One Size Fits All (Frank Zappa album)

Band

The album features the summer/fall 1974 lineup of the Mothers of Invention, with George Duke, Chester Thompson, Ruth Underwood, Tom Fowler and Napoleon Murphy Brock. One track features bassist James "Birdlegs" Youman, who stood in for Fowler when the bassist broke his hand while on tour.

Album content

The album features one of Zappa's most complex tracks, "Inca Roads". One of Zappa's heroes, Johnny "Guitar" Watson, guests on two tracks (flambe vocals on the out-choruses of "San Ber'dino" and "Andy"). Captain Beefheart also appears under a pseudonym.

Zappa stated in the liner notes that the album was recorded simultaneously with their next album, but this "next album" would be replaced by Bongo Fury, consisting mostly of live recordings with Beefheart from May 1975. From comments Zappa made in radio interviews in April 1975, it seems likely that the unreleased next album would have included "Greggery Peccary," which first appeared three years later on Studio Tan.

Releases

Early U.S. LP pressings of One Size Fits All are notable in that they have the catalog number "BS 2879" inscribed - and crossed out - in the runoff matrix, indicating that at one point One Size Fits All was (perhaps mistakenly) planned to be released on Warner Bros. Records, whose Reprise Records subsidiary distributed Zappa's DiscReet Records label. The album was ultimately released on DiscReet with a catalog number in Reprise's sequence, DS 2216. Warner Bros. did not reassign the number BS 2879 to another album.

One Size Fits All was first released on CD by Rykodisc in 1988. It was reissued by Rykodisc in 1995 with restored cover art, but with identical sound quality. In 1996 a 24-karat gold Au20 edition was released with significantly improved sound quality. In 2012 it was remastered and reissued yet again by the Universal Music Group under the Zappa Records imprint.

Track listing

All songs written by Frank Zappa.

Musicians

Production staff

Charts

Album