Farewell Aldebaran
| Farewell Aldebaran | |
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| Studio album by Judy Henske and Jerry Yester | |
| Released | 1969 |
| Genre | Psychedelic rock, folk rock |
| Length | 34:33 |
| Label | Straight Records STS-1052 |
| Producer | Jerry Yester, Zal Yanovsky |
| Professional ratings | |
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| Allmusic |   |
Farewell Aldebaran by Judy Henske and Jerry Yester is an album issued in 1969 on Frank Zappa's innovative Straight record label. It contains a wild mixture of styles, as though recorded by ten different bands, all featuring Henske's almost gothic lyrics and remarkable vocal range, which might lead one to think there were also ten different singers. Instrumentally the songs are held together by Yester's piano. The album, which has achieved a cult following, is also notable for its early use of synthesisers. Although the album got some good reviews it failed to sell in large quantities, purchasers possibly having been driven away by its sheer eclecticism.
Henske and Yester met while working in the West Coast folk scene in the early 1960s, Henske as an uncategorizable solo singer recording folk, blues, jazz and comedy, Yester as a member of the Modern Folk Quartet. They married in 1963. A few years later Henske's career was faltering as a result of ill-advised forays into cabaret while Yester had produced albums by Tim Buckley and The Association, and replaced Zal Yanovsky in The Lovin' Spoonful.
The pair, with their new-born daughter, moved to Los Angeles in 1968. Henske shared a manager, Herb Cohen, with Frank Zappa, who suggested to her that she should put music to some of the verse she was writing. Yester, at this point, was working with Yanovsky on the latter's first solo album, and experimenting with new electronic and other sound effects. The couple combined to put together Farewell Aldebaran, drawing on a varied selection of their musician friends, and it was issued on Zappa and Cohen's new label.
In the UK, the album was broadcast by John Peel who played Three Ravens on more than one occasion on Radio One.
Henske and Yester went on to form a more conventional band, Rosebud, before they went their separate ways at the start of the 1970s. The album was bootlegged on CD by Radioactive Records [2] in 2005, before being re-issued officially on Omnivore Records in 2016.
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