🔊 Audio Herb Alpert & The Tijuana Brass with Johnny Mathis & Bill Dana (Hollywood Bowl, 9-11-65)

Michael Hagerty

Well-Known Member
Contributor
There's a terrific site called Past Daily---an audio site filled with all sorts of fascinating things. One of the latest postings is a complete recording of Herb Alpert & The Tijuana Brass, Johnny Mathis and Bill Dana at the Hollywood Bowl on September 11, 1965.

It was part of a once-yearly series dating back to 1959 called "Stereo at the Bowl", featuring various artists and sponsored (at least by 1965) by the House of Sight and Sound...and emceed by KMPC, Los Angeles personalities Johnny Grant, Johnny Magnus and Roger Carroll.

According to Past Daily's Gordon Skene, the tape was a reference tape made by the Hollywood Bowl. It had been ordered destroyed in 1968. Thankfully, someone ignored that order and it found its way into Gordon's hands:

Johnny Mathis – Herb Alpert & The Tijuana Brass – Hollywood Bowl –...
 
You just made my year. I went back to 1965 and re-imagined The Brass. Wonderful hearing the band shouts in the background. Very much like the time I heard the TJB at the Arie Crown Theater in Chicago around this same time. You can go home again, if only for a little while.
 
For those who might want to cut right to the TJB part, I'll mention that it starts about 28 minutes in. It lasts until about 1 hour and 20 minutes in.
 
For those who might want to cut right to the TJB part, I'll mention that it starts about 28 minutes in. It lasts until about 1 hour and 20 minutes in.

I was surprised by the format of the concert---Johnny Mathis does a 20 minute set, Bill Dana (along with KMPC's Johnny Magnus) does 8 or so, the TJB does 50 minutes and then Mathis comes back for an hour. So Johnny Mathis is the opening act AND the headliner.
 
Wonderful...great post!

When the band was introduced, I am sure I heard that Herb introduced Art Bushagen (sp?) on trumpet and Tonni Kalash on the "other" trumpet. So there were actually three trumpets for a short time in concert?

If so, that is certainly news to me after all these years.

I have seen a couple video clips where it looks like another trumpet player than Tonnii Kalash is playing, but I thought that Tonni Kalash was always the only other trumpet player in concert. I thought someone else may have been a "stand in" temporarily for some reason. All the albums covers, TV specials, and the live performances I have seen were only Herb and Tonni on trumpets.

Bob Edmondson does some great trombone playing, as usual.

By 1968 and 1969, additional albums had been released and the concert set list included songs from those albums. There were so many popular songs by that time that Herb organized some of the songs into medleys of hits.

I also seem to remember that the Americhi/Mexican influence had begun to taper off in favor of the more instrumental pop sound of the later albums from SRO on to Beat of the Brass.
 
Songs performed by Herb Alpert & The Tijuana Brass:

The Lonely Bull
All My Loving
Hello Dolly
Winds Of Barcelona
Mae
The Girl From Ipanema
Bittersweet Samba
Never On Sunday
Tijuana Taxi
I've Grown Accustomed To Her Face
Struttin' With Maria
Acapulco 1922
Mexican Shuffle
A Taste Of Honey
Third Man Theme
Up Cherry Street
Whipped Cream
South Of The Border

This should satisfy all of the many fans over the years here who have expressed a desire for a Tijuana Brass live concert recording. This one's from the soundboard, sounds really good, has audience noise at a minumum, and features all of the in-between banter and antics.

Makes a great live CD!
 
Use an audio-capture program like Audacity and play the whole program through while recording. It's best to use a flat setting on your playback so as not to pre-color the sound.

Then either save the whole thing as one big file, or split it up into songs, and write it all out to a CD.
 
Use an audio-capture program like Audacity and play the whole program through while recording. It's best to use a flat setting on your playback so as not to pre-color the sound.
I have Audacity. How do I use this "flat setting"?
 
I have never used Audacity before, so it is somewhat daunting. I downloaded it, and it will take some study about how to get the program recorded.
 
Well, I can understand that. It took me a long time to get proficient in using Audacity, but constant trials and failures allows for learning. Google searches will usually help, but even then sometimes the language is written on levels beyond me. Experimentation is the key.
 
Just make sure that any audio equalization on your computer is set to a neutral setting - no enhanced bass or treble - when you record the audio.
 
There is a way to do a "loopback" (I think in Audacity?) where it will take the digital right off of the sound card, before any processing. (At least on my sound card, there is no processing anyway.) I am not at home to find out though--it'll have to wait a few days.
 
Wow, thanks for this post. I have so many live performances by so many of my other favorite artists... it's kind of amazing there has been next to nothing out there for the TJB fan.

I also thought it was humorous to hear Herb getting the "friendship award" or whatever it was from the Mexican government. Today if a bunch of Italian and Jewish guys played mock-Mariachi music and shouted "Ole" for an hour on stage, they'd probably be called racists instead.

Interesting to hear Julius Wetcher playing with the group live. This concert would make sense travel-wise as it's an LA gig and it would be easy for him to attend, but did he tour with the group often?

I wonder if Herb Alpert has heard this tape... he should!
 
I also thought it was humorous to hear Herb getting the "friendship award" or whatever it was from the Mexican government. Today if a bunch of Italian and Jewish guys played mock-Mariachi music and shouted "Ole" for an hour on stage, they'd probably be called racists instead.

To say nothing of what would happen to Bill Dana (Jose' Jimenez).
 
The seven piece group we know as Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass, as pictured on the Going Places through Beat of the Brass albums, and as seen on the TV specials, was the touring group during the 1960s. That was the group that I saw in concert in 1968 and 1969. Julius Wechter did not play in concerts during that time.

That seven piece group contained two trumpets (Herb and Tonni Kalash), trombone (Bob Edmondson), drums (Nick Ceroli), bass guitar (Pat Senatore), 12 string guitar (John Pisano), and piano (Lou Pagani).

I am still unclear on what appears to be the very early role of Art Bushagen(sp?) on trumpet.

Julius Wechter did, as mentioned above, play in the concerts with the "reorganized" TJB in the 1974-1975 time period. I saw that group perform two times. There were different members playing in that group than in the original group from the 1960s. In fact, I think the only original member other than Herb Alpert was Bob Edmondson.

Julius Wechter was also the leader of the Baja Marimba Band, which had its own touring schedule. I saw that group perform in May, 1969.
 
I had to chime in and also say how much I appreciate this! Really enjoyed hearing the concert from so long ago, and wonderful to hear how they actually sounded on stage and not in the recording studio. I really loved the energy of it all and their little changes from the original recordings we are all so familar with. Thank you.
 
From Rodney Davis - connections:

JOHNNY HAMLINa.jpg
Art Mooshagian (2nd from left) pictured above.

hamlin_quintet_199221656_std.jpg
Look who is on drums?
 
I was looking at a few 1974 clips of the reformed TJB. It's neat to see Julius doing his thing. But then I came across this clip of the Andy Williams show. Evidently this was discussed on this board years ago... I believe this is video of Art Mooshagian performing with Herb.

 
I have never used Audacity before, so it is somewhat daunting. I downloaded it, and it will take some study about how to get the program recorded.
Not really...there's an mp3 link on the site that you can download, so no recording necessary...and it's probably no worse quality than the streaming audio: https://pastdaily.com/wp-content/up...ijuana-Brass-Sept.-11-1965-Hollywood-Bowl.mp3

Most audio programs will allow you to convert from .mp3 to .wav (I use Foobar2000: foobar2000 ), then after loading the .wav into Audacity, you can crop the HA&TJB portion. Save this new .wav and burn it to a CD-R.
 
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