Which TJB album gets the least play from me

[Clark]

I have to start by saying I liked all the albums that I owned, from Lonely Bull to Beat of the Brass. In my opinion, they all had something to offer. If you were to graph my enjoyment of the albums in the order of release, it would be a bell shaped curve, starting low with the first two, rising with South of the Boarder and peaking with Whipped Cream, Going Places and What Now My Love. The curve starts down with SRO and goes low again by the time of the Beat of the Brass. (Although within the last week or so, I have been listening to BOTB and the 9th, and I think a lot more of both of them now.)

Of all of these, I listen to Vol II least. I personally enjoy listening to it the least of the 10. Thats all.

P.S. This is my first post. I think this is a great forum.

 

[Harry]

Hi Clark,

Thanks for joining our little group. You'll find us a friendly lot. Enjoy the forums and the website -- Neil (Rudy) has done a terrific job putting it all together for us to be able to come together and discuss our favorite subjects.

Harry
...welcoming newcomers, online...

 

[Rudy]

...and I, the head "putz" around here, welcome you as well.

I've always maintained that Volume 2 almost comes off as a "novelty" album, hanging onto the "Old Tijuana"/mariachi theme for most of the album. Lonely Bull had a lot of different styles on it, like an "early Herb Alpert sampler", if you will. I've always enjoyed Volume 2 regardless, and I don't think I play it any less than the others.

 

[thetijuanataxi]

It seems to me that VOLUME 2 is a "sequel" to LONELY BULL. And like many sequels, V2 is more festive, arramgements are fuller and a bit more robust, there is a "party" feeling throughout the album and it sounds like the band is bigger than on LB. It rockets into motion with "The Great Manolete" which I think is probably Herb's salute to Rafael Mendez as "Hello Dolly" is to Louis Armstrong. The crowd noises don't really bother me. In the context of the LP, they seem appropriate. I think the album was meant to see if Herb's audience wanted the music to turn more south or go a little north of the border in flavor. The arrangements on SOTB suggest that Herb decided that Americanizing the sound a bit would incease the group's popularity. I really love this album. Especially "The Green Leaves Of Summer" (which I forgot to mention in the thread where we were discussing our favorite slow TJB songs). I don't love it as much as GOING PLACES or some of the others, but it is anything but a weak album. Sure Julius dosen't have much prescence on this record, but I think it still rocks. BTW, there was a white label pressing of this LP, so that means A&M sold every ochre label copy they made(millions).So for a marginal success, it didn't do too bad.

David,
about to play "The Green Leaves Of Summer"

 

[Harry]

BTW, there was a white label pressing of this LP, so that means A&M sold every ochre label copy they made(millions).So for a marginal success, it didn't do too bad.

A white labeled LP is only an indication that it is a promotional copy -- and actually those are usually pressed first. It's not any kind of clue as to how many ochre copies sold. The white label promos were sent to radio stations to get them to play the album on the air -- that's why they're called promotional. There are some albums that were so 'unpopular' in release that all that seem to exist out there are white-label promos, which radio stations were happy to get rid of.

There were actually two different releases of Volume 2 to the public, and they're easy to tell apart by the back cover. The first one, after Lonely Bull, features huge printing covering the entire 12" back cover:

To the left of the word "brass", there's a picture of three mariachi-dressed trumpeters. It's hard to tell if Herb's one of them or not.

That version of the album simply didn't sell all that well, since none of the songs made much of an impression on the charts. In fact the only charting song from Volume Two was "Marching Through Madrid", topping out at #96 on the Billboard® Hot 100 chart on the day before Herb's birthday, March 30th, 1963. A year and a half later, "The Mexican Shuffle" bested it by going to #85, but it had a lot of buzz about it with the whole "Teaberry Shuffle" campaign on TV. Millions more than just the record-buying public heard "The Mexican Shuffle". Then with the astounding success of "A Taste Of Honey", A&M decided to re-release the Volume 2 album. This one sported the more familiar dark grey back cover:

The whole Volume 2 thing was such an unclear experience, that Herb and Jerry must not have yet known in which direction the 'Tijuana Brass' was headed. A year after "Marching Through Madrid" charted, the single "Mexican Drummer Man" was also finding its way up the charts. This odd Phil Spector, Wall-Of-Sound-sounding single was very different from the direction of either Lonely Bull or Volume 2. It featured a girl-chorus (The Blossoms), singing lyrics *about* 'Herbie' and the 'Tijuana Brass'. Ironically, this song actually bested both "Marching Through Madrid" and "Mexican Shuffle" on the charts, though only slightly, peaking at #77. As I mentioned, it was the buzz about "Mexican Shuffle" and its use in commercials that propelled the TJB sound in that direction. Otherwise, we might all be sitting around today, talking about the various vocalists with that 'Tijuana Brass' group over the years!

I understand the reaction to come to the defense of Volume 2, but really, no-one is trashing it or downplaying its significance in the Alpert canon. It's simply that many of us don't play it all that often. For the record, though -- I played it this week -- and enjoyed everty minute of it!

One more trivia tidbit about Volume 2 as pointed out by our own Mr. Bill: one of the black printing plates used on the CD cover is backwards, resulting in the dome-spired building on the left getting a ghostly reappearance on the right!

Harry
NP: Volume 2, Herb Alpert's Tijuana Brass

 

[Rudy]

...thinking a line about cake and icing will get Shirley into the thread, online...

Or Dan!

 

[Rudy]

To the left of the word "brass", there's a picture of three mariachi-dressed trumpeters. It's hard to tell if Herb's one of them or not.

I'm going to bet that's just a stock photo of three generic Mariachi trumpet players.

Also, I'm unsure of the timing, but Phil Spector's engineer Larry Levine brought that Wall of Sound to A&M with "Mexican Drummer Man" and the South Of The Border album. I don't know if this included the "Mexican Shuffle" single, though, since that has always appeared in mono (even on LP) and doesn't quite have the same sound to it.

 

[DAN BOLTON]

...thinking a line about cake and icing will get Shirley into the thread, online...

Or Dan!

Sorry, guys[and gals...] my S.O. took the ##!*** cake....



Dan

 

[thetijuanataxi]

Harry,
By "white label" I was referring to the "70s label with the big A&M logo on it, not the promo discs made for DJs. My reasoning was that the album was successful enough for A&M to sell all the ochre label pressings by the early "70's as compared to let's say "Warm" or "S.R.O", which never made it to the '70s label. As for the picture on V2, that is most definitely Herb in the center. Who the other two are is anybody's guess. Probably musicians he hired for that 1963 Crescendo date. Perhaps one of these guys is the trumpeter from the Hollywood Palace show that Tonni Kalash wasn't in.

David,
Enjoying "The Green Leaves Of Summer" though it will only be in the 40s tomorrow..........

 

[david]

It was a big adjustment for me to hear Herbs "Change" of tone, style, whatever you want to call it, after the breakup of TJB. I will be honest in that as much as I admire Herb Alpert, a lot of his post TJB music didn't insprie me. "Warm" put me to sleep. "Midnight Sun" was in my opinion dark, depressing (although "Someone to watch over me" is performed beautifully on the trumpet. I have never cared for Herbs vocals, he plays trumpet better than he sings).
I may be way out of line here but during Herb's "Bullish" tour he and his wife were being interviewed on a bay area televison station. I noticed that at times when Herb was asked a question he mometarily drifted away from the converstaion, as if he was bored, or his thougts were elsewhere. More than once his wife answered for him to avoid the noticeable pause. I believe the question had to do with other performers he had discovered and Peter Frampton was the topic. Herb could not remember the name of the movie (Sgt. Pepper) that essentially was the end of Peters muscial career.
I realize that perhaps Herb was concentrating on his upcoming "Bullish" tour, or who knows what was on his mind but he just seemed not to be quite present in the "here and now," withdrawn is the best description I can think of.

 

[DAN BOLTON]

It was a big adjustment for me to hear Herbs "Change" of tone, style, whatever you want to call it, after the breakup of TJB. I will be honest in that as much as I admire Herb Alpert, a lot of his post TJB music didn't insprie me. "Warm" put me to sleep. "Midnight Sun" was in my opinion dark, depressing (although "Someone to watch over me" is performed beautifully on the trumpet. I have never cared for Herbs vocals, he plays trumpet better than he sings).
I may be way out of line here but during Herb's "Bullish" tour he and his wife were being interviewed on a bay area televison station. I noticed that at times when Herb was asked a question he mometarily drifted away from the converstaion, as if he was bored, or his thougts were elsewhere. More than once his wife answered for him to avoid the noticeable pause. I believe the question had to do with other performers he had discovered and Peter Frampton was the topic. Herb could not remember the name of the movie (Sgt. Pepper) that essentially was the end of Peters muscial career.
I realize that perhaps Herb was concentrating on his upcoming "Bullish" tour, or who knows what was on his mind but he just seemed not to be quite present in the "here and now," withdrawn is the best description I can think of.

He could have been having a bad day...nobody knows for sure, except him. Maybe he'd just been to the dentist...sometimes we have a tendency to be so wrapped up in what a famous person has to say that we get disappointed easily if we don't hear what we think we should. I remember expecting so much from each TJB album that there was no way that any of them could match my expectations, and I had to listen to each one a couple of times before I finally realized that the music really was good. I had built each album up so much in my mind that it really wasn't fair to the guys involved...I mean, they're only human...superhuman, for sure; but human nonetheless. That was my problem, though...I expected way too much. I was a kid, and didn't have a lot other than the TJB to look forward to, but it still wasn't really fair...it's easy to idolize someone and hang on every word, but sooner or later, they're gonna slip off that white horse...and who was it that put them up there in the first place?

I'm not saying that anybody other than me has been guilty of that...but sometimes it's easy to read something into the things that people say, especially if you're expecting something profound from them all the time.

I'm only speaking from personal experience.


Dan

PS I have a CD copy of VOLUME 2...so I listen to it a lot over most of the other TJB albums by default, but that isn't a bad thing...to me, WHAT NOW MY LOVE is the album I listen to the least...it seems like warme over GOING PLACES to me...but then, that album was such a smash, that it would be a very hard act to follow. My expectations again, I guess, because WNML is a good album...it just followed a masterpiece.

 

[Captain Bacardi]

I may be way out of line here but during Herb's "Bullish" tour he and his wife were being interviewed on a bay area televison station. I noticed that at times when Herb was asked a question he mometarily drifted away from the converstaion, as if he was bored, or his thougts were elsewhere.

To me it seems that just about every interview that I've seen Herb do he's having to answer the same questions over and over and over. Can you imagine how many times he's had to re-tell the "Lonely Bull" story or how "Taste Of Honey" came to be? Herb is pretty notorious about not looking back. I have one interview of him where he talks about why he didn't want to do the TJB anymore, and he mentions that people kept expecting him to do the TJB songs sideways. He got bored with it and wanted to do something else. Unfortunately, there's a lot of people who want to keep him pigeonholed in that style. He's a creative person and wants to keep moving forward. I don't blame him for being bored rehashing the old days.


Capt. Bacardi

 

[Mike Blakesley]

I was always surprised about the reissuing of VOLUME 2. (which is my least-played album, since I don't own it) Since the Brass changed its sound so much with SOUTH OF THE BORDER, and found success with the more American-ish sounds, I would think Herb would've liked to see LONELY BULL and VOLUME 2 slide off into obscurity while he made new music more in the "hitmaking" style.

But, I suppose they had a warehouse full of VOLUME 2 to get rid of....and amazingly, LONELY BULL was the last of the regular TJB albums to be deleted from CD release.

 

[Steven J. Gross]

Since this thread is back again I must mention that the WORST overall Herb Alpert project (IMHO) was the CD "Colors".