Читать книгу The Mojo Collection - Various Mojo Magazine - Страница 58

Record label: A&M

Produced: Jerry Moss

Recorded: Goldstar Studios, LA; 1965

Released: September 1965

Chart peaks: 5 (UK) 1 (US)

Personnel: Herb Alpert (t); Tonni Kalash (t); Julius Wechter (marimba/vibes); Bob Edmondson (tb); Pat Senatore (b); John Pisano (electric 12string guitar); Lou Pagani (p); Nick Ceroli (d); Larry Levine (e)

Track listing: Tijuana Taxi (S); I’m Getting Sentimental Over You; More And More Amor; Spanish Flea (S); Mae; 3rd Man Theme (S); Walk, Don’t Run; Felicia; And The Angels Sing; Cinco De Mayo; A Walk In The Black Forest; Zorba The Greek (S)

Running time: 29.27

Current CD: High Coin SABRECD2009

Further listening: The Lonely Bull (1963); Whipped Cream And Other Delights (1965)

Further reading: www.tijuanabrass.com; www.herbalpert.com

Download: iTunes

In the mid-’60s, while the kids were in thrall to the Fabs and their guitar-wielding, hair-shaking contemporaries, there was a parallel music market that catered for the less spicy tastes of their parents. Unassailably dominant in that market was the phenomenally successful Herb Alpert and his Tijuana Brass.

Twenty-five-year-old Los Angeles ex-actor and trumpeter Alpert had been keen to find a distinctive sound on his instrument and in 1962, fooling around on a tape recorder in his garage with a tune written by friend Sol Lake called Twinkle Star, he noticed that the melody worked well played in Mexican-style thirds – the Mariachi sound of the Tijuana bullfights Alpert occasionally frequented.

‘I liked the Mariachi sound,’ said Alpert, ‘but it hadn’t progressed much over the years and it seemed to me you could add an undercurrent of American sound, updating the bass-line and the guitars and timpani.’

Forming a label with partner Jerry Moss – changing the title of Lake’s tune to The Lonely Bull and naming the studio-creation (which soon became a real band) The Tijuana Brass – the ensuing single and album began a wave of popularity that saw The Tijuana Brass at their peak outselling the Beatles 2-to-1 and making A&M Records the most successful artist-owned label of all time.

Going Places was the fifth Tijuana Brass bestseller and typifies their exuberant, cheeky charm. Alpert’s customised ‘Ameriachi’ style was by now so focused that the apparently incongruous, daringly juxtaposed material (Zorba The Greek, I’m Getting Sentimental Over You and The Third Man Theme on one album!) is vividly adapted, with the listener seduced into barely caring how these tunes originally sounded.

‘It’s a wild, happy sound, like the Mariachis,’ Alpert said, attempting to explain The Tijuana Brass’s appeal. ‘It’s good-natured and full of humour. It’s not a protest and not a put-down. I think people were bugged with hearing music which had an undercurrent of unhappiness and anger, even sadism. But our music you can get with in a hurry, tap your feet and hum along.’ As The Tijuana Brass’s popularity faded, Alpert, never a jazz player, continued making records in contemporary pop styles and on the back of A&M’s success with The Carpenters, The Police and others, sold the label in 1990 to Polygram for $500 million.