King Kong: Jean-Luc Ponty Plays the Music of Frank Zappa

Studio album by Jean-Luc Ponty

Released

May 25, 1970

Recorded

October 6–7, 1969 at Whitney Studios, Glendale

Genre

Jazz fusion, Avant-garde jazz

Length

43:42

Label

World Pacific/Liberty

Producer

Richard Bock

Jean-Luc Ponty chronology

Electric Connection
(1969)

King Kong
(1970)

Open Strings
(1971)

Professional ratings
Review scores
Source	Rating
All About Jazz	(favorable)
Allmusic

King Kong: Jean-Luc Ponty Plays the Music of Frank Zappa (or simply King Kong) is an album by French jazz fusion artist Jean-Luc Ponty first released in 1970 on Liberty Records' World Pacific Records subsidiary label and later released on Blue Note. The album contains numerous selections Zappa had previously recorded either with the Mothers of Invention or under his own name, including:

In addition, the track "Music For Electric Violin And Low Budget Orchestra" includes the themes from "Duke of Prunes", from Absolutely Free, and "Pound for a Brown", from Uncle Meat. Zappa excised those themes, and everything that followed them, when he later recorded the piece himself under the title "Revised Music For Guitar And Low-Budget Orchestra", which was first released on his 1978 album Studio Tan.

George Duke, who would eventually join Zappa and Ponty in the Mothers, is featured on piano on all tracks. Ernie Watts is featured on alto and/or tenor saxophone on tracks 2, 3, 4, and 6. Zappa himself plays guitar on track 4, and Mothers members Ian Underwood (tenor sax) and Art Tripp (drums) contribute on track 1, 5, and 6.

Rolling Stone's Bob Palmer called it "one of the most rewarding and boundary-obliterating collaborations" and said "Zappa, donning his Jazz Composer - Arranger suit, emerges as a first-rate practitioner of the art: his previous lack of acceptance by the jazz community is probably due to the same bizarre touches that endear him to his younger audiences. Here he is reminiscent of Charles Mingus, not musically (except for the Mingus-like melody and violin-tenor voicing of "Twenty Small Cigars") but in the way he examines and finds new expressive possibilities in his earlier pieces, and combines them with new music that refers to wide areas of experience without centring in any one stylistic bag."

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Wikipedia