Zapped

Many years ago when I was a DJ in California I had an experience which I will never forget. It involved a man who was to become a great musician in the field of Rock and beyond. My story happens before there was any Mothers of Invention and Frank Zappa was not a household name amongst people who played guitar or, as they do today, listen to Zappa’s iconic music. This goes back to 1962.

There was this guy named Vaughn Meader and he and a few others, cut a comedy album named The First Family. It was funny and a lot of people bought it; more than a million in less than two months. You see, it was based on the daily life of President John F. Kennedy, his wife and his two brothers. Meader was an excellent impersonator of JFK and the writing was timely and made for enjoyable listening.

The LP came out in October of ’62 and despite the Cuban Missile Crisis, Meader and co-writers Bob Booker and Earl Doud had an instant hit. By mid 1963 The First Family had sold over 7 million copies, won a Grammy and Meader was a sought after stand-up comedian. Needless to say the bottom fell out when Kennedy was assassinated thirteen months to the day after the LP was produced. Meader went into instant non-recognition, lost his money, took to drugs and died. So much for The First Family. I told you about it to set the scene for my own experience.

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I was working in San Bernardino as an early evening disc jockey on a Rock ‘n’ Roll radio station. Actually we called them Top 40 stations in those days and we were a solid number one in the huge market that extends from East Los Angeles to Palm Springs including Riverside and Redlands and dozens of suburban towns. I had a lot of listeners because 6-9PM is the teen ‘slot’. In those days there was little interference from management as to what a DJ could do on the air as long as he kept it short and played lots of music. It was freewheelin’ to use Bob Dylan’s term.

I had been given the gift of impersonation as well. And using the popularity of both JFK and Meader’s LP, I would often ad lib the time, temperature, a few lines and a bit of nonsense imitating President Kennedy between The Crystals and Marvin Gaye. Nobody had a copy-write on impersonating JFK and if a person was good enough, and I was, why not? I didn’t steal Meader’s material, I used my own.

Somehow and I’m not sure of the answer, a nascent rock band leader named Frank Zappa either heard me or more than likely heard of me and a light bulb went off in that incredibly imaginative mind. He sat down and wrote a song about surfing; a basic rock composition — a nebulous tune but in the wildly popular Surfer style which was the craze in those days before the Brits came to town. The Beach Boys, Jan and Dean and the Ventures plus a dozen local bands all featured songs about surf parties and ‘shootin’ the curl’ and ‘the pipeline’. Zappa called his song The Big Surfer.

It was simple in concept. The ‘Big Surfer’ was President Kennedy and he was at the beach to judge a surf contest. The libretto — and I use the word lightly — was a series of one-liners such as “you’re looking good” or “hiya hiya hiya” etcetera, voiced by me using the JFK accent with a little reverb (echo) added which somehow gave it an outdoors feel like big speakers on a stage on the sand. Zappa himself over dubbed kiddy giggling and had some girls squealing in the background managing to give the thing a fair imitation of how a Surf Contest party would sound.

When Frank Zappa called me and laid out what he wanted from me I gladly accepted. I signed a contract. I was gonna make a record. On Capitol Records yet, where Zappa had jobbed the concept. One night shortly after he called, I got off the air at 9PM and drove to Frank’s tiny studio in nearby Cucamonga. He gave me the script and his band played along with me and Frank pointed when he wanted me to speak. It was easy — in fact I think we did the whole 2 minute song in one take. I drove back to San Berdoo, Frank took his tapes, overdubbed his voices and they cut the thing at Capitol studios, pressed 400 DJ copies and we were set for immortality as it were.

But it never got off the ground. The punch line to the song was: the winner of the Surfing Contest got an all expense paid trip as the first member of the Peace Corps, to Alabama. The American Southern states in 1962, including Alabama, were the front lines of the early Civil Rights Movement: rough and dangerous. Among the movement’s leaders was a 37 year old black man whose name was Medgar Evers. A couple of days before The Big Surfer by Frank Zappa was due for release … with my name on the A side (the flip side was just a 2 minute instrumental surf-riff) … Capitol Records #4981 was withdrawn. Medgar Evers had been shot dead in the driveway of his home in Jackson, Mississippi.

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Frank Zappa, before he died, mentioned  The Big Surfer several times when being interviewed about his early recordings. In Rolling Stone Magazine he says he was sure he had a hit; “We had this disc jockey in San Bernardino who sounded more like Kennedy than Kennedy”. (Caswell Whiteside, the name I use on this website, is a pseudonym). He admitted leaning on the strength of The First Family’s success. We hadn’t invented the term ‘rip-off’ in those days — anyway it was only similar in context, Zappa had produced a single 45RPM musical single as opposed to a spoken word comedy Long Playing album.

What was Frank like? He was a hell of a nice guy, full of fun and put me at my ease immediately. And if I’d been smart, I would have hung on to the few copies he sent me from Capitol but all I have is a tape from a fellow broadcaster who contacted me years later – a Zappa collector who did have the record. Believe me, it’s worth a lot more today than it was 47 years ago.