Captain Beefheart’s legendary 1976 shelved recording ‘Bat Chain Puller’ is to get an official release on January 15th 2012.

The original album was shelved after a dispute between album producer Frank Zappa and Herb Cohen regarding monies earned via their Discreet Records label, sometime recording home to Don Van Vliet (aka Captain Beefheart).

Many of the ‘Bat Chain Puller’ songs were re-recorded and issued on subsequent albums; even the title itself got recycled two years later for Beefheart’s 1978 release ‘Shiny Beast (Bat Chain Puller)’, but despite circulating on bootlegs for many years, those original 1976 recordings have never been available in their entirity on an official basis.

January 15th would have been Don Van Vliet’s 71st birthday.