Herb Alpert / Tijuana Brass - What Now My Love CD

What Now My Love buy CD music How a good-looking Jewish boy from Brooklyn discovered the secret of success in an updated form of mariachi music is perhaps beyond our scope. Then again, it might not be such a mystery after all. Aside from the obvious example of exotica, much easy listening depends upon more than a touch of ethnicity to maintain its musical roots. What Herb Alpert found in Mexican street bands was a previously untapped source of south-of-the-border melody and rhythm. With its unlikely combination of Alpert's cool Chet Baker-like trumpet and the blocky cadences of a marching band, the Tijuana Brass produced a lively, colorful mix that managed to appeal to hips and squares alike. WHIPPED CREAM & OTHER DELIGHTS was Herb Albert's most successful album, helped--no doubt--by its highly provocative cover art. The tunes are mostly unknown originals or, in the case of Lieber & Stoller's "Love Potion #9," so transformed by the Tijuana "treatment" as to be almost unrecognizable. Special mention must go to guitarist John Pisano and marimba man Julius Wechter, both of whom round out the sharp corners of a potentially raucous ...

What Now My Love CD music Herb Alpert and 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 American music, jazz and rock. Alpert's family of 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 bossman's trumpet could be joyous, mocking and melancholy in turns, and his choices of tunes totally unpredictable; who else would dare juxtapose "The 3rd 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. ~ Richard S. Ginell Liner Note Authors: Herb Alpert; Josh Kun.

What Now My Love songs Herb Alpert/Herb Alpert & the Tijuana Brass/Tijuana Brass: Herb Alpert (trumpet); John Pisano (electric guitar); Tonni Kalash (trumpet); Bob Edmondson (trombone); Lou Pagani (piano); Pat Senatore (bass guitar); Nick Ceroli (drums). 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 Signature Series 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, midtempo "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 then-recent memory of the slain U.S. leader John Fitzgerald Kennedy. ~ Lindsay Planer Audio Remasterer: Ted Jensen. Liner Note Authors: Herb Alpert; Josh Kun. Recording information: Gold Star Recording Studio, Hollywood, CA. Arranger: Herb Alpert.

What Now My Love album for sale There is a dreamy-eyed wonder about Herb Alpert's debut album. Within its Latin-esque affectations, the album is a moodily romantic concoction of easy listening and progressive sounds. "El Lobo" is a portrait of love's sorrow, tenderly painted with trumpets, guitars, and ghostly vocal choruses. "The Lonely Bull" is cinematic, with imagery of bullfights vividly implied by the opening sound effects of a roaring crowd. The deep electric guitar sounds like the Ventures, a popular 1960s instrumental rock group. Even at the outset, Alpert's style has the elements that he carried with him over the succeeding years. There's a preference for solid and dominant percussion and tempos, making all his work specifically geared for the dancing set. The Mexican melodies lend a cross-cultural vitality that was to persist in the trumpeter's work. Herb Alpert & the Tijuana Brass: Herb Alpert (trumpet). Recorded at Conway Recorders, Hollywood, California. Audio Remasterer: Ted Jensen. Liner Note Authors: Herb Alpert; Josh Kun. Recording information: Conway Recorders, Hollywood, CA. Photographer: Herb Alpert.

What Now My Love CD music 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 a 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. ~ Richard S. Ginell Audio Remasterer: Bernie Grundman. Liner Note Authors: Herb Alpert; Chuck Champlin; Josh Kun. Arranger: Herb Alpert.

What Now My Love buy CD music Herb Alpert & the Tijuana Brass: Herb Alpert (trumpet); John Pisano (guitar); Bob Edmondson (trombone); Nick Ceroli (drums). 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. ~ Richard S. Ginell Audio Remasterer: Bernie Grundman. Liner Note Authors: Herb Alpert; Josh Kun. Photographer: George Jerman. Arranger: Herb Alpert.