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 America Drinks & Goes Home

Notes and Comments
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  The Real FZ voice
  "America Drinks & Goes Home" is an unsubtle parody of adult conduct in neighborhood cocktail lounges in America. The humour is aimed at (1) the type of music your parents like to listen to, (2) the manner in which they like to have it performed ( - the insincerity of the nightclub crooner in his closing address to the alcoholics at the bar), (3) the manner in which the audience persists in talking above the level of the music while it is being performed - which belies their disrespect for music as an art and for anyone involved in the performance of music.
  Also
From: FZ (TRFZB)
  AMERICA DRINKS AND GOES HOME (from Absolutely Free): We spent hours putting that together. Herbie Cohen was playing the cash register. We rehearsed the crowd noises. The talk track is funny because they are saying things like "I got a new Mustang" and the girls are saying: "Sally, will you go with me to the bathroom?" you know that stuff. The crowd mumble was carefully programmed, like choreographed. Then on top of that, which you can't even hear, there's a fight going on. [listen carefully, you can] We had the crowd separated into two rooms. In the main studio we had ten people sitting around the microphone, doing these lines on cue, with the cash register over here and the glass on one microphone. Then in the vocal booth off to one side, we had Ray Collins and Jimmy Carl Black and Roy Estrada going through this number. We had Bunk Gardner trying to pick up two girls. You know, "What's a girl like you doing in a place like this?" - all that stuff. And then Jim's an Okie wanting to beat up a Mexican, who is Ray. They start drinking beer together and the Indian accuses the Mexican of going out with his wife and they punch it out. Meanwhile, the chicks tell this guy to fuck off because he is coming on too strong, you know: "What type of girls do you think we are?!". It's all happening in there. Those things are so carefully constructed that it breaks my heart when people don't dig into them and see all the levels that I put into them.
From: Terry Gilliam
  As for that quote from Frank Zappa about me being the only comic genius to come out of America that's nonsense. I mean, it's a great quote but it's all balls! I actually knew Frank before I came to England. Me and my then girlfriend appear on one of the early Mothers of Invention albums. It's some sort of crowd effect and we were dragged into the studio to make noises like drunks in a bar.
From: Michael Gray
  Meanwhile, (spring, 1959) Zappa was busy elsewhere in a musical outfit called Joe Perrino and The Mellotones, which operated out of San Bernardino, and, hate it as Zappa might, what they played was cocktail music. Muzak for half-drunk tone-deaf cocktail bar patrons in places like Tommy Sandi's Club Sahara on East Street, San Bernardino. It was from a ten month stint in that band that Zappa's inspiration came for the parody masterpiece, 'America Drinks And Goes Home' on the early album Absolutely Free...
  To Album Refs
To Global Refs
Bob, how's it goin'?
How's the kids? Wonderful, nice to see you, yes...
Oh, Bill Bailey?
Oh, we'll get to that tomorrow night, yeah...
From: M Smith <basset@interlog.com>
  The "Bill Bailey" from "America Drinks and Goes Home" refers to "Won't you come home, Bill Bailey", which has to be just about the corniest song in the entire American songbook.
From: Vladimir Sovetov
  And here is it. BTW, Big Bill Broonzy performed it.
BILL BAILEY
Words and Music by Hughie Cannon
1906
8-Bar Intro

Verse 1

ON ONE SUM-MER'S DAY, SUN WAS SHIN-ING FINE.
THE LA-DY LOVE OF OLD BILL BAIL-EY WAS HANGING CLOTHES ON DE LINE
IN HER BACK YARD, AND WEEP-ING HARD:
SHE MAR-RIED A B & O BRAKE-MAN, DAT TOOK AND THROW'D HER DOWN,
BEL-LER-ING LIKE A PRUNE-FED CALF, WID A BIG GANG HANG-ING 'ROUND;
AND TO DAT CROWD, SHE YELLED OUT LOUD;

Verse 2

BILL DROVE BY DAT DOOR, IN AN AU-TO-MO-BILE,
A GREAT BIG DIA-MOND, COACH AND FOOT-MAN, HEAR DAT BIG WENCH SQUEAL;
"HE'S ALL A-LONE," I HEARD HER GROAN;
SHE HOL-LERED THRO' THAT DOOR, "BILL BAIL-EY, IS YOU SORE?
STOP A MINUTE; WON'T YOU LISTEN TO ME? WON'T I SEE YOU NO MORE?"
BILL WINKED HIS EYE, AS HE HEARD HER CRY:

Chorus

WON'T YOU COME HOME BILL BAIL-EY?, WON'T YOU COME HOME?
SHE MOANS THE WHOLE DAY LONG
I'LL DO DE COOK-ING, DAR-LING, I'LL PAY DE RENT;
I KNOWS I'VE DONE YOU WRONG;
'MEM-BER DAT RAIN-Y EVE DAT I DROVE YOU OUT,
WID NOTH-ING BUT A FINE TOOTH COMB?
I KNOWS I'SE TO BLAME; WELL, AIN'T DAT A SHAME?
BILL BAILEY, WON'T YOU PLEASE COME HOME?

  To Album Refs
To Global Refs
Caravan with the drum solo?
Right, yeah, we'll do that...
  CC
  FREAK OUT. You Probably Wondering Why I'm Here
  Subject: Re: Zappa crowd noise on Eric Burdon record?
From: Steve Cobham
  This is really an obscure bit of trivia, but I read in a recent magazine - Mojo UK, I think it was - that Eric Burdon had used crowd noise off a MOI album on his single "Good Times". As I haven't got this single for comparison, I can't check it out for myself. I presume that this article refers to the bit where EB says "And here we all are having jolly good times...etc". Anyone out there able to confirm this early "sampling" of FZ's works, please?
From: Biffyshrew <biffyshrew@aol.com>
  It definitely sounds like it was nicked from "America Drinks And Goes Home"--the giveaway is the repeating (looped?) cash register noise.
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