His music was an amalgam of classical music, jazz, R&B, doowop, poetry and—sometimes—just plain noise. And Frank Zappa the man was even more complicated. Think you know Frank Zappa? Get to know him better this week on The New Jazz Archive. We’ll talk with Kevin Courier about some of the things that made the Zappa sound what it was, and take a look back at how Zappa’s early life growing up as a kid in the California desert shaped him as a man and musician. And we’ll talk with Pauline Butcher, a prim and proper British secretary who became Zappa’s unlikely personal assistant, and check in with a group of students at the School of Rock near Detroit who recently earned their musical stripes by tackling the music of Frank Zappa head on.
Frank Zappa
