| Zoot Suit Riot: The Swingin' Hits of the Cherry Poppin' Daddies | ||||
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| Compilation album by Cherry Poppin' Daddies | ||||
| Released | March 18, 1997 July 1, 1997 (Mojo re-issue) |
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| Recorded | 1989–1997 at Gung Ho Studios in Eugene, Oregon | |||
| Genre | Neo-swing, third wave ska[1] | |||
| Length | 51:28 | |||
| Label | Space Age Bachelor Pad Records Mojo Records |
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| Producer | Steve Perry Cherry Poppin' Daddies |
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| Cherry Poppin' Daddies chronology | ||||
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| Singles from Zoot Suit Riot | ||||
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Zoot Suit Riot: The Swingin' Hits of the Cherry Poppin' Daddies (often shortened to Zoot Suit Riot) is a compilation album by American ska-swing band the Cherry Poppin' Daddies, released on March 18, 1997 on Space Age Bachelor Pad Records.
Self-produced by the Daddies to satisfy demand for their swing material while the group was between studio releases, Zoot Suit Riot consists of only the straight swing tracks compiled from the band's first three albums - which were predominantly punk and ska-oriented - plus four bonus tracks recorded exclusively for this compilation.
Released independently in March 1997, Zoot Suit Riot was eventually re-issued and nationally distributed by major label subsidiary Mojo Records following the Daddies' signing to the label. By early 1998, steady airplay of its titular single propelled the album to the top of Billboard's Top Heatseekers, helping serve as a catalyst for the short-lived swing revival of the late 1990s. At its peak, Zoot Suit Riot reached number seventeen on the Billboard 200, selling over two million copies in the United States.
Contents |
By 1996, the Cherry Poppin' Daddies had eked out a living as a full-time independent band, having released three regionally successful studio albums and carving out a touring niche within the American third wave ska scene, consistently appearing as tour support for prominent ska bands such as The Mighty Mighty Bosstones and Reel Big Fish at a time when ska was just beginning to generate commercial interest.[2][3]
While the Daddies were almost exclusively playing ska-based tours at this time, the coincident radio success of the Squirrel Nut Zippers and Royal Crown Revue began drawing media attention towards the formerly underground swing revival movement. Before long, the Daddies were regularly attracting a separate, larger audience for their swing material, though soon came to realize the band lacked an album which fully represented the swing elements of their music, and more so lacked the finances to record a new one. Singer-songwriter Steve Perry explained how the concept of a compilation came to be in an interview for The Daily of the University of Washington:
| “ | We didn't want to be a "swing band". What happened was that our manager said, "Everybody comes up and they ask me which CD has the most swing on it," - that's what we mostly played live - "and I don't know what the fuck to tell them because two of the CDs have the same amount and the other has less. So it's between these, and I don't know what to do. I swear to God, if you put all of those swing songs on one record, people would just shit. They would really want that, because how many people have all three Cherry Poppin' Daddies records?" "Well, none." "Well, yeah. There you go." And I went, "I don't think that a band from Eugene with three records could put a greatest hits record out." "Then record some new songs." We had talked about it for a while, and we decided to do it. And it was cheap. So we did it.[4] | ” |
After a brief recording period, Zoot Suit Riot was released through the Daddies' self-owned label Space Age Bachelor Pad Records on March 18, 1997. In its initial run, the album became an unexpectedly popular item, reportedly selling as many as 4,000 copies a week through their Northwest distributors.[5] Despite steady sales, however, securing wider distribution and marketing outside of the Northwest proved difficult through an entirely DIY label. Following a tour together, Reel Big Fish helped arrange a meeting between the Daddies and their label Mojo Records in the hopes of getting the band a distribution deal, negotiations of which instead led to the Daddies being signed to a three-album record deal.[4][6] Zoot Suit Riot was re-issued and given national distribution by Mojo on July 1, 1997, less than four months after its original release.
By October 1997, the growing popularity of swing music had contributed to the increased sales of Zoot Suit Riot, leading Mojo to issue one of the album's bonus tracks, "Zoot Suit Riot", as a single and distribute it among modern rock radio stations.[7] The Daddies, who were in preparation over recording a new studio album, protested Mojo's actions under their belief that a swing song would never receive airplay on mainstream radio and the band would have to recoup the costs of its marketing.[4][8] Regardless, Mojo went ahead with the plan, and to the band's surprise, "Zoot Suit Riot" soon found regular rotation on both college radio and major stations such as Los Angeles' KROQ-FM.[9]
After several months of regular rotation on KROQ-FM, Zoot Suit Riot eventually climbed to #1 on Billboard's Top Heatseekers chart, going on to become the first album of the neo-swing revival to crack the top 40 of the Billboard 200, peaking at number 17 and spending an ultimate total of 53 weeks on the charts.[10] The album surpassed sales of 500,000 in June 1998, eventually attaining platinum status on August 25.[11][12]
The Daddies reached their commercial zenith in the summer of 1998, embarking on a world tour as part of the 1998 Warped Tour and receiving heavy media coverage, frequently appearing on television programs ranging from The Tonight Show to The View and Dick Clark's New Year's Rockin' Eve 1998 [13][14] The surrealistic music video for "Zoot Suit Riot", directed by pornographer Gregory Dark, was nominated for a "Best New Artist in a Video" award at the 1998 MTV Video Music Awards. "Weird Al" Yankovic even recorded a parody of "Zoot Suit Riot" on his 1999 album Running with Scissors, reworked as "Grapefruit Diet".
Two additional singles were released from Zoot Suit Riot: "Brown Derby Jump", for which a music video was filmed, and a rerecorded and rearranged version of "Here Comes the Snake", a track which originally appeared on the band's 1996 album Kids on the Street. Both singles failed to chart.
| Professional ratings | |
|---|---|
| Review scores | |
| Source | Rating |
| allmusic | [15] |
| Robert Christgau | [16] |
Zoot Suit Riot received mixed reviews from critics. On the positive end of the critical spectrum, The Los Angeles Times, comparing albums by the most popular artists of the swing revival, chose the Daddies as having "the most effective music for the dance fad of the moment", citing the bands' "suggestive lyrics and occasionally interesting musical textures" as their most distinguishing quality.[17] The New York Times described the Daddies as "one of the few neo-swing bands that can win over a skeptic with their rhythm section", noting Perry's lyricism as having "an inventiveness missing from most of the other swing bands' lyrics".[18] Pif Magazine, at first approaching the album with skepticism, ultimately remarked "the Cherry Poppin' Daddies do not take one false step on Zoot Suit Riot", delivering most of their praise on its lyricism and anti-retro rhetoric, noting "this is not a band that is trying to sell pants, but a serious band that is interested in traditional forms of American music".[19]
On the negative end, allmusic gave the album a rating of 2.5 out of 5 stars, noting that while the band pulled off "reasonably infectious" tunes, the lyrics had lent Zoot Suit Riot a "condescending Gen-X attitude, as well as a lack of understanding about what made swing fun", writing the album off as a "smirking hipster joke, only without any humor and very little music".[20] Jazz critic Scott Yanow, in his 2000 book Swing!, labeled the Daddies as the perfect "whipping boy for the Retro Swing movement", noting "The Daddies sound as if they are a punk rock band who has chosen to masquerade as swing...the rhythm section has difficulty swinging, the vocals are often profane...the music, although excitable in spots, usually comes dangerously close to camp".[21]
All songs written and composed by Steve Perry, except where noted otherwise.
| No. | Title | Length |
|---|---|---|
| 1. | "Zoot Suit Riot" | 3:53 |
| 2. | "The Ding-Dong Daddy of the D-Car Line" | 3:31 |
| 3. | "When I Change Your Mind" | 2:29 |
| 4. | "Here Comes the Snake" | 3:18 |
| 5. | "Mr. White Keys" | 3:07 |
| 6. | "Come Back to Me" (Burton Lane, Alan Jay Lerner) | 2:39 |
| 7. | "Brown Derby Jump" | 2:58 |
| 8. | "Dr. Bones" | 3:34 |
| 9. | "Pink Elephant" | 3:40 |
| 10. | "Master and Slave" | 4:04 |
| 11. | "Drunk Daddy" | 5:10 |
| 12. | "No Mercy for Swine" | 4:02 |
| 13. | "Cherry Poppin' Daddy Strut" | 3:05 |
| 14. | "Shake Your Lovemaker" | 5:50 |
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Total length:
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51:28 | |
| Japanese release | |||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| No. | Title | Length | |||||||
| 15. | "2:29" | 3:43 | |||||||
| Original album | Year | Track | ||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | ||
| Ferociously Stoned | 1990 | X | X | X | X | X | ||||||||||
| Rapid City Muscle Car | 1994 | X | X | X | X | |||||||||||
| Kids on the Street | 1996 | X | ||||||||||||||
| Previously unreleased | 1997 | X | X | X | X | X | ||||||||||
Band roster at the time of release of this compilation album:
| Instrument | Musician | Track | ||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | ||
| vocals/guitar | Steve Perry | X | X | X | X | X | X | X | X | X | X | X | X | X | X | X |
| bass | Darren Cassidy | X | X | X | X | X | ||||||||||
| Dan Schmid | X | X | X | X | X | X | X | X | X | X | ||||||
| trumpet/trombone | Dana Heitman | X | X | X | X | X | X | X | X | X | X | X | X | X | X | X |
| guitar | Jason Moss | X | X | X | X | X | X | X | X | X | ||||||
| John Fohl | X | X | X | X | ||||||||||||
| James Gossard | X | X | ||||||||||||||
| tenor saxophone | Sean Flannery | X | X | X | X | X | X | |||||||||
| James Phillips | X | X | X | X | X | X | ||||||||||
| Adrian Baxter | X | X | X | |||||||||||||
| alto/tenor saxophone | Scott Hall | X | ||||||||||||||
| Brooks Brown | X | X | X | X | X | X | X | X | X | |||||||
| Ian Early | X | X | X | X | ||||||||||||
| Rex Trimm | X | |||||||||||||||
| drums | Hans Wagner | X | X | |||||||||||||
| Brian West | X | X | X | X | X | X | X | |||||||||
| W. Sean Wagoner | X | X | X | |||||||||||||
| Sean Oldham | X | |||||||||||||||
| Tim Arnold | X | X | ||||||||||||||
| keyboards | Chris Azorr | X | X | X | X | X | X | X | X | X | X | X | ||||
| Dustin Lanker | X | X | X | X | ||||||||||||
Featured on track 6
| Year | Chart | Position |
|---|---|---|
| 1998 | Heatseekers | 1 |
| 1998 | The Billboard 200 | 17 |
| Year | Single | Chart | Position |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1998 | "Zoot Suit Riot" | Adult Top 40 | 16 |
| 1998 | "Zoot Suit Riot" | Modern Rock Tracks | 15 |
| 1998 | "Zoot Suit Riot" | Top 40 Mainstream | 32 |
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