The first known recording of Frank Zappa and Captain Beefheart
Frank Zappa and Captain Beefheart first met at Antelope High School in California. Beefheart had been known as Don Glen Vliet when the two music icons became acquainted, and they formed a close friendship based on a mutual love of music, particularly the early sound of R&B, blues and doo-wop.
The two would collaborate persistently across both of their careers, but the first time was around 1958-59 when they used a portable reel-to-reel recording system to lay down a tasty effort. The result was ‘Lost in a Whirlpool’, with music by Zappa and lyrics by Vliet.
Zappa reflected on the song during an interview in 1989. He said: “‘Lost in a Whirlpool’ was taped on one of those tape recorders that you have in a school in the audio/visual department. We went into this room, this empty room at the junior college in Lancaster, after school, and got this tape-recorded and just turned it on. The guitars are me and my brother (Bobby Zappa), and the vocal is Don Vliet.”
The recording is an absolute relic and a piece of musical history. To listen to Zappa and Beefheart set out an early version of the kind of music that would define their future careers is nothing short of miraculous. We can easily imagine the two young music icons brimming with enthusiasm at being able to finally put their talents to the test.
Interestingly, in the interview, Zappa explained that the story behind ‘Lost in a Whirlpool’ goes back beyond its mere recording. He said: “When I was in high school in San Diego in ’55, there was a guy who grew up to be a sports writer named Larry Littlefield. He, and another guy named Jeff Harris, and I used to hang out, and we used to make up stories, little skits and stuff, you know, dumb little teenage things.”
“One of the plots that we cooked up was about a person who was skin-diving—San Diego’s a surfer kind of an area—skin-diving in the San Diego sewer system and talking about encountering brown, blind fish,” he added. “It was kind of like the Cousteau expedition of its era. So, when I moved to Lancaster from San Diego, I had discussed this scenario with Vliet, and that’s where the lyrics come from. It’s like a musical manifestation of this other skin-diving scenario.”
In light of that description, it’s easy to see that ‘Lost in a Whirlpool’ is infused with the kind of comic influence that would feature in a number of both Beefheart and Zappa’s future efforts. Equally obvious is that the song had been written by two young men with a uniquely high-school sense of humour. Check it out below.
