SANTA MONICA, Calif.
Just a few notes from that peppy horn are enough to book you on a first-class nostalgia trip. They take you back to turntable parties in the paneled rec room, tiki torches on the patio, and Dad sporting his groovy new sideburns. They evoke enormous plastic daisy decorations, wide whitewall tires and yellow shag carpet.
Odd as it seems now, Herb Alpert & the Tijuana Brass had as much claim on the soundtrack of the 1960s as the Beatles. The group's instrumental pop albums, slickly produced by Alpert himself, made him king of easy listening, god of the gentle and long-gone Middle of the Road genre.
"My kids say a new generation will discover this, but I don't know," says Herb Alpert, 70. "I will say it's upbeat and positive music. There's so much dark music out there now."
(Maryanne Bilham Blacksun)
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You heard those horns everywhere -- on "Ed Sullivan," on Top-40 radio, on chewing-gum commercials, on "The Dating Game." Your parents loved him, but so (often in secret) did the kids. At its peak in 1966, the TJB -- essentially Alpert and an evolving cast of L.A. studio musicians -- had four albums in the Top 10. By the end of the decade, the group had sold more records than anyone except the Beatles, Elvis and Sinatra.
And then? And then the Tijuana Brass began a slow shuffle toward used-record store bins and Muzak-al obscurity. There were a couple of brief Alpert spikes during the 1970s (notably, the disco-ish "Rise" in 1979), but the air went out of the golden trumpet soon enough. Alpert devoted more of his time to building the record empire he had co-founded (he was the "A" in mighty A&M Records) and to other pursuits. As ubiquitous as such perky Tijuana Brass hits as "Spanish Flea," "Mexican Shuffle," "Tijuana Taxi" and "A Taste of Honey" were four decades ago, they are dusty artifacts today, the musical equivalent of double-knit polyester slacks.
So maybe it's as good a time as any for a Herb Alpert revival, or at least a retrospective. After more than a decade out of print, Alpert's best-selling TJB works from the 1960s are being reissued by Shout! Factory, a small Los Angeles-based label. A complicated publishing deal tied up the rerelease until last month, when the Alpert-approved series began with "The Lonely Bull," the TJB's 1962 debut, as well as "South of the Border" (1964) and a collection of unreleased and obscure recordings (some with new Alpert trumpet parts) from 1963-74 called "Lost Treasures." Eight more remastered originals will follow throughout the year.
"My kids say a new generation will discover this, but I don't know," says Alpert. "I couldn't predict that I was going to make a hit record [40 years ago], so I can't say if they will or they won't. I will say it's upbeat and positive music. There's so much dark music out there now."
Alpert, now 70, who is as low-key and relaxed as a bass solo, talks in the offices of his self-named philanthropic organization here, which is decorated with imposing sculptures and paintings by the man himself. The jet-black hair and angular features that made him salable to middle America a few decades ago haven't quite been erased by time.
Despite one health issue last year (atrial fibrillation, a heart ailment), Alpert remains active and creative. He practices every day on the same trumpet he has played since 1953, works on his art and oversees the considerable fortune he has amassed, especially since selling A&M to Polygram in 1990 for a reported $500 million. Sometime soon, he says, he plans to produce an album by his wife, singer Lani Hall Alpert, who once recorded with another A&M group, Sergio Mendes and Brasil '66.
The legend of Alpert's big recording breakthrough, "The Lonely Bull," really is true, he says. When Alpert and his business partner, Jerry Moss (the "M" in A&M), attended their first bullfight in Tijuana, Mexico, in 1962, Alpert became intrigued by the brass fanfare that introduced each fight, and crowd's excited reactions. He set out to capture it in a recording. Alpert reworked the melody of a song called "Twinkle Star," written by collaborator Sol Lake, and mixed it with a recording of the "oles!" from an actual bullfight.
The single was the first hit for Alpert, then 27, and for his fledgling record label. The album that followed, also a popular success, established the Tijuana Brass formula: a few highly polished original compositions (by Alpert, Lake and other writers), coupled with bright cover versions of popular songs of the day and a few golden oldies. The whole package -- music, promotion and, of course, the Tijuana Brass name, which was dreamed up by Moss -- was designed to conjure up a south-of-the-border tourist fantasy. Alpert played up the old Mexico feel by using marimbas, breezy guitars and brass elements that vaguely suggested a mariachi horn section (actually, Alpert overdubbing himself). The original songs also had titles that stayed with the theme: "Acapulco 1922," "Adios, Mi Corazon," "Salud, Amor y Dinero," etc. "When you're making an instrumental record," he says, "there has to be a visual attached to it. You close your eyes and you get a mental picture. I got letters from all over the world from people saying, 'Thank you for taking me on a trip to Tijuana.' "
The Latin flavor extended to A&M's early artist lineup, which included the Sandpipers ("Guantanamera"), Mendes, and the Baja Marimba Band, which featured another Alpert collaborator, Julius Wechter.
Of course, Alpert and the Tijuana Brass were about as authentically Mexican as a Chili's restaurant. Alpert never paid much attention to mariachi music (he leaned more toward Louis Armstrong and Miles Davis). He and Moss, a veteran record promoter, were primarily interested in creating a bright, radio-friendly pop sound. Although one of the early session musicians was Hispanic (Mexican jazz bassist Abraham Laboriel), most of the group that became the Brass in its touring heyday were Italian Americans: Pat Senatore (bass), John Pisano (electric guitar), Lou Pagani (piano) and Nick Ceroli (drums).
The concept -- gringos dressed in sombreros and matador outfits, playing Americanized Mexi-pop -- probably wouldn't stand the authenticity test today, let alone a cultural sensitivity or kitsch test. To a few critics, it didn't hold up then, either. The San Francisco Chronicle dismissed the Tijuana Brass as a Mexican minstrel show.
