The Search For Tom Dooley
Lyrics
Players On This Song
Frank Zappa: lead guitar
Bobby Zappa: rhythm guitar
Don Van Vliet: vocals
Jerry Ullberg: Voice
Records On Which This Song Has Appeared
Unreleased
Notes About This Song
Recorded December or January 1958/59 in a classroom at Antelope Valley High School in Lancaster, California. This session also produced the Lost In A Whirlpool track.
...we did a parody of "The Search For Bridey Murphy." (...) It's a story about the girl who gets hypnotised and taken back, and she supposedly remembers a life before the life that she's living now, and documents it all here. Yeah, and goes through all these scenes, and so we did a parody on that where this guy is being hypnotised, and his voice--while he's being hypnotised the voice is played by one of the school teachers named Jerry Ullberg, who has a very nice white suburban sort of voice. And as he goes further and further back, he becomes Tom Dooley. As it turns up, Tom Dooley is a very uh, a sort of jivey negro [...] boy or something, I don't know what kind of rendition this boy is giving to, but it's a funny concept, that tells about how Tom Dooley gets home.
