Zoot Suit Riot (album)

By 1996, having spent seven years performing within the Northwest punk and ska underground, the Cherry Poppin' Daddies had independently released three studio albums while steadily gaining recognition in the American ska scene at a time when the genre was beginning to generate mainstream commercial interest on the heels of bands such as No Doubt and Sublime.[5] At this time, largely following the success of the 1996 film Swingers, which prominently showcased the Los Angeles swing revival movement, public attention also started turning towards swing music, which had been slowly emerging within the west coast alternative underground pioneered by bands such as Royal Crown Revue and Big Bad Voodoo Daddy.[6]

Though the Daddies has been a better-known presence in the ska scene, the band eventually began drawing a sizable audience for their swing songs as they continued to tour alongside ska bands. Facing an unexpected demand for their swing music - which until then had only been a partial component of their repertoire behind punk, funk and ska - the Daddies realized they lacked an album which fully represented their swing and jazz influences, 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.[7]

Recording for the album's bonus tracks took place in late 1996, and according to accounts by Perry, was hurried and carried out on a tight budget as the band "didn't have much bread to record".[8] In several instances, only single takes were used: at the end of the album's titular song, Perry is heard saying "I think I'm about ready to sing it now", which he was signifying to the engineer after doing his first run-through of the song. The engineer instead told him it was a decent take and suggested keeping his comment in the final mix as an inside joke, to which Perry ultimately agreed ("Unbeknownst to us, it became a big hit record").[9]

Zoot Suit Riot was released through the Daddies' self-operated record label Space Age Bachelor Pad Records on March 18, 1997. In its initial pressing, the album became an unexpectedly popular item, reportedly selling as many as 4,000 copies a week through both the band's tours and their Northwest distributors.[10] Despite steady regional sales, obtaining wider distribution and marketing outside of the Northwest proved difficult through the band's entirely DIY label.[11] Following a national tour together, ska band Reel Big Fish helped arrange a meeting between the Daddies and their label Mojo Records in an attempt to score the band a distribution deal, negotiations of which instead led to the Daddies being signed to a record contract.[7][12] 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 rising mainstream popularity of swing music had resulted in consistently steady sales of Zoot Suit Riot, motivating Mojo to release the album's title track as a single and distribute it among modern rock radio stations.[11] The Daddies, who were in preparation over recording a new studio album, ardently protested Mojo's decision under the belief that a swing song would never receive airplay on mainstream radio and the band would likely have to recoup the costs of its marketing.[7][13] Nevertheless, Mojo persisted, and to the band's surprise, "Zoot Suit Riot" soon found regular rotation on both college radio and major stations such as Los Angeles' influential KROQ-FM.[14]

Professional ratings

Review scores
Source	Rating
AllMusic	[1]
Robert Christgau	[25]

Despite the album's commercial success, Zoot Suit Riot met with largely mixed reactions from mainstream critics. Of the positive reviews, The Los Angeles Times, comparing albums by the most popular groups of the swing revival, chose the Daddies as having "the most effective music for the dance fad of the moment", citing the band's "suggestive lyrics and occasionally interesting musical textures" as their most distinguishing quality.[26] 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".[27]

Stephen Thomas Erlewine of AllMusic, however, gave the album a rating of 2.5 out of 5 stars, noting that while the Daddies pulled off "reasonably infectious" tunes, the modernist 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".[28] The 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."[29]

Perry's reflection on the album has been decidedly ambivalent, which he has described in interviews as being a "blessing as well as a curse", noting that while Zoot Suit Riot had exposed the Daddies' music to a wider audience and provided them with the financial stability to continue as a band, the success of the album continues to paint a one-dimensional image of the Daddies as an "orthodox swing band" over the prominently eclectic ska, punk and rock influences which largely feature in their music.[30]

In mid-2014, Perry revealed that he had re-obtained the rights to Zoot Suit Riot from Jive Records and planned to release a remixed version of the album. In interviews, Perry lamented the fact that the production of the album had been rushed and that only first takes had been used, noting that the band could have done "2 or 3 more" takes of the songs "if we had known the future back in 1996". He stated elsewhere, "I guess my thought is, after 25 years [of the band], I would like to make the record sound a little better."[9][31][8]

Zoot Suit Riot: The 20th Anniversary Edition was released exclusively by the band on CD and vinyl on January 13, 2017, with five bonus live tracks recorded during the Zoot Suit Riot tour in 1998.[32]

All songs written and composed by Perry, except where noted otherwise.

• Later Mojo pressings of the album included a hidden Spanish-language version of "Zoot Suit Riot" after a long period of silence in the same track as "Shake Your Lovemaker".

• Steve Perry – vocals, guitar
• Dana Heitman – trumpet, trombone
• Ian Early – alto saxophone, tenor saxophone
• Sean Flannery – tenor saxophone
• Jason Moss – guitar
• Darren Cassidy – bass guitar
• Tim Donahue – drums

Additional musicians

• Glen Bonney – trombone on tracks 1, 15
• Bud Chase – tuba on track 3
• Mark Alan – backing vocals on track 15

The First Church of Sinatra

• Tim Allums – trumpet
• Mark Berney – trumpet
• Dave Van Handel – trombone
• Glen Bonney – trombone
• Wayne Conkey – bass trombone
• Ross Warren – alto saxophone
• Tim Wilcox – alto saxophone
• James Phillips – tenor saxophone
• Richard Coon (Temple)  – baritone saxophone

• Skaboy JFK: The Skankin' Hits of the Cherry Poppin' Daddies, the Daddies' similar 2009 compilation of ska material
• Zoot suit riots, the historical event which inspired the title track