FRANK ZAPPA
21 December 1940 — 4 December 1993
JEWISH PRINCESS
FRANK ZAPPA
from the 1979 Polygram/Zappa Records LP
Sheik Yerbouti
JEWISH PRINCESS
I want a nasty little Jewish Princess
With long phony nails and a hairdo that rinses
A horny little Jewish Princess
With a garlic aroma that could level Tacoma
Ah… Lonely inside
Well she can swallow my pride
I need a hairy little Jewish Princess
With a brand new nose who knows where it goes
I want a steamy little Jewish Princess
With overworked gums who squeaks when she cums
I don't want no troll
I just want a Yemenite hole
I want a darling little Jewish Princess
Who don't know shit about cooking and is arrogant looking
A vicious little Jewish Princess
To specifically happen with a pee-pee that's snappin'
All up inside
I just want a Princess to ride
[Awright, back to the top…everybody twist]
I want a funky little Jewish Princess
A grinder, a bumper with a pre-moistened dumper
A brazen little Jewish Princess
With titanic tits and sand-blasted zits
She can even be poor
So long as she does it with four on the floor
[Vapor lock!]
I want a dainty little Jewish Princess
With a couple of sisters who can raise a few blisters
A fragile little Jewish Princess
With Roumanian thighs who weasels 'n lies
For two or three nights
Won't someone send me a Princess who bites
Won't someone send me a Princess who bites
Won't someone send me a Princess who bites
Won't someone send me a Princess who bites
Words and music by Frank Zappa
© 1979 Polygram/Zappa Records
In 1986 Frank Zappa released an LP titled Does Humor Belong In Music? and even today the question remains a problematic one for even the most open-minded of music fans. Before Zappa burst upon the scene in 1966 as founder and creative director of The Mothers of Invention the notion of humor in popular music was largely confined to presenting familiar material in deliberately unsuitable arrangements, often featuring eccentric instrumentation as exemplified in the work of 'zany' 1940s bandleader Spike Jones. (This is not to cast aspersions on the talent of Mr Jones, who was to his style of music what Duke Ellington was to jazz.) Humorous lyrics rarely accompanied this 'funny music' because record companies had a financially motivated horror of offending and potentially alienating any section of the record buying public that didn't already belong to a marginalized and therefore ignorable minority. (Blues artists could get away with loading their songs with humorous double entendres because their material was primarily aimed at that same ignorable minority.)
On the rare occasions when they were featured, humorous lyrics tended to be of the nonsense or patronizingly racist and/or sexist variety or, if their creators were working in the Broadway/Tin Pan Alley tradition, so witty and urbane that they were deemed too sophisticated to be considered legitimately offensive. Think, for example, of Cole Porter's enduringly popular song Let's Do It in which one partner attempts to persuade the other, more reluctant partner to engage in the act of sexual intercourse by listing all the creatures who deem said activity to be not only biologically necessary but physically enjoyable. The song didn't offend the audience for whom it was written, just as it seldom offends anyone today, because Porter was careful to avoid any direct mention of the sexual act itself, instead offering the listener a dazzling array of clever and entirely apposite rhyming couplets to tell his risqué little tale. Humor was also a key element of many early rock and roll songs, with tongue-in-cheek tunes like Chantilly Lace by the Big Bopper and Monster Mash by the delightfully named Bobby (Boris) Pickett and The Crypt-Kickers going on to become well-loved if somewhat unlikely classics of their respective eras.
It took the Vietnam War, ongoing battles over segregation and social injustice, the assassinations of a US President and a prominent black civil rights leader and the rise of the alternative 'hippie' counter-culture to rid rock music of whatever sense of humor it may have possessed in its infancy. And the situation was even less promising in avant-garde music which, then as now, was not exactly known for being a barrel of laughs. Zappa was unique in that he straddled both worlds –– rock and the avant-garde –– and refused to modify his outlook to satisfy the preconceived expectations of either audience, many of whom were as antagonistic to the idea of deviating from the well-established norm as those whose outmoded notions of normalcy they claimed to be so boldly reacting against. Zappa told it like it was even when his observations, nearly always funny and nearly always confronting, angered and offended large sections of the North American population who, while outwardly supportive of the right to free speech as granted to them by their nation's Constitution, were nevertheless appalled to find themselves being lampooned and satirized by a master of the art.
Jewish Princess, a tune featured on Zappa's 1979 LP Sheik Yerbouti, offended so many members of the North American Jewish community that they took their grievances to the Anti-Defamation League which demanded that he publicly apologize for daring to release it. Zappa characteristically refused to do this, later telling the ADL via a 1991 interview in Spin magazine that 'Unlike the unicorn, such creatures do exist –– and deserve to be "commemorated" with their own special opus.' He went on to state that the organization's demand was tantamount to claiming that '…there is no such thing as a Jewish Princess. Like I invented this?'
I've always wondered if the song, which I find screamingly funny in spite of (or perhaps because of) its unapologetic lack of political correctness, would have become the object of such outrage had it been written and performed by a Jewish comedian instead of an Italian-American composer long identified (if mistakenly) with the 'weird' and threatening WASP counter-culture. Jewish humor has a long and proud tradition of self-deprecation and astringent self-criticism –– traditions which continue to make it appealing to Jewish and non-Jewish audiences alike. The fact that Zappa, a high profile non-Jew, dared to make such trenchant observations about one small segment of the Jewish community made him a threat to people who perceived, wrongly in my view, that he was attacking them on racial or religious grounds. Is his song really any more offensive than Lenny Bruce making jokes about gay Jews and high-ranking members of the Catholic clergy? Or Joan Rivers appearing on national television a few years after 9/11 and suggesting that the $2 million compensation payment received by the widow of a fireman was perhaps preferable to living with the deceased for the remainder of her life had he not perished in the terrorist attacks launched on the Twin Towers? Granted, these are not polite observations. But, despite what many wilfully ignorant people would have us believe, ours is not and never has been a polite or even vaguely courteous world.
Jewish Princess was neither the first nor last example of a song that would earn Zappa the condemnation of his hypersensitive countrymen. The track Bobby Brown Goes Down, featured on the same 1979 LP, is another exercise in scathing but extremely accurate satire, poking fun at yuppies, the gay leather scene and –– horror of horrors! –– the sacrosanct 'American Dream' itself. Subsequent LPs saw him take aim at sexually active Catholic girls who strive to keep their sex lives a secret from their parents (Catholic Girls), clueless female residents of California's San Fernando Valley (Valley Girl, with lyrics and vocals by his daughter Moon Unit Zappa), Elvis Presley (Elvis Has Just Left The Building), Michael Jackson (Why Don't They Like Me?), former US Presidents Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan (Dickie's Such An Asshole) and televangelists (Jesus Thinks You're A Jerk) among other conspicuously notable targets. Love his music or loathe it, it's impossible to deny Zappa's originality or his uncompromising honesty –– qualities alarmingly absent in a culture obsessed with retrospectively editing itself to promote what are often misguided if not altogether spurious notions of good manners and inclusiveness.
It's a fine song and if you're a Jewish Princess and you haven't heard it yet it's on the Sheik Yerbouti album. You go out there and listen to it and remember –– that until somebody writes a song about you, you don't exist. And I wrote a song about Jewish Princesses and I provided certification for the whole bunch of you. It's got all of your stuff in there. It tells about what you do with your zits, what you do with your nose, what you do with every part of your body. I care. I wrote a song about you. And what do I get for my trouble –– the ADL jumps up and down, ungrateful wretches.
Use the links below to visit the website of North American composer and musician FRANK ZAPPA (1940–1993) and to watch a brief clip from the 1979 FRANK ZAPPA interview conducted by DR DEMENTO:
Special thanks to everyone who takes the time to upload music to YouTube. Your efforts are appreciated by music lovers everywhere.
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Last updated 12 October 2021 §
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