Steve Perry's face superimposed over a bed of skulls, one of many surreal images from the 1998 "Zoot Suit Riot" video. Perry has said that the song had no influence on "Zoot Suit Riot", and that both bands just happened to draw from the same era of music and culture. Upon its initial release, some critics and swing fans noted a perceived musical and thematic similarity between "Zoot Suit Riot" and swing revivalists Royal Crown Revue 's 1991 single "Hey Pachuco", which was also written about the 1943 Zoot Suit Riots though doesn't reference the event by name. Mojo nevertheless persisted and "Zoot Suit Riot" soon found regular rotation on several major stations, notably Los Angeles' KROQ-FM, helping boost the single onto Billboard 's Hot 100 Airplay chart and launch the Daddies into temporary mainstream notoriety. The Daddies, who were in preparation over recording a new studio album, ardently protested this move under the belief that a swing song would never receive airplay on mainstream radio and were concerned over losing money from its marketing. Īs swing music began gaining mainstream commercial momentum by late 1997, Mojo chose to issue "Zoot Suit Riot" as a single and distribute it among modern rock radio stations.
Bones" and "Brown Derby Jump", plus the ska b-side "Hi and Lo" was distributed to radio stations for possible airplay "Zoot Suit Riot" was ultimately excluded from the tape as the band felt the song had no commercial potential. A promotional demo cassette featuring two swing songs from the album, "Dr. Following steady independent sales of the album which reportedly reached as many as 4,000 copies a week, the Daddies eventually signed a distribution deal with major label subsidiary Mojo Records and Zoot Suit Riot was re-issued and nationally distributed in July 1997. Zoot Suit Riot: The Swingin' Hits of the Cherry Poppin' Daddies was released independently on Space Age Bachelor Pad Records in March 1997. That's not that deep, but there you go." In discussing the appropriation of the actual Zoot Suit riots, he wrote "To me, the simplified duality I used as I wrote the song was: we swingers were in solidarity with our counter cultural ancestors the 'Zoot Suiters' and we were opposed to the 'sailors' who represented the squares who weren’t yet hip to our growing communal jive".
It was an expression of a proud marginalism. Īlthough the Daddies have occasionally explored issues of race, violence and politics in their music, "Zoot Suit Riot" expresses no overt political or social commentary: in a 2009 interview, songwriter Steve Perry elaborated on its significance as an intended "anthem" for the swing scene, saying "I guess it seemed like a Pachuco rallying cry that could double as a dance anthem for those of us interested in swing music and culture at a time when nobody else was. Perry has cited the music of Lalo Guerrero, a Mexican-American musician associated with the pachuco and pachuca subcultures of the 1940s, as an influence on the song's content and style.
Lyrically, the song's narrative is loosely based around the Los Angeles Zoot Suit Riots of the 1940s, a series of racially-motivated assaults by American servicemen upon Mexican-American youths. "Zoot Suit Riot" is written in the musical style of 1940s jump blues. Unbeknownst to us, it became a big hit record", noting elsewhere that he "probably would of given it 2 or 3 more rips, probably slightly slower, if we had known the future back in 1996". "He said, 'We should keep that in and it will be our joke that we did this on the first take.' So we left it in the song and moved on. "I had sung the tune and the engineer, my friend, pressed the button and said, 'I think it sounds pretty good, come in here and listen to it'", he revealed in a 2014 interview. At the end of the recording, singer Steve Perry is heard saying "I think I'm about ready to sing it", which he was signifying to the engineer. ĭue to the hurried production of the album, the song "Zoot Suit Riot" was recorded in one take.
As means of having something new to sell on their next tour while the band was preparing for their next studio album, the Daddies quickly assembled a compilation album of only the swing tracks from their first three albums, recording four new songs-including "Zoot Suit Riot"-to round out a full-length record. As a result, the Cherry Poppin' Daddies, who were at that time primarily associated with the West Coast ska punk scene, began attracting a separate but sizable following for the prominent swing influences in their music. Overview Background and recording īy the end of 1996, the formerly underground swing revival began drawing mainstream recognition in wake of the success of bands such as the Squirrel Nut Zippers and the hit film Swingers.