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which Zappa had called “a stupid piece of trash,” was essentially a fantasy about a teenage Lone Ranger. In the film, there was to be a character called Captain Beefheart, featuring Vliet in the role. It was also the name of a character that Zappa created for another aborted film projectcalled
Captain Beefheart vs.the Grunt People
.
    As for the origin of the name Captain Beefheart, it was worthy of a Zappa song itself. Apparently Don’s Uncle Alan (who Zappa claimed looked like Harry Truman) lived with his parents. “He used to piss with the [bathroom] door open when Don’s girlfriend [Laurie] walked by, and [he’d] make comments about how his whizzer looked just like a beef heart,” Zappa recalled.
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drummer John French concurred in substantiating that story. “There was an old joke about a fellow having ‘a head on his penis the size of a beef heart,’” French explained. “From what I can surmise and from what I’ve seen of Frank, it seems likely that he combined a childhood hero image (à la Captain Midnight) with the old joke to come up with this distorted comic symbol for ‘the kind of male sexuality.’” The name soon started to take on mythical status in the studio right after the day’s recording. Vic Mortensen and Zappa would sit around devising clever band names and they’d start riffing on the character of Captain Beefheart. “[He] was supposed to be this magical character,” Mortensen recalled. “His thing is [that] he would drink the Pepsi Cola and he could make magic things happen, he could appear or disappear.” Mortensen suggested that if he had those kinds of powers, he should also have a band to match them. “I told Frank, ‘Hey wouldn’t it be cool if Captain Beefheart had a Magic Band, and wherever he went, if he wanted the band to appear, he would take a drink of Pepsi, and BINGO there’s the band right behind him, ‘jukin’?”
    In the summer of 1963, right after Zappa had bought his own five-track recording studio in Cucamonga named appropriately Studio Z, Don Van Vliet was born as Captain Beefheart. “Hello there kids, this is your old friend CaptainBeefheart,” Vliet announced on tape in a carny barker’s voice. “You know me—the Magic Man, invisible and all that jazz. Hah! I fly through time and space, dimension warp … all that rhythm. Well, anyway … I’m here tonight to tell you that we have a heck of a little teenage opera for ya. You’re really gonna dig it … hmm … yes, it’s really groovy.” As groovy as it might have been, the grooves themselves never reached the ears of the public until years later when Zappa included excerpts on his commemorative
Mystery Disc
albums.
    Before Captain Beefheart started playing pranks with his own Magic Band, he began singing in a new Zappa ensemble known as the Soots. Besides featuring Beefheart on vocals, the group included guitarist Alex St. Clair Snouffer and Vic Mortenson on drums. With the band, Don started gaining more and more confidence as a singer. They made a number of recordings including Little Richard’s “Slippin’ and Slidin’” (sung in the style of Howlin’ Wolf) and “Metal Man Has Won His Wings,” where Beefheart performed in the hallway outside the studio while the band played in the other room. This rather unorthodox technique for recording vocals was an early variation on the methods Zappa haphazardly developed for the sessions on
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. Ultimately, Zappa sent their recordings for consideration to Dot Records, but Milt Rogers, the A&R guy at Dot, wrote him in December 1963 with some bad news. “[Although] the material has merit,” Rogers stated, “we don’t feel strongly enough about its commercial potential.…” Zappa phoned Rogers for a further explanation, and he was told that Dot’s lack of interest was due to the “distorted guitar.” On the positive side, he had nothing bad to say about Beefheart’s voice.
    While Zappa opened the door for