Jean-Luc Ponty – King Kong: Jean-Luc Ponty Plays The Music Of Frank Zappa

There is a 70's (probably 1970) Japanese pressing with catalogue number LP-8982. This also came as a red wax with white promo labels and OBI. Both versions unlisted here on Discogs.

The Italian 3C 054-91651 pressing sounds pretty good. Nice, clean, quiet EMI pressing. Not much that you could ask for.

If you're a Zappa fan, there is no reason to not own this album. It's everything you could want from an instrumental, heavily jazz-oriented cover album of some of Zappa's greatest pieces from the 1960s (including one piece penned by JLP). A good number of members from the Mothers are also in attendance, and even Mr. Zappa himself plays guitar on Ponty's piece. I don't have any other albums from Ponty, so I've filed this in my Zappa collection. My labels are also completely blank. (Anyone else have that quirk about this particular version?)

The 1970 UK release cat# LBS 83375 has been duplicated here.

This is also re-issued in 1976 on the Blue Note Reissue Series as the LP 'Canteloupe Island', Blue Note BN-LA632-H2, with the Pacific Jazz release ST-20168, 'Jean-Luc Ponty With George Duke Trio - The Jean-Luc Ponty Experience', and this bundled together as one double LP.