The CD Reissues are Wonderful.

It's kind of funny to me how Whipped Cream is consistently the best seller, when it's really not the best TJB album in my book, nor was it the biggest seller (I believe that honor went to What Now My Love or possibly Going Places). It's that cover! And the fact it gets the most mention in any articles about the band, I guess. I wonder what the top seller would be if you added up all the sales from all the releases over the last 50+ years? Maybe WC has emerged on top by this time.

Still, if the new reissues are geared to the younger generations, you'd think they would discover the joys of the albums that don't get so much publicity...eventually.

It's the same with any artist though...their most popular album remains their most popular, no matter how often the other, sometimes better, albums are reissued.
 
It's kind of funny to me how Whipped Cream is consistently the best seller, when it's really not the best TJB album in my book, nor was it the biggest seller (I believe that honor went to What Now My Love or possibly Going Places).
I'm a little surprised to hear that. How many copies did !!Going Places!! and What Now My Love sell? Does anyone have stats?
 
I know that ever since our site has had affiliate links, Whipped Cream has consistently outsold everything, even Definitive Hits. I know that What Now My Love stayed on top of the album chart for nine weeks, but like anything on the charts, those are the initial sales of a title. A steady back catalog seller can easily surpass the most popular charting album over the years in terms of units sold.
 
Interesting that the typesetting on the artist and title on the disc is very close to the original LP's typesetting. Close enough to jog the memory here, at any rate!

Brian Porizek (Art Director) had photos of all the labels to work with - so not coincidental. :wink:
 
One can only HOPE that the aforementioned "younger generations" are drawn to an artist -such as Herb- based on, well, the fact, being: his music has had something GOOD "to say" for the last 50+ years and, that, they are receptive-enough to realize it has always had tremendous HEART behind it.
I mean, if anyone remembers, for example, the (brief) revival of interest in Bacharach; 15-or-so years ago (at the time Mike Meyers was pushing the "Austin Powers" movies)...THOSE people -I'm sure, *now*- have, probably, gone back to thinking: "Burt, who?". Unfortunately, "retro" is marketed thesedays as a commodity -- tied-in with the status-and-greed mindset internet auctioneering fuels. Impressionable people are told WHAT to like...WHAT to buy...etc; and they -now- do it often to just please whomever they want to "fit in" with (at a given time).
I think, if one is a "Gen. X'er" (me): chances are you, probably, would not have had any inkling of Herb if not for your FATHER having had the records (or tapes).
 
if one is a "Gen. X'er" (me): chances are you, probably, would not have had any inkling of Herb if not for your FATHER having had the records (or tapes)

My interest in Herb was sparked by friends of my parents. There was this "Tijuana Brass" everybody was talking about, so their gang was all aware of Herb..then we were boating with these people, and they had the "4 track" tape of Whipped Cream, which I thought was great...then not long after that, one of the TV specials aired and I was instantly hooked. Bought the LP of Going Places for my mom for Mother's Day but I played the record more than she ever did. I still have that LP.
 
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Im sure a lot of you had your interests in Herb sparked by either your parents or relatives or their friends. And thats how my story goes. Just simply my parents had 2 of his albums and i discoved them at a very young age and the rest as the say Is History.
 
When I was 5 (1981), I was already "immersed" (haha!) in: The Beatles '62-'66 "Red" album; The Stones' "HOT ROCKS" comp; and...the reel-to-reel OR-4101 of "T.L.B." (which, I'd love to show to the audience here; when I figure out how to link to photo dropbox!).
Anyhow, hearing all that at an early age and -subconsciously, now- *connecting* it with "safe memories" from a time where childhood is full of "endless discovery"...I'm glad I had someone to make me recognize the inherent quality of these things -- which, as the years go by: the environment of people won't nurture THAT type of experience (simply because, of course, history becomes "pushed back" *further* and, because, there IS a difference -for the negative- in how the overall society today has changed).
I mean, also: I suppose I was "lucky" that I saw CASINO ROYALE when I was 8, too (because my father was a Peter Sellers and Woody Allen fan)! So, from there -- I "graduated" to Bacharach and first heard dad's B.C.&S.K. copy (on the OR-4227 reel).
 
As I have said here previously, this re-issue project is driven by Herb's nephew, Randy, who wanted to introduce Herb's music to new generations. It is why there are no fancy booklets, bonus tracks, etc. The music and all is expected to be as it was upon original release and also to keep the price very affordable.
 
As I have said here previously, this re-issue project is driven by Herb's nephew, Randy, who wanted to introduce Herb's music to new generations. It is why there are no fancy booklets, bonus tracks, etc. The music and all is expected to be as it was upon original release and also to keep the price very affordable.

And a great, big thanks to Randy for doing this too! But as you said, there are no fancy booklets, bonus tracks, or extended liner notes... which is why I am perfectly satisfied with my Shout Factory copies and I only bought the remaining titles on Herb Alpert Presents. After all, none of these are original releases anymore. I'm just happy to have all of Herb's work now on digital CDs.

Except for JUST YOU AND ME. I'll have to settle for my needle drop CD-R. :sigh:
 
I am just glad that all of these recordings are now out so that everyone can purchase what they want or need.

Compare that to where we were at 15 years ago. The original CDs were long out of print, as were some of the earlier solo CDs. A few titles were Japan-only, and in the pre-Internet days, it was harder to order them (or even hear about them). The occasional rare copy would be offered on eBay and we'd wonder how high the price would go. Shout Factory hadn't happened yet. Many of us wondered if we'd ever see reissues. We had a lot of wishful thinking here!
 
And a great, big thanks to Randy for doing this too! But as you said, there are no fancy booklets, bonus tracks, or extended liner notes... which is why I am perfectly satisfied with my Shout Factory copies and I only bought the remaining titles on Herb Alpert Presents. After all, none of these are original releases anymore. I'm just happy to have all of Herb's work now on digital CDs.

Except for JUST YOU AND ME. I'll have to settle for my needle drop CD-R. :sigh:
I Totally agree and i too have my JYAM Album on vinyl with a nice needledrop CD-R and a true digital CD version of it would bring everything Full Circle but Time will tell whether it happens or not.
 
Let's all hope that the music contained in the reissues appears cool enough to the younger generation, to the extent that it can be shared amongst friends.

I am 61 years old and remember that during the mid-60s the music chat at school was mainly around the Beatles, Stones, Beach Boys and Elvis. There was no mention of
Herb and so I was almost too embarrassed to impart my love of HA & the TJB to my friends at that time, as it would have appeared "square".

I feel that, if sales are to impress, then if any young people are converted to Herb when they hear these reissues, then the music and artist will also need to appear cool enough so that younger people will not be embarrassed (as I was) to share
their like of HA with friends (pretty clumsy sentence this, but you will get my gist).
 
There was no mention of Herb and so I was almost too embarrassed to impart my love of HA & the TJB to my friends at that time, as it would have appeared "square".
Heh. I remember talking to a friend of mine during my teens in the 1980s. I'll call him John Doe. He was speaking derisively about The Dating Game, and he repeatedly stated in his little rant that one thing that made it bad was Herb Alpert's music. The idea that Alpert's music was bad seemed axiomatic to him. I was too embarrassed to mention what a big fan I was of Alpert's records, as it would have appeared square... even though I fully acknowledged being square, and John Doe was just as square!

Unfortunately, after I made my kids hear most of my HA albums, they hated his music, and made it clear that they would be embarrassed if anyone at their school caught me listening to his music. Ah well. I tried.
 
I had a speech class in high school, either in 9th or 10th grade. One of our assigned speeches was a "demonstration" speech, so I took one of the portable 8-track players from the store and demonstrated it using the TJB tune "America" from Greatest Hits, which was one of the first 8-tracks I owned. The song would've been about 10 years old at that time.

The demo went fine although I was a nervous wreck (I hate public speaking) but there definitely was not a huge increase of Tijuana Brass customers at our store after that day. I probably should have used something by the Beatles or the Doors.
 
From the online-therapy department: I played "Cabaret" on my trumpet backed by the TJB at a 7th grade talent show in 1968, and it was a hit. The entire talent show was so well received, they asked the class to perform the whole thing over again the next day for the lower grades. That second day, I played "What Now My Love" instead. But I had the early stages of a cold and split the notes after the middle section the song — and was so embarrassed I didn't talk about it for a long, long time. Like, this is the first time I've ever spoken of it! Looking back, most everybody else in the class mimicked records like "Gitarzan," which didn't take a whole lot of skill. So all these decades later, I'm feeling better about splitting notes in public.
 
Heh. I remember talking to a friend of mine during my teens in the 1980s. I'll call him John Doe. He was speaking derisively about The Dating Game, and he repeatedly stated in his little rant that one thing that made it bad was Herb Alpert's music. The idea that Alpert's music was bad seemed axiomatic to him. I was too embarrassed to mention what a big fan I was of Alpert's records, as it would have appeared square... even though I fully acknowledged being square, and John Doe was just as square!

I never had a problem talking about what a TJB fan I was when I was in high school. But for me, I avoided playing people the "novelty" tunes such as "Spanish Flea" or "Whipped Cream". Instead, I would play tunes that either swung or had a great groove, such as "Getting Sentimental Over You", "Slick", "Wade In The Water", "Walk, Don't Run" and stuff like that. Coney Island came out in my junior year, so songs like "Senor Mouse" and "Vento Bravo" would really impress some people.
 
It's kind of funny to me how Whipped Cream is consistently the best seller, when it's really not the best TJB album in my book, nor was it the biggest seller (I believe that honor went to What Now My Love or possibly Going Places). It's that cover! And the fact it gets the most mention in any articles about the band, I guess. I wonder what the top seller would be if you added up all the sales from all the releases over the last 50+ years? Maybe WC has emerged on top by this time.

Still, if the new reissues are geared to the younger generations, you'd think they would discover the joys of the albums that don't get so much publicity...eventually.

It's the same with any artist though...their most popular album remains their most popular, no matter how often the other, sometimes better, albums are reissued.

Hi Mike- Whipped Cream is by far and away the all time biggest selling TJB album all around the world. US included. To this day, that album is selling all over the world. There is a lot of mis-information out there so please do not believe all that you hear. Hope you had a good summer!
 
As I have said here previously, this re-issue project is driven by Herb's nephew, Randy, who wanted to introduce Herb's music to new generations. It is why there are no fancy booklets, bonus tracks, etc. The music and all is expected to be as it was upon original release and also to keep the price very affordable.

Hi Steve- you are 100% correct. A huge amount of the really young music listeners are very, very anti hype. These are the kids embracing vinyl. These kids want truth and transparency. Like the Beatles re-releases, I just wanted these albums to be released as Herb & Jerry released them. Liner notes, song titles, cover art, etc. The only major thing I really wanted was for the sound to be as best as possible. And I think that we achieved that. Many years was spent preserving these tapes and doing digital transfers and remastering by Bernie who is part of the TJB and A&M family. We had no choice but to re-create all of the artwork as we had Zero original artwork. And 80% of these albums were created before the CD. The art was created for a huge 12x12 surface and not a small CD package. The colors, the typeface and music will never, ever, ever be as they were 50 years ago but everything that we have done is absolutely the very best that we could do with what we have. I am very proud of these albums and am happy that these are now out in the world. There is so much piracy with crappy over=priced TJB/Herb recordings all around the world that I wanted to create "Official" TJB/Herb recordings which is why I called the label HA Presents.. Also, I have read that several long time fans are unhappy with us not using plastic CD Jewel cases. When I came on board to help Herb with Steppin' Out (both he and I are very ecologically minded) we discussed cardboard packaging (which is more expensive) as opposed to the Jewel Pack and we agreed to the cardboard. Also, there are some mis-conceptions that we are waiting to see how these albums do sales-wise before we release other titles. NOT AT ALL TRUE. These releases were brought about by me. Money and sales have absolutely NOTHING to do with anything. "Bullish, Blow Your Own Horn, Herb & Hugh" and several others are all coming out. I just want to ensure that those releases sound as good as these other albums sound and I did not want to delay these re-releases because these others were not what I intended them to be. Again, I want people that are discovering the TJB for the very first time to have the same joy that I had as a kid hearing these albums in the same way that everyone here had joy and happiness hearing these for the first time 40, 50 years ago. I mean how crazy is it that we are all here 50 years later talking about drop outs on songs, extra trombone tracks on certain mixes, typos on credits, colors on CD packages, etc. This is so fantastic because we are really all here because a guy with a really cool sound on his horn picked some great songs and recorded them in a way that touched millions of people and obviously brought a whole lot of happiness and memories to all of us on this forum. For me this is a tribute to my uncle who is a rather shy, kind, generous, warm human being that has a wonderful legacy of music that deserves to be passed on to future generations.
 
Hi Randy!

I, for one, am very happy with these reissues. And I certainly appreciate all the hard work you've done to get these out once again. Overall, the sound is fantastic on each of these releases. I have the vinyl on order and am looking forward to hearing those as well (I'm a vinyl junkie as well).

One question - since these are being introduced to newer generations, is there some kind of special marketing that will be used to attract said generations?

Thanks again for your contributions!
 
Indeed @badazz ! I echo what the Captain says in that we appreciate the years of work. Having been "in the know" on other restoration and remastering projects, I know these things never happen overnight. At least with Herb, the licensing is not an issue but with other reissue labels, licensing alone can take months, even years. Locating the proper tapes takes even longer. Then there's restoration (more weeks or months), mastering, and production. In this project you had over 25 titles to deal with! No small feat. I sort of miss getting the CDs in packaging (mini versions of all of the album covers would be cool, of course) but with the high-res files, I know I've gotten top-notch sound quality.

Just wanted to add that on top of Bernie's mastering, the pressing plant did a really nice job on the four new vinyl titles I picked up. Nice work!
 
Hi Randy!

I, for one, am very happy with these reissues. And I certainly appreciate all the hard work you've done to get these out once again. Overall, the sound is fantastic on each of these releases. I have the vinyl on order and am looking forward to hearing those as well (I'm a vinyl junkie as well).

One question - since these are being introduced to newer generations, is there some kind of special marketing that will be used to attract said generations?

Thanks again for your contributions!

I love that there is another Captain B in the world!! Thanks for your kind words. We have a ton of things going on in Europe and Japan to reach the younger people. TJB songs are being used on tv shows in Germany, UK, Italy, Netherlands, Spain and Japan. We have tie ins with many clothing chains throughout Europe like H&M, Top Shop, etc. We also have programs and give-aways going on in vinyl shops and record stores in Europe and Australia. The Japanese flipped out over the catalog picture that we made with the 25 albums so we printed up several thousand large posters and Japan is working several different promos utilizing those posters. I also had Herb sign about 300 of them. We are also reaching kids through the press. We have a team of young PR people throughout Europe that are focused in on blogs, podcasts and the youth culture. We have Rise remixes starting to get some good club play throughout Europe. These remixes will certainly not lead directly to a 17 year old seeking a TJB album but all of these things are feeding into one another to create awareness. A kid in the UK may hear the SoulShaker Rise remix in a club and then read about it on his favorite DJ's blog and then a week later read a story about Herb in the UK's #1 music magazine Mojo and then see a poster of the catalog at his favorite HMV vinyl shop, etc. Herb has given 93 radio and various media interviews around the world since the end of May with 2 scheduled for Germany tomorrow morning and a French and Australian interview scheduled for Friday. We will have a huge program with Urban Outfitters in the US which will revolve around Whipped Cream. We currently have TJB songs including Rise & Rotation playing in 11K stores throughout the US. Dozens of mall chains, fast food restaurants, wineries, Jiffy Lubes, Vans, and dozens of other stores. During Thanksgiving week and the first 2 weeks of December we will have TJB songs playing at various times in 3200 movie theaters throughout the US. Regal, Edwards, AMC, Cinemark, etc will be playing songs 6 to 10 times per day throughout the theaters. In their lobbies, bathrooms, in the theaters before shows, etc. So Captain B, we have quite a few things going on..
 
Indeed @badazz ! I echo what the Captain says in that we appreciate the years of work. Having been "in the know" on other restoration and remastering projects, I know these things never happen overnight. At least with Herb, the licensing is not an issue but with other reissue labels, licensing alone can take months, even years. Locating the proper tapes takes even longer. Then there's restoration (more weeks or months), mastering, and production. In this project you had over 25 titles to deal with! No small feat. I sort of miss getting the CDs in packaging (mini versions of all of the album covers would be cool, of course) but with the high-res files, I know I've gotten top-notch sound quality.

Just wanted to add that on top of Bernie's mastering, the pressing plant did a really nice job on the four new vinyl titles I picked up. Nice work!

Thanks Rudy. We too have a ton of licensing issues. Yes we control the masters but every time we want to use a song for tv shows, samplers, featured uses on blogs, podcasts, videos and games we have to deal with various publishers and songwriters that need to give permission for the various uses. And many songs have multiple writers and publishers. We often end up using a little unknown song called, "Rise" because I happen to be friendly with the writer & publisher who always allows us to use that song.. Glad that you like the vinyl. Getting vinyl pressed and quality controlled is horrendous. We got in line last December in order to have our 4 new vinyl releases ready for shipment in early August. It is crazy. We released Whipped Cream on vinyl last November and sold out to stores in 5 days. So we immediately put in a re-order for more Whipped Cream vinyl and they were finally delivered in early June. Years ago it would take 2 or 3 days to get records pressed and delivered. So whatever business you are in there are always challenges and things are never really straight ahead easy. But,, when people are happy dropping the needle on to Green Peppers or pop that Warm CD into their car player and start tapping their feet, suddenly it is all worthwhile because people are indeed happy digging these recordings. Hope you are having a good week Rudy!
 
I Totally agree and i too have my JYAM Album on vinyl with a nice needledrop CD-R and a true digital CD version of it would bring everything Full Circle but Time will tell whether it happens or not.

Hi Bobberman- I want to thank you for your kind email note that you sent me earlier today. It makes me happy that you are happy. Thank You!
 
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