History
The first instance of lyrics being written for the melody is on a 1965 demo tape by The Mothers Of Invention on which the song is recorded as "I'm So Happy I Could Cry." The lyrics describe the sincere love of a man to a "...girl he left behind him when he went out to see this great, big world..." This version, released on the posthumous Frank Zappa album Joe's Corsage, also contains a bridge section that is not included in any other version of the song, save for the instrumental version that appears at the end of the "Lumpy Gravy" LP. At one point, the tune (without lyrics) was referred to by a working title of "Never On Sunday" (coincidentally the title of another very popular and oft-recorded song by Greek composer Manos Hadjidakis, written around the same time that Zappa wrote his song).
Three years later, in 1968, Zappa wrote entirely new lyrics to the tune and it was finally re-recorded by The Mothers Of Invention (in a more abbreviated arrangement, with the bridge section excised) as "Take Your Clothes Off When You Dance" for the album We're Only In It for The Money. The song would be known by this title from that point on. The lyrics to this version are a satirical look at social classes and the hippie subculture of the sixties.
The song was once again re-recorded by Frank Zappa for his album Lumpy Gravy under the shortened title "Take Your Clothes Off," this time in its more common instrumental form and, as previously mentioned, with the original bridge section that was excluded from the "We're Only In It For The Money" version of the track fully reincorporated. Most live performances of the song by Frank Zappa are instrumental jams.
Read more about this topic: Take Your Clothes Off When You Dance
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“A people without history
Is not redeemed from time, for history is a pattern
Of timeless moments.”
—T.S. (Thomas Stearns)
“I am ashamed to see what a shallow village tale our so-called History is. How many times must we say Rome, and Paris, and Constantinople! What does Rome know of rat and lizard? What are Olympiads and Consulates to these neighboring systems of being? Nay, what food or experience or succor have they for the Esquimaux seal-hunter, or the Kanaka in his canoe, for the fisherman, the stevedore, the porter?”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Bias, point of view, fury—are they ... so dangerous and must they be ironed out of history, the hills flattened and the contours leveled? The professors talk ... about passion and point of view in history as a Calvinist talks about sin in the bedroom.”
—Catherine Drinker Bowen (1897–1973)