Ed Palermo Big Band - Featuring Denny Walley at The Falcon

The world's zaniest big band performs and re-forms the music of Zappa, and Captain Beefheart.
Featuring legendary slide guitarist Denny Walley!

To paraphrase a rhetorical question once posed by Frank Zappa: Does humor belong in jazz? For arranger, composer, saxophonist and bandleader Ed Palermo, the answer to that query has long been “Yes! Yes! A thousand times yes!”

Although active for over thirty years, the 18-piece Ed Palermo Big Band has been performing jazz arrangements of Zappa’s music regularly since 1994. What started out as faithfully antic versions of the recently deceased composer’s complex, fiendishly clever music, has expanded to reflect Palermo’s passion for Todd Rundgren, British psychedelia and progressive rock. This often entails head-spinning in-jokes, such as performing Traffic’s 1971 tune “The Low Spark Of High Heeled Boys” over Zappa’s bass line for his composition “Chunga’s Revenge.” ...

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The world's zaniest big band performs and re-forms the music of Zappa, and Captain Beefheart.
Featuring legendary slide guitarist Denny Walley!

To paraphrase a rhetorical question once posed by Frank Zappa: Does humor belong in jazz? For arranger, composer, saxophonist and bandleader Ed Palermo, the answer to that query has long been “Yes! Yes! A thousand times yes!”

Although active for over thirty years, the 18-piece Ed Palermo Big Band has been performing jazz arrangements of Zappa’s music regularly since 1994. What started out as faithfully antic versions of the recently deceased composer’s complex, fiendishly clever music, has expanded to reflect Palermo’s passion for Todd Rundgren, British psychedelia and progressive rock. This often entails head-spinning in-jokes, such as performing Traffic’s 1971 tune “The Low Spark Of High Heeled Boys” over Zappa’s bass line for his composition “Chunga’s Revenge.”

“I decided a long time ago that I never wanted to do an album that takes itself seriously....That would embarrass me. I generally want everything to be funny and self-deprecating.”

In 1955, Denny Walley met Frank Zappa. “I was 12 going on 13, and we moved into the same housing development that Frank Zappa lived in,” Walley says. “I became best friends with Frank’s brother Bobby. We had a common interest in blues records—the early blues 45s—and Frank was a big collector. I would go over there and Frank would play those records.”

Slide guitar was an obvious choice for a Zappa lineup featuring Captain Beefheart. But Walley hadn’t seen Zappa in years, and by 1974, Frank was an institution. Walley was ready for his [slide guitar] audition. “I walked in the door and could’ve dropped to my knees,” he says. “George Duke was on keyboards. Tom Fowler was the bass player. Chester Thompson was behind the drums, plus Napoleon Murphy Brock and Frank. That was what I walked into.”

Denny Walley has played with many bands over the years and is best known for his work with Frank Zappa's Mothers of Invention and Captain Beefheart's Magic Band. He also played briefly with Geronimo Black in 1972. Captain Beefheart gave him the nickname "Feelers Rebo".

Since 2003 Denny has been touring regularly with the reformed Magic Band.

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