🎵 AotW Classics Greatest Hits Vol. 2 - Herb Alpert & The T.J.B. (SP-4627)

Harry

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Greatest Hits Volume 2
Herb Alpert & The T.J.B.
SP-4627 (LP); CD-3269 (CD)

51WXMTC10DL._SX300_.jpg


Track Listing:

1. What Now My Love (Becaud/Sigman) 2:16
2. The Work Song (Nat Adderley) 2:09
3. Brasilia (Julius Wechter) 2:28
4. Jerusalem (Herb Alpert) 2:33
5. So What's New (John Pisano) 2:09
6. Last Tango In Paris (Gato Barbieri) 2:46
7. My Favorite Things (Rodgers/Hammersein) 3:00
8. This Guy's In Love With You (Bacharach/David) 3:58
9. A Banda (Chico Buarque De Hollanda) 2:10
10. Flamingo (Grouya/Anderson) 2:25
11. Cabaret (Kander/Ebb) 2:39
12. Zazueira (Jorge Ben) 3:13
13. Bittersweet Samba (Sol Lake) 1:43
14. Wade In The Water (Alpert/Edmondson/Pisano) 3:04

PRODUCED BY HERB ALPERT AND JERRY MOSS

Putting together this album brought back many beautiful
memories to me. Each tune was chosen because the melody
moved me for unanswerable reasons.
I hope you enjoy my selections.

Warm wishes,
Herb Alpert

Recorded at A&M Studios and Gold Star Studios,
Hollywood, California
Cover design: Chuck Beeson. Illustrator: Chuck Ren

The CD was bundled together for a time with GREATEST HITS and sold as the HERB ALPERT FAN BOX SET. It was also reissued in the PolyGram era with a number of 75021 3269 2 with a very plain-looking back insert.
 
For some reason, we seem to have never given this album a proper Album Of The Week thread. There was a thread comparing this to SOLID BRASS but never on on its own.

I remember stopping on my way home from work one evening at a Philly-area Clover store. They were a budget division of Strawbridge & Clothier, a major department store in town, and they always had a pretty decent record department. When GREATEST HITS first came out, I remember looking at the track list and figuring that there had to be a volume two somewhere down the line and was surprised when SOLID BRASS showed up to become the de facto second volume. And I was even more surprised later in the '70s when this one showed up.
Harry
 
When this was first released it was only available on cassette and 8-track. The LP format came out a couple of years later. The exception was with the Columbia Music Club who did have it on LP. I never understood why they did it that way.

Capt. Bacardi
 
I always thought this album got a raw deal in its packaging compared to the first Greatest Hits album. But...I think they probably knew the Brass was winding down and didn't want to spend a lot of cash packaging this. I also didn't like that they didn't spell out "Tijuana Brass" on the cover.

The song selections are great though.
 
GREATEST HITS 2 was the second instance, for me, that something odd was up with the WHAT NOW MY LOVE tracks. SOLID BRASS had the dry versions of "What Now My Love" and "So What's New", and this one had those same tracks and "Brasilia" that sounded different from my LP.

And in the CD era, it's still, to this day, the only place to find an uncompressed "Zazueira" from WARM. Hopefully that will be rectified if and when the herbalpertpresents.com site ever starts offing uncompressed files.

Harry
 
I always thought this album got a raw deal in its packaging compared to the first Greatest Hits album. But...I think they probably knew the Brass was winding down and didn't want to spend a lot of cash packaging this.

The TJB was more than winding down - they were kaput by the time this was released (1977). The revamped T.J.B. ended in the fall of '75. It may have been a better idea to release this at that time.



Capt. Bacardi
 
Right - I mis-spoke there...I meant "winding down" in the sense that the public was seriously moving on to other things by that time so they probably figured this wouldn't be a big sell.

I can see why they used "T.J.B." though considering Herb's previous two albums used that name.
 
Still it was nice for us Tijuana Brass fans to be able to add something "new" to the collection in the midst of disco fever. It was better when it became a CD a decade later. Mine has a date of 10/87 around the hub.

My memory tells me that in the CD age, we got a bunch of hits compilations first - GH1, FOURSIDER, SOLID BRASS, GH2. The it seems to me the CHRISTMAS ALBUM came next and then the big dump of the first six albums plus BEAT OF THE BRASS all in 9/88.

I'd also managed to find WHIPPED CREAM and SRO as Japanese imports somewhere after CHRISTMAS ALBUM.

Harry
 
This was somewhat of a 'strange' release, as it was released on vinyl in Canada and to record clubs originally and then later as a regular U.S. release. I was quite surprised to find my vinyl copy early on while travelling in Quebec in '77.

Upon checking my collection, I found a second vinyl copy that has a white sticker on the spine covering the SP-4627 and indicating SP-3269 - now 'Mid-line' priced.
 
The "Greatest Hits, Vol. 2" album went to # 206 (Billboard's Bubbling Under The Top 200 Album Charts) for only 1 week back on August 16, 1980. Did NOT chart when it was released in 1977. Matt Clark Sanford, MI
 
When travelling "Interrail" through Europe as a 19-year old in 1978, I was delighted to find the Herb Alpert & Hugh Masekela LP in a record shop in Copenhagen. It was never released in Norway. Later on the trip, in Cannes, France I stumbled over GH vol 2. It was never released in Norway either.

- greetings from the warm and sunny north -
Martin
 
The "Greatest Hits, Vol. 2" album went to # 206 (Billboard's Bubbling Under The Top 200 Album Charts) for only 1 week back on August 16, 1980.


That was probably the effect of "Rise" being so popular that year, making whatever Herb Alpert titles were in the racks more popular.

Harry
 
Yep, bought this one as a record club copy, with sound that was surprisingly good and there was plenty of music, too. Granted, such an album should have been offered back in 1971, perhaps, but welcome even belatedly.

:ed:
 
Back around the year 2000, I was in a record store and rifling through the Herb Alpert CD section, I spotted a typical GREATEST HITS VOLUME II along with others, but when I flipped the GH2 jewel case over, the back looked odd to me. Everything was printed in a rather plain-looking font, not the bold, shadowed font of the original.

I bought it, hoping to find maybe a rare mix or remastering, or anything different, but the sonics were identical. Here's a quick picture of the two GH2 rear CD covers:

GHv2RearComparison.jpg

Even odder is the fact that they dragged out an AM+ logo on that latter-day rear cover.

Harry
 
Was the 2000 find used, or new? The back cover of the odd one almost reminds me of the earliest CD releases--notice how the track numbers are boxed in? That is how some early A&M CDs listed track numbers on the disc.

So I lucked out here--I have about half of my collection still in storage, including compilations, but I kept one or two out if they had a unique-to-CD track: I had GH Vol 2 on the rack. Turns out I have that same AM+ back cover. I remember buying it locally, new, and I think the disc may have been out for a year or so before I picked it up. It likely could have been 80s vintage for all I know, although I can't place if it came out before or after the TJB albums were put on CD around 1988 or so. Although looking at this disc, it shows a 1988 date also. Could be the nicer rear cover was a reissue. (It certainly looks better!)

This is the disc, with the fonts closely matching the back cover:

2013-08-10 11.25.24.jpg
 
My "earlier" disc has nicer fonts on the disc, complete with the boxed track numbers, and composer/publisher info below each track. The hub has a date of 10/87 on it. It's also got the older A&M CD catalog number of CD 3269.

The "newer" disc, that looks like yours, has no date around the hub, just the machine-printed numbers of 750 213 269-2 03! (and an "E" after it all). There's also and IFPI number of L005.

GHv2Disc.jpg

Harry
 
It also just occurred to me that maybe the "newer", junkier font was a re-print for that HERB ALPERT FAN BOX SET that was just a ganging together of GH1 and GH2 inside some shrink wrap. The timing would be about right for the late '90s.

Harry
 
I am pretty sure I bought mine before that box set ever came out (or before I saw it--they weren't on the shelves here for more than a year or so), and I have the "lousy" back cover. That was so long ago...

Interesting that both of our discs are dated 1988. The matrix code on mine is almost the same as yours, except it ends in "02" rather than "03".
 
The "Greatest Hits, Vol. 2" album went to # 206 (Billboard's Bubbling Under The Top 200 Album Charts) for only 1 week back on August 16, 1980. Did NOT chart when it was released in 1977. Matt Clark Sanford, MI
That explains why ( along with the fact that the vinyl version wasnt issued in the stores at first.) When i first got my copy of GH VOL 2. ON Vinyl it seemed like a very fresh brand new release to me even though i saw it in the stores on cassette and 8 track a couple years earlier. However im glad i held out for the vinyl release.( and later the cd release.
 
Incidentally all music guide and others INCORRECTLY list the release date as 1973. ( no doubt because of the seperate copyright year listed for "Last tango in paris".) Nevertheless the actual and true release date was 1977.
 
A latter-day update, it appears that Discogs lists the "poor font" AM+ back cover as the earlier disc, while the "nice font" back cover version gets listed as later.

I still think that the "nice font" one came first. Looking at the foldover booklet, the "nice font" version has the track list inside, and has the fact that CHRISTMAS ALBUM is no longer available, while listing a number of tracks as hailing from SOLID BRASS, and it has the liner notes printed there. Meanwhile, the "poor-font" AM+ version has nothing printed inside, just blank white.
 
The AM+ makes sense as being the earlier disc since that was a marketing logo for the CDs back in the early days. The later release drops it. Also interesting that the AM+ logo never appeared on the disc...just the insert.
 
The AM+ makes sense as being the earlier disc since that was a marketing logo for the CDs back in the early days. The later release drops it. Also interesting that the AM+ logo never appeared on the disc...just the insert.
True. And if that were the only clue, I'd agree that the AM+ was from an earlier time. But, there are some other clues here:

- The time in which I bought the disc. - I owned the "nice font" version a long time - like a decade - before I found the "ugly one".
- The "nice font" disc and package all state that the catalog number is CD 3269, everywhere, disc, spine, booklet. That's a purely A&M catalog number.
- The "nice font" disc itself has a "10/87" in the center hub ring. That just HAS to be the date of manufacture.
- The "ugly font" version, while it has CD 3269 on the booklet and spine, has 75021 3269 2 on the face of the disc. That's a PolyGram number as far as I know. And Polygram took over sometime around or after 1989, right?

Ah well, whatever. I'm just happy to own the CD in either or both forms. If nothing else, it represents the best mastering of the track "Zazueira" in digital lossless form.
 
I may have bought mine in the late 80s, as I think back on it. But I can't remember if I bought it before the TJB albums came out, which was (I think) 1988 or 1989, as I remember those hitting the stores and I bought a few of them at the time.
 
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