Herb Alpert / Tijuana Brass - Christmas Album MP3 Download

Christmas Album songs 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 sound. Additional Tracks Audio Remasterer: Ernie ...

Christmas Album 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.

Christmas Album buy CD music 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.

Christmas Album album for sale 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. ~ Richard S. Ginell Audio Remasterer: Bernie Grundman. Liner Note Authors: Herb Alpert; Tom Mankiewicz; Josh Kun. Photographers: Jim McCrary; Guy Webster. Arranger: Herb Alpert.

Christmas Album 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.

Christmas Album buy CD music 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. ~ Richard S. Ginell Audio Remasterer: Bernie Grundman. Liner Note Authors: Herb Alpert; Josh Kun. Photographers: Jim McCrary; Guy Webster; John Lurie. Arrangers: Herb Alpert; Peter Matz.