Herb Alpert album

If the 12" single of Herb Alpert's "Rise" hadn't taken over the charts the way it did back in 1979, one wonders if anyone would have gotten around to checking out the Tijuana Brass, or if Alpert would have gone down in the books as the guy who had a number one with a Burt Bacharach tune ("This Guy's in Love with You"). Instead, the cut energized the entire dance club generation with DJs looking for new grooves and even ended up being used by Sean "Puffy" Combs on the Notorious B.I.G.'s Hypnotise, albeit in a drastically re-morphed form. The single began as a disc track composed by Alpert's nephew Randy and his pal Andy Armer. Alpert suggested they slow the groove way down and turn it into a slow mover. They issued it without an album to go with it, simply as a single on A&M. Club DJs picked up on it and began using duplicate copies either to let the percussion break go on a bit longer before trumpet kicked in, or playing one copy just behind another, creating a call and response melody with the trumpet and the rhythm section. After the single stormed the charts and stayed there all summer, eventually hitting the number one spot, Alpert, Armer and friends went about assembling an album to capitalize on it.

They did well: Rise hit number six on the Billboard pop chart. The rest of the tracks are a slew of originals and covers. The set opens with a small pomp and circumstance intro called "1980" that Alpert composed for the Olympics that year, assisted by the late Michel Colombier on keyboards. Alpert also composed the ballad-turned-Latin-dancefloor fire walker "Behind the Rain," (originally composed for Gato Barbieri's Caliente! album) that has its own appeal in the 21st century with chorus-like backing vocals. Other tracks include the Armer and Randy Alpert "Rotation." This cut, introduced by hand percussion, bells and shakers is another soulful groover with a killer, soft-spoken keyboard line that's lite funk and hypnotic. A looped synth line enters in place of a bassline. Handclaps, fingersnaps, and Alpert's trumpet from the distance play a melody not unlike the one on the "Lonely Bull." Effects, washes, reverb, and mild distortion create a futuristic backdrop to this otherwise beautifully melodic tune. Alpert plays his in the pocket soul-drenched melody lines over the top and one of the first "chillout" tunes was born. The 2007 version of the album includes an alternate version with digital delay on the trumpet as a bonus track. Speaking of bonus cuts, Alpert recorded an updated version of Rodrigo's "Aranjuez" introduced by a steel string playing the flamenco intro and backed by hand percussion and the popping bassline of Jerry Knight to full-on 1/2 disco tempo, creating another melodic classic for the floor complete with marimba played by Julius Wechter from (where else?) the Tijuana Brass! The handclap and vocal whoop-up in the middle adds to the celebratory nature of this version. By its end the tune is unrecognizable and has become a disco anthem with strings, with Harvey Mason beating the hell out his kit and keyboard loops layered on top of one another. It's still an amazing thing to hear nearly 30 years later. There is a brand new mix of the cut contained on the 2007 edition.

Alpert, wanting to charge the disco scene, had re-recorded the Crusaders' "Street Life" with Joe Sample on piano amid the synthetic keyboards. The marimba adds to the vibe and the slowed downtempo, as the melody is ushered in by strings before Alpert starts blowing his tight, sharp little vamps. Sample's piano is a solid accompaniment to James Jamerson, Jr.'s bass playing, and the whole thing rivals the Crusaders' version because of the deep, soulful melody in Alpert's playing. And who would have ever thought the prog rocker Pete Sinfield and Procol Harum's Gary Brooker's tune "Angelina" (recorded for Brooker's first solo album) would end up here as a faux calypso tune with a pedal steel guitar in it? The studio was the lab and everything was possible then, though hearing it now it's amazing they could accomplish all this back then. What this leaves is "Love Is," penned by Bill Withers, and delivered here rather anemically by Alpert. But it isn't the vocal that sells this, it's the drop dead bassline by Louis Johnson and the woven-in keyboard lines. Alpert plays fills around and through his vocals and turns the song into an anthem of celebration. What it all adds up to is an extraordinary recording that stands the test of time as a bona fide classic of the late disco/pre hip-hop era. The pop charts would have none of it these days. But eating this up as folks did, pre-MTV, with simply the radio going nuts trying to introduce the next single from it, Alpert, his nephew, and Armer stumbled onto something that would reinvigorate Alpert's career as a recording artist and as a producer.

Meant as the companion album to a Herb Alpert & the Tijuana Brass television special of the same name and packaged in a fancy double-fold LP jacket, The Beat of the Brass came out amid signs that Alpert's hot streak was finally beginning to run out. Not quite. Viewer requests for a new Burt Bacharach song, "This Guy's in Love with You" -- featuring an Alpert vocal -- were so strong that A&M released it as a single, which shot up to number one and took The Beat of the Brass with it to the top. Herb's vocal is touching in its strained naïveté; he sounds sincere, and that overrides the lush, overbearing Bacharach orchestral arrangement. The rest of the album generated an often nostalgic quality then and now; the tunes by John Pisano and Sol Lake are exquisite, and Alpert's arrangements of songs like "Thanks for the Memory" seem autumnal in quality, as if an era were about to close. The band still has the ability to groove; the vamp on Julius Wechter's bossa nova "Panama," with Wechter's jazzy vibes and Pisano's strong rhythm guitar, could have been stretched to half an hour. Yet Alpert's trumpet sounds a bit withered at times, and the band vocals and cloying children's chorus on "Talk to the Animals" could be done without.

The cover art of Herb Alpert's Ninth is hilarious -- a bust of grim old Beethoven wearing a Herb Alpert sweatshirt, a parody of the pop icon fad going around at the time and maybe a comment on the rock world's newfound pretensions in the wake of the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper. In any case, Herb Alpert's Ninth does introduce some highbrow pretensions of sorts to Alpert's Ameriachi sound -- some very subtly applied strands of strings on several numbers and a madcap, multi-sectioned fantasy of tunes from Bizet's Carmen that is full of in-jokes from the opera and the TJB's hits. Alpert is also quite aware of the brave new world around him; he does a spare, lazy, yet entirely novel-sounding cover version of Sgt. Pepper's "With a Little Help from My Friends" and gives the Supremes' "The Happening" a bouncy workout. There is also a touching memorial to the late Ervan Coleman ("Bud") and another underrated contribution from the Alpert songwriting team, Sol Lake's swinging "Cowboys and Indians." The TJB still churns out the Latin American rhythms, but sometimes with a shade less exuberance.

The cover art of Herb Alpert's Ninth is hilarious -- a bust of grim old Beethoven wearing a Herb Alpert sweatshirt, a parody of the pop icon fad going around at the time and maybe a comment on the rock world's newfound pretensions in the wake of the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper. In any case, Herb Alpert's Ninth does introduce some highbrow pretensions of sorts to Alpert's Ameriachi sound -- some very subtly applied strands of strings on several numbers and a madcap, multi-sectioned fantasy of tunes from Bizet's Carmen that is full of in-jokes from the opera and the TJB's hits. Alpert is also quite aware of the brave new world around him; he does a spare, lazy, yet entirely novel-sounding cover version of Sgt. Pepper's "With a Little Help from My Friends" and gives the Supremes' "The Happening" a bouncy workout. There is also a touching memorial to the late Ervan Coleman ("Bud") and another underrated contribution from the Alpert songwriting team, Sol Lake's swinging "Cowboys and Indians." The TJB still churns out the Latin American rhythms, but sometimes with a shade less exuberance.

For one week in June 1967, Sounds Like was able to break the Monkees' 31-week hammerlock on the number one slot on the charts -- just two weeks before the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper took over and changed the world. This shows, lest you forget -- and many have -- just how popular Herb Alpert & the Tijuana Brass were, still spanning the generations during the Summer of Love, still putting out records as fresh and musical and downright joyous as this one. Though not as jazz-flavored as S.R.O., Sounds Like does preserve the feeling, particularly in the extended vamps on an updated slave song, "Wade in the Water" (a hit single). "Gotta Lotta Livin' to Do" settles you into the record with nothing but a long vamp -- a daring production decision. Yet Alpert was on a roll; everything he tried in the TJB's heyday seemed to work. The lesser-known tunes back-loaded on side two are a string of pearls -- John Pisano's appropriately titled bossa nova "The Charmer," Roger Nichols' tense "Treasure of San Miguel," Ervan Coleman's catchy "Miss Frenchy Brown." Finally, Alpert takes a flyer and concludes the LP with an extravagant Burt Bacharach orchestration of his theme from the film Casino Royale -- an artifact of '60s pop culture, to be sure, but still a perfectly structured record.

By late 1966, it seemed as if every TV commercial and every pop arranger had latched onto the Herb Alpert "Ameriachi" sound -- at which point the resourceful originator of that sound began to pare it down and loosen it up a bit. S.R.O. (Standing Room Only), referring to the Tijuana Brass' string of sold-out concerts, is an accurate title, for this LP is about a seven-piece band loaded with experienced jazzers who groove and swing together to a greater degree than on their previous albums. Sure, the arrangements are very tightly knit and don't allow much room for spontaneity, but they still sound fresh and uninhibited, and Alpert often allows the flavor of jazz to come through more clearly. Indeed, two of the album's three hit singles, "The Work Song" and "Flamingo," are jazz tunes -- the former nervous and driving, the latter joyously kicking -- and the third, "Mame," gets a nifty Dixieland treatment à la Louis Armstrong, with Alpert singing one verse. The sleeping gem of the record is guitarist John Pisano's "Freight Train Joe," a wistfully evocative tune that won't quit the memory, and the mournful Alpert/Pisano/Nick Ceroli tune "For Carlos" later became Wes Montgomery's "Wind Song." Though S.R.O. only went to number two on the LP charts, Alpert's creativity and popularity were still peaking.

With this album, Herb Alpert & the Tijuana Brass settle into their hitmaking groove, the once strikingly eclectic elements of Dixieland, pop, rock, and mariachi becoming more smoothly integrated within Alpert's infectious "Ameriachi" blend. They sound more like a band now; along with Alpert's now-indelibly stamped trumpet sound, listeners could recognize jazzman John Pisano's distinctive rhythm guitar, Lou Pagani's piano, the droll Bob Edmondson's dulcet trombone, etc. Pisano, who debuted as a composer on Going Places, comes up with the memorably whistleable "So What's New," and the rest of Alpert's songwriting brigade (Ervan Coleman, Julius Wechter, and Sol Lake) chime in with some lively, catchy tunes. There is also an assortment of pop, film, and Broadway standards of the day, all impeccably arranged by Alpert, whose production instincts grew sharper and surer with every release. Result: another hugely entertaining hit LP, one that stayed at number one longer than any other TJB album (nine weeks).

Herb Alpert & the Tijuana Brass were rolling right down the middle of the American pop scene like a locomotive in 1966 -- and this album captures them at the peak of their exuberance. By now, there really was a live, touring edition of the Tijuana Brass, and there was an easily identifiable TJB sound, with its strummed Latin American guitars, twin trumpet leads, delicate marimba or vibes (played by Julius Wechter of Baja Marimba Band fame in the studio), and strong grooves rooted in Latin music, jazz, and rock. Alpert's sidemen and composers were busy generating their own catchy hits, like Wechter's deadly infectious "Spanish Flea" and the tragically short-lived Ervan Coleman's wonderfully goofy "Tijuana Taxi." The boss man's trumpet could be joyous, mocking, and melancholy in turns, and his choices of tunes totally unpredictable; who else would dare juxtapose "The Third Man Theme," "Walk, Don't Run," "I'm Getting Sentimental Over You," and "Zorba the Greek" on one record? No other TJB record has as much unbuttoned fun and humor as this one -- and not surprisingly, it spent six weeks at number one in 1966.

Building upon South of the Border's (1964) Top Ten success, Herb Alpert dismissed the contingency of Los Angeles-based studio instrumental all-stars, which he had christened the Tijuana Brass. Because there was enough demand for live dates, just like a musical Gepetto, Alpert formed a real Tijuana Brass. The bandleader/trumpeter was joined by Tonni Kalash (trumpet), Robert Edmondson (trombone), Pat Senatore (bass), John Pisano (guitars), Lou Pagani (piano), and Nick Ceroli (drums). Ostensibly, the personnel wasn't a primary consideration as Alpert and company had already begun making serious inroads on the pop music scene. Not bad, considering the market was being heavily infiltrated, if not practically dominated by the British Invasion. With Whipped Cream & Other Delights (1965), they would take that momentum to new heights -- including three Grammy Awards alone for the update of the Bobby Scott and Ric Marlow-penned theme to Shelagh Delaney's play of the same name, "A Taste of Honey." The remainder of the material on the dozen-song album was chosen with food as the underlying thematic motif. Sol Lake -- who provided Alpert "The Lonely Bull" and "Mexican Shuffle" returns, and this time he has custom-made the upbeat and, above all, catchy trio of "Green Peppers," "Bittersweet Samba," and "El Garbanzo." Allen Toussaint's title composition "Whipped Cream" garnered significant attention, but not as a chart hit. Rather, it could be heard as bachelorettes were being introduced on ABC-TV's The Dating Game. Early in the series run, additional Alpert offerings were also incorporated as incidental music: "Spanish Flea," as the bachelors were being announced, "Lollipops and Roses," when the lucky winners were being told where they would be spending their date, and both "Ladyfingers" and "Lemon Tree" were in rotation as contestants mulled over their answers.

After several poor analogue-to-CD transfers in the '80s and '90s, Whipped Cream & Other Delights was reissued as part of Shout! Factory's Herb Alpert and boasts remarkably improved sound. [The CD was also released with two bonus tracks: "Rosemary" and "Blueberry Park," which are denoted as "unused studio session masters."]

Herb Alpert was still using an array of SoCal studio all-stars as his Tijuana Brass when South of the Border (1964) began to restore the combo's good name after the modest Herb Alpert's Tijuana Brass, Vol. 2 (1963) failed to ignite a fire in listener's ears. In his essay accompanying Shout! Factory's 2005 reissue of South of the Border, Alpert comments that the Sol Lake composition "Mexican Shuffle" "opened a new door for me." That passageway meant the loss of the Tijuana Brass' practically forced mariachi style and the rise of Alpert's approach in arranging familiar melodies in fresh, creative settings. Nowhere would this stylistic progression be as pronounced as in the horn-driven updates of several then-concurrent chart hits. For instance, the mod sonic wrinkle in "Girl from Ipanema" emits a darkness veiled in mystery, directly contrasting the light buoyancy of "Hello! Dolly" or the footloose feel of the Beatles' "All My Loving." They seamlessly fit in with Sol Lake's "Salud, Amor y Dinero" and a cover of Julius Wechter's playful mid-tempo "Up Cherry Street" -- which Wechter's own Baja Marimba Band had just recorded for their 1964 self-titled debut. The ballads "I've Grown Accustomed to Her Face," "Angelito," and "Adios, Mi Corazon" provide contrasts with Alpert's sensitive scores never seeming maudlin or unnecessarily over the top. If the regal "El Presidente" sounds particularly familiar, it may well be due to Alpert's slight renovation of the "Winds of Barcelona" from the Tijuana Brass' previous effort, the less than impressive Herb Alpert's Tijuana Brass, Vol. 2. It was renamed "El Presidente" presumably to honor the recent memory of the slain U.S. leader John Fitzgerald Kennedy. [A 'Deluxe Edition' of the album was released in 2005.]

The colossus that is A&M Records starts right here with the first album by the 1960s instrumental juggernaut known as the Tijuana Brass. True, there was no "Tijuana Brass" per se at this time; just Herb Alpert and a coterie of Los Angeles sessionmen, with Alpert overdubbing himself on trumpet to get that bullring effect. Also, Alpert was just getting the TJB concept underway; the textures are leaner, the productions less polished, and the accent is more consciously on a Mexican mariachi ambience -- the relatively square rhythms, the mandolins, the mournful, wistful siesta feeling -- than the records down the road. The hit title track (originally a tune called "Twinkle Star"!) is a cleverly structured, exciting and haunting piece of record-making -- and its composer, Sol Lake, becomes the charter member of Alpert's team of TJB tunesmiths with several more ethnic-flavored numbers. In accordance with the newly emerging bossa nova movement, Alpert does a nice, straightforward, authentic cover of "Desafinado," even departing a bit from the tune with some spare jazz-inspired licks, and "Crawfish" pleasingly adapts the mariachi horn sound to a bossa beat. [In 2005, Shout! Factory reissued The Lonely Bull as part of their Herb Alpert Signature Series, featuring remastered sound, a deluxe digipack, and new liner notes from Josh Kun.]