved Zappa having various speakers improvise dialogue using topics offered by Zappa. Various people contributed to these sessions, which produced dialogue that was released on other Zappa albums in the No Commercial Potential project and later albums. These speakers included Eric Clapton, Rod Stewart and Tim Buckley.

Most of the dialogue on the reedited Lumpy Gravy, recorded simultaneously with We're Only in It for the Money, was spoken by a small group which included Motorhead Sherwood, Roy Estrada, Spider Barbour, All-Night John (the manager of the studio) and Louis Cuneo, who was noted for his laugh, which sounded like a "psychotic turkey". The concept of the reedited album derived from Zappa's "big note" theory, which states that the universe consists of a single element, and that atoms are vibrations of that element, a "big note".

The reedited album proved to be very difficult to make, as the master tapes featured many accidental splices. The reedited version also incorporated additional musical content not on the original release of the album, including previously recorded surf music; including a 1963 Zappa-produced demo recording of a tune that later appeared in a 1967 recording under the title Take Your Clothes Off When You Dance on We're Only in It for the Money. Some of the editing was done in Zappa's living room. On the 1967 and 1968 releases of the album, Zappa was credited as "Francis Vincent Zappa", as Zappa had believed that this was his real name. He later learned that his birth name was Frank Vincent Zappa, and this mistake was subsequently corrected in reissues of the album.

Reception and legacy

The reedited Lumpy Gravy was well received by critics, and Zappa called it one of his favorite albums out of his own work, stating that it contains his favorite music. Allmusic writer François Couture wrote, "The starting point of Zappa's 'serious music,' Lumpy Gravy suffers from a lack of coherence, but it remains historically important and contains many conceptual continuity clues for the fan."

In 1984, the second version of Lumpy Gravy was remixed by Zappa, with new overdubs by bassist Arthur Barrow and drummer Chad Wackerman. This third version of the album was not released in full at the time; an excerpt appeared in a The Old Masters sampler sent to radio stations. Dialogue from the "piano people" sessions was included on Zappa's later album Frank Zappa Meets the Mothers of Prevention, and informed Zappa's final album, Civilization Phaze III in 1993. In 2009, the box set Lumpy Money was released, containing the 1967 and 1984 versions of Lumpy Gravy, and audio documentary material derived from the sessions that produced the original 1967 orchestral sessions, dialogue which appeared in the 1968 release of Lumpy Gravy, and the album We're Only in It for the Money.

Track listing

All tracks written by Frank Zappa.

Personnel

Charts

Album - Billboard (United States)