🎵 AotW Classics LONELY BULL Herb Alpert & TJB 101-S

Your favorite track:

  • The Lonely Bull

    Votes: 6 25.0%
  • El Lobo

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Tijuana Sauerkraut

    Votes: 3 12.5%
  • Desafinado

    Votes: 7 29.2%
  • Mexico

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Never On Sunday

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Struttin' With Maria

    Votes: 1 4.2%
  • Let It Be Me

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Acapulco 1922

    Votes: 4 16.7%
  • Limbo Rock

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Crawfish

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • A Quiet Tear

    Votes: 3 12.5%

  • Total voters
    24

Harry

Charter A&M Corner Member
Staff member
Site Admin
Herb Alpert & The Tijuana Brass
THE LONELY BULL

A&M 101-S, 101(mono)

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Tracks:

1. The Lonely Bull (El Solo Toro)
2. El Lobo (The Wolf)
3. Tijuana Sauerkraut
4. Desafinado
5. Mexico
6. Never On Sunday
7. Struttin' With Maria
8. Let It Be Me
9. Acapulco 1922
10. Limbo Rock
11. Crawfish
12. A Quiet Tear (Lágrima Quieta)

This is Tijuana Music - the noisy Mexican-American voices in the narrow streets, the confusion of color and motion - captured in the sound of the Tijuana Brass.

Tijuana is a spectacle, a garish border town....But it is also sometimes a strangely wistful, romantic place, and that quality is represented here by the often haunting trumpet of Herb Alpert.

"The Lonely Bull" started it all. Herb organized the Tijuana Brass to combine a persistant melody written by a friend with the inspiration of the Tijuana bull-ring. And now this album, and a chance to hear Tijuana in all its aspects, played by trumpeter-arranger-composer Herb Alpert, and the bright, bold, versatile Tijuana Brass. :Hernando Cortés


Releases include the LP, 101 and 101-S, A&M CD-3101, and Shout! Factory CD DK 32771.
 
This is another new feature here - hopefully one we can keep going simultaneously with our main chronological Album Of The Week.

Roughly each week, we'll go back and re-examine one of the early albums in the A&M canon. Our guess at this point is that we'll start at the beginning, and work our way through the first 100 albums or so - that should take around two years.

If successful, we'll repeat the process for newcomers, all the while continuing with our main Album Of The Week features. This joins with the other new feature, the Spotlight on Herb's solo albums.

Join in, re-listen, vote your favorite, and let the world know how you feel about these classic albums from A&M's earliest days.

Harry
 
A first for Herb and a first for his newfound record label...! "The Lonely Bull (El Solo Toro)" was a suprisingly big run-away hit and enough that it got my vote, easily...

"El Lobo (The Wolf)" is a good secondary try at making the same impact as "...Lonely Bull", while "Tijuana Sauerkraut" displays the novelty nature of the Alpert canon... Tracks like "Desafinado" is what a good South American-based Latin piece especially with "South Of The Border" is all about... "Mexico" and "Acapulco 1922" are also authentic-sounding, moving moments, while Herb established himself as modern song interpreter of the hour with the jovial and romantic "Let It Be Me", the fun and dancable "Limbo Rock" and the swaying and trumpet-braying "Never On Sunday"... And of course a couple more fun pieces are "Crawfish" and "Struttin' With Maria"--which are both some uplifting trumpet exercises and capture the same spirit... You can't also beat the sombre, melodic and promising closing number, which is also fortunately available as a single, " A Quiet Tear (Lágrima Quieta)" which sports a much quieter bravado, but not mainly restrained, as it seems as though the narrator although this being an instrumental promises a "return" as Tijuana Brass did with the subsequent ...Volume 2...

The beginning of another "return" of Alpert, along with Jerry Moss delivering more from this brand new A&M label...



Dave
 
Since we are back to the beginning, I thought that some of these details would be both enlightening and entertaining. As this is A&M's first album release almost 46 years ago, we really want to keep the memories alive and share some of the details that many perhaps never knew.

Musician credits:
The Lonely Bull / Acapulco 1922 - 10/29/62 - Herb Alpert - trumpet, Julius Wechter - marimba, Bud Coleman - guitar & mandolin, Dave Wells - trombone, Lew McCreary - trombone, Ray Pohlman - bass, Bill Pitman - guitar, Earl Palmer - drums & Ira Westley - tuba.

A Quiet Tear / El Lobo / Let It Be Me / Mexico - 10/31/62 - Herb Alpert - trumpet, Julius Wechter - marimba, Bud Coleman - guitar & mandolin, Earl Palmer - drums, Bill Pitman - guitar & Ray Polhman - bass.

Crawfish / Desafinado - 11/3/62 - Herb Alpert - trumpet, Julius Wechter - marimba, Laurindo Almeida - guitar, Roy Harte - drums, Harry Babasin - bass & H. L. Allison - drums.

A Quiet Tear / Never On Sunday / Struttin' With Maria / Tijuana Sauerkraut - 11/5/62 - Herb Alpert - trumpet, Julius Wechter - marimba, Bud Coleman - guitar & mandolin, Dave Wells - trombone, Laurindo Almeida - guitar, Lew McCreary - trombone, Earl Palmer - drums, Ray Pohlman - bass, Howard Roberts - sax & Ira Westley - tuba.

Lonely_Bull_Trade_Ad.jpg

Cash Box trade ad - November 24, 1962 - Page 39

101a.jpg

First pressing - side 1

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First pressing - side 2

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Little LP for stereo jukebox
 
Yes, thanks for the details! Although you have two separate dates listed for "A Quiet Tear". I'm guessing that one of those should be "Limbo Rock".



Capt. Bacardi
 
Yes, you're right, but that's what the research showed and I've not been able to get it resolved yet. And, considering all the years of speculation about who played on these sessions, we are farther along than we've ever been. :D

Steve
 
Since this is the first album and the beginning of the label, I thought it appropriate to repost this from an old post celebrating the 40th anniversary of A&M:

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

What better way to look back forty years than in the words of the principals who were there. Here's the story of the year 1962, taken from A&M Records - The First Ten Years - (A Fairy Tale) by Chuck Casell, a promotional book published on the 10 year anniversary of the label:

1962
EARLY DAYS OF A CARNIVAL


1962 began to make its mark.

John Glenn, after four hours and 56 minutes, became the first American to orbit the Earth; the Pittsburgh Pirates, the perennial cellar team, won the World Series; Chubby Checker started one of the biggest dance crazes this country has ever seen: The Twist; and Herb Alpert and Jerry Moss became good friends.

"When Jerry and I met," Herb recalls, he was handling eight or ten lines and he was the most important independent promotion man on the West coast.''

Jerry remembers the formative days. "Our relationship had gotten to the point where we used to hang out together at night, go to different piano bars on La Cienega or Sunset, and he'd sit in with the horn. It was just as evening. 'Let's sit in over there tonight.' And I would just sit and see what was happening at the bar: 'Yeah, that's my friend, he plays the horn.' I was really getting involved with Herbie's trumpet. He communicated beautifully with that horn.''

Around this same time, Jerry decided to produce a song called "Love Is Back In Style.'' It had an instrumental break and he thought it would he great if Herb played the trumpet on it. He did.

The record eventually cost Jerry $500 to produce. "I went over to Herbie's apartment after I mixed it, and played him the record. At the same time, he played me a record he produced for about $500, called 'Tell It To The Birds' by Dore Alpert." That was that, for a while.

Herb and Jerry used to go out to the beach a lot. Jerry remembers that it was either at the beach or in a steam bath, the conversation came up again as Jerry says, 'I forget which one of us brought it up, but it went something like, 'You've got $500 in your record and I've got $500 in my record. Why don't we make a little company out of it and see where it goes, see what happens.' And at the time I sort of needed that, and I guess he felt, 'Well, what the hell, it's Get-Rich-Quick-Idea #3425 and if that doesn't work in six months, let's go on to the next one.'

Jerry continues: 'So we put $100 each into a checking account and called the company Carnival Records. There was a show on Broadway at the time called 'Carnival,' and the advertising was in Music City, thus 'Carnival Records.'

"We then released the first record (July 25, 1962), called "'Tell It To The Birds," a vocal by Herbie, under the name of Dore Alpert.

The record started to take off a little bit in L.A. It eventually sold between 12-15,000 copies in L.A.

"Wink Martindale, at the time, was in the A&R Dept. at Dot Records and was very interested in purchasing 'Tell It To The Birds' as a master purchase. He offered us $750 for the record.

"By then, we were really starting to sell more records in L.A., so Herbie and I made a deal with Wink. He could have the record for the world with the exception of California. We'd distribute the record on Carnival in California." And they did.

"We now had $750 plus the receipts of around 12,000 records in L.A., which meant that we had about $3-4,000. Our company was getting into some capitalization."

With this first burst of progress, they released Jerry's record (the one with Herbie playing the horn break) and nothing happened. "Nice record, Jerry, but..."

But the momentum was still there. And they started fooling around in the studio with another song. It was an instrumental that Herb had gotten from a guy he used to play casuals with by the name of Sol Lake. The song was titled "Twinkle Star." During this time, Herb had converted his garage into a recording studio, sound room and began playing around with this song, playing all the parts on the horn and doubling the horn, getting the song to take shape.

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The following week, on a Sunday afternoon, Herb and Jerry went to a bullfight in Tijuana. They saw Carlos Arruza, one of the great rejoneodors, fighters on horseback. Herb remembers it clearly: "I was very intrigued by the whole feeling, the colors, the sounds and the spirit of Mexico. It was the first time I was exposed to any thing that resembled Mexican music. The band that was playing in the stands was not a Mariachi band, but it was definitely Mexican style." (The storm begins to brew.)

"So when we got back to Los Angeles, I started fooling with this song in more of a Latin mood, not trying to capture the sounds that I heard, but more of the colors and spirit of it all. It was very up, positive and bright, and had a lot of bravado to it. So I adapted that concept to this song and we recorded it. It came out well and had a nice feeling but seemed to be lacking something that would make it really appealing to somebody listening to it for the first time. We were very conscious of the first 10 or 20 seconds when a program director puts a record on.

"I remember walking down Sunset Boulevard with Jerry and getting a flash of an idea to incorporate the sounds of the crowd in Tijuana that we heard, the Ole! Ole! on top of the intro that we had, which was the entrance of the bull as he entered the ring, that horn.''

So this friend, Ted Keep, the engineer happened to have a tape library of sound effects in which he had sounds that were actually captured in the bullring in Tijuana. So we overlaid that on this track, which at the time was called 'Twinkle Star.' The minute we put it on it took a whole new direction. It was kind of a real visual feeling by listening. It was something that reallv added to the spirit of the song. It became 'The Lonely Bull.' I don't remember whose title that was, probably Jerry's. And when we played it for disk jockey friends and everybody we knew in the record business, they flipped over it! They loved the sound! They thought it was something special."

In August of '62, Herb and Jerry decided to release "The Lonely Bull" single. But by this time it was discovered that there was prior usage of the name "Carnival," so they now had to find another name for their new company.

After going through a series of meaningless names, they finally arrived at a miraculous solution: they just took an "A" and an "M" and called it "A&M Records." Geniuses!

Also, by this time, "The Lonely Bull" had been held up awaiting a label. But the label came through. It read: "The Tijuana Brass featuring Herb Alpert." Incidentally, Jerry came up with "The Tijuana Brass." (Not bad for his first week or two on the job.)

"The Lonely Bull" immediately started happening in Los Angeles, San Francisco and all up and down the West coast.

At that point, Jerry was still handling his independent lines while working on "The Lonely Bull," the first single on A&M.

A&M Records was in Herb's garage in the back of his house on Westbourne. Jerry remembers: We had a desk, piano, piano stool, a couch, coffee table and two phone lines. And from that the two of us worked out very well, because we could go over the songs on the piano, and make phone calls to the distributors. We also had an answering service at the time. I'd do all my own billing.

"At this time we had only singles to worry about so it was no big thing. As the records started coming out, Herbie would take care of the parts. He'd take the tape out of the studio, make a master out of it, deliver the master, and pick up every record. Every record, we went to Monarch, listened to it and made sure it was fine."

Marv Bornstein, who was then in Quality Control at Monarch, remembers when Herb came in during the days of "The Lonely Bull": "Not too long after the single, they decided to make an album and we used to press all our mono albums in a plastic called styrene. It made kind of a nice record, except that if you didn't have a real good needle, it was good for like two plays. Well, we had some very big labels that accepted it that way." Not Herb. "We ended up pressing "The Lonely Bull" mono albums on vinyl, which until that time was only used for stereo."

Jerry remembers when "The Lonely Bull" single started to happen: "I mean it really started to take off. And by this time I felt, this is really a record, and I think I better tell my other accounts that I can't work for them anymore, I'm quitting, my whole stake is with A&M at this stage of the game."

To Herb, it's unforgettable: "I don't think we had any intentions of starting our own label, it's just that this record was flying, we didn't have time to think about that. And fortunately enough, we had a good friend, Nate Duroff, at Monarch, who was pressing the records for us because we didn't have any money to do that. The record was selling by the thousands! San Francisco would order 10,000, Minneapolis 20,000; they were just flying in like that. I remember Jerry kept asking me, 'Well, what should I do? Should I quit my gig?' And I said, 'I don't know, this thing could stop instantly.' So it really got to the point where it was more than he could handle part time, so I said, 'Stop, let's take a chance and go with it.' So Jerry quit his independent promotion work and devoted full time to the record.

Jerry reminisces: "So there we were, 'A&M Records.' From that August (1962) through that January (1963) we were in the garage. We used to spend all the time in that place. The phones and the ordering and the windows, everything, was just hysterical. Great, great times."

"The Lonely Bull" eventually sold about 700,000 copies and went to #6 nationally, four months after its release.

With the success of "The Lonely Bull," Herb and Jerry' started producing some new artists they had found. Herb remembers: "We recorded a guy named George McCurn and had a moderate success with a tune called “I’m Just A Country Boy.” And then a group called the Kenjolairs. (Three guys named Kenny, Joe, and Larry.) We just kept going. We really didn’t have time to relax and think about what was happening, it was just happening.”

Then, in December of ’62, A&M released its first album, also titled “The Lonely Bull.” Jerry recalls, “Nobody covered the single, but on the album they really came down very hard. In all, there were about 8 or 9 cover versions.”

They both realized then that they had to move out of the garage and also, they needed someone to help them. Jerry reflects: "For me to do the billing was now getting ridiculous. Every night I spent poring over the credits." Except for one night: "I was at The La Brea Inn, and happened to say that we were going to need a girl pretty soon. Jolene Burton was there and overheard this. Jolene was one of the top girls at Liberty at the time, and I knew her because I used to go over there. This was 1962 and she was making $150 a week, which was big dollars. She'd been in the record business 5 years already.

"So she called me the next day and said, 'I heard you mention that you were looking for a girl. I'd like to be the girl!

I said, 'Well, I don't think we can afford you.'

She said, ‘You really don't know that.'

I said, 'Well, we can afford to pay $100 a week.'

She said, ‘I'll take it. Because when I started with Liberty Records they didn't start much bigger than this, and I could use the excitement. Besides, I think you guys are going to be around for a long time, and I'll save you money. I know how to order records, merchandise, paper, how to bill, I know all those things. I'm a bookkeeper, secretary.’

I just said, ‘Terrific.’”

©1972 A&M Records, Inc.

I was fortunate enough to find this book, and wanted to share a portion of it here with those who've never had the opportunity to see it.

Harry
 
Lonely Bull is a good album. I like it, as I do all of the sixties TJB albums. I think the early albums contain some very interesting sounds, good songs, and unique arrangements. I still find myself going back to these albums and listening to them as I did 40 years ago, with the same amount of interest and enjoyment.

It marks the beginning of an era - a new sound, style, and concept that established the beginning of what was to become one of the major musical artists of the 1960s. The title song became the radio hit and launched Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass as a household word in musical entertainment in the sixties.

All the songs here are good songs on their own merit, with, IMO, the title track, Let It Be Me, A Quiet Tear, and Acapulco 1922 being the top of an important landmark album.

Musically and sonically, the album may seem a bit primitive when viewed from hindsight and seeing what was to come over the remainder of the decade. As such, it is even more important as the album which launched the artist - although, IMO, it wasn't until the South of the Border album that the sound really got up and running.

What I find interesting and enjoyable is to play this album, and then play something like Beat of the Brass. Quite a musical journey over a period of about six years.
 
The first time I listened to this entire album was when I bought the Shout! Factory re-release a few years ago. (Dad didn't have the original LP). I like the entire thing. People will probably think I'm crazy, but a some of the tracks, such as "Limbo Rock" and "Acapulco 1922" sound like Twenties-era recordings rather than Ameriachi (which I'm not saying is a bad thing. :D ) The others songs have that Mexican feel. If I had to choose favorites, they'd be "The Lonely Bull", "El Lobo", "Desafinado", "Tijuana Sauerkraut" and "Never On Sunday".
 
I didn't grab or hear this album until later in the '60s. When the big explosion of hits from WHIPPED CREAM and GOING PLACES hit, I was hooked on the TjB, and went back to find the earlier albums.

Apparently I wasn't alone, as sales figures for albums like VOLUME 2 get boosted ith the sales of the later albums.

My first copy of THE LONELY BULL was the mono version, which I still find definitive. Later on I got the stereo version, thinking that the somewhat gimmicky stereo mix of the song "The Lonely Bull" (on GREATEST HITS) was kind of interesting. Some of the songs are OK in stereo, but largely the album has a better feel for me in mono.

I naturally grabbed the A&M CD when the group of the first six + BOTB came out in the '80s, and of course have the Shout! Factory release as well. I wish Herb had included those mono tracks too.

Harry
 
This was the last Tijuana Brass album I heard -- I got onto the bandwagon with GOING PLACES -- and it's my least favorite of the albulms, probably because the definitive "sound" that I became a fan of wasn't quite there yet on this album. That said, the closing song "A Quiet Tear" is one of my favorites and I've gotten to where I really like the title tune as well.

There used to be a grocery store across the street from where I work, and they had a small record department (as just about every grocery store did then, I guess). I would go over there now and then and keep looking at the LONELY BULL album. I could tell that it wasn't the same band as pictured on the back of the GOING PLACES album and the later ones, and the song titles didn't seem as "hip" as the later albums, so I kept passing it by. I'm not sure when I first heard it, but I finally caved in at some point.

Ultimately my favorite part of owning this album is reading the liner notes in the Shout Factory re-issue. But there are a couple of great moments in the music, as well.
 
We've mentioned before that this album was put together rather hurriedly, and it shows a little in a few places, like DESIFINADO; which had a loose, almost ad-lib kind of feel(but it's a darn GOOD ad-lib...). Overall, though, it's an almost Herculean effort. Herb Alpert was definitely a very busy guy in 1962-63...his vocal recordings, which are far better than their sales figures reflect; the two TJB albums; the other fledgling A&M releases he oversaw( George McCurn and the BMB's first album come to mind...).

There's something exotic about this album, maybe it's the flavor...this album has a lot more of a Mexican/Mariachi flavor to it than most of the later TJB albums...VOLUME 2 was more L.A./Street in its' overall tone, and SOUTH OF THE BORDER embraced more of a Latin sound than a mariachi emphasis.

There wasn't anything else on the charts quite like this album, and it came just after Telstar made the world a lot smaller and the Cuban Missile Crisis was just ending, giving the world a sigh of relief. The world was ripe for this album, I think...


Dan
 
I believe this album was the fourth TJB LP I bought, although one of my aunts had it and I listened to it anytime we visited her. This is a no-frills kind of album, very sparse arrangements. Aside from the title track I usually enjoy "A Quiet Tear" with its mournful feel to it, and there seemed to be more effort arrangement-wise with the added background vocals. I always thought this song was great to listen to with headphones. I also enjoy Herb's solo on "Crawfish" (and let's not forget that the mono LP has a completely different solo on it!) and the interplay between Herb and Julius Wechter on "Desafinado". On the negative side, this album also has what I consider one of the worst songs with "Tijuana Sauerkraut", which I think is just a really stupid song, but that's just my opinion. It's not a masterpiece album, but a very important one.


Capt. Bacardi
 
For some tracks, the mono version of this album is the best. "Acapulco 1922" sounds much better in mono (as it doesn't have the added wood block percussion), as do the title track and "Never On Sunday", not to mention the different solo on "Crawfish" that the Captain mentions above. These are plentiful enough that you can still find them in used bins. I never did care for "A Quiet Tear" when I was younger, since the LP was all distorted at the end. Hearing it on a clean copy, and on CD, made it sound so much better that it grew on me.
 
On this album, there were no less than six of the tracks that were in the running in my mind for best track on the album: "The Lonely Bull", "El Lobo", "Tijuana Sauerkraut", "Struttin' With Maria", and "A Quiet Tear". The four I like the least are "Desfinado", "Mexico", "Let it Be Me", or "Crawfish" (actually I find "Crawfish's sliding trumpet almost annoying), and, while I like "Never On Sunday" and "Limbo Rock", I don't like them as much as the other six I named.

But those six are all such high quality that they were hard to choose between. With every artist I've ever taken the time to delve deeply into the work of, I've almost always come away enjoying some random album cut more than the supposed "hits", and that trend has continued with the TJB. Kind of makes me wonder what I'd think of Volume 2 since I absolutely adore "Marching Through Madrid" (laugh all you want). Anyway, back on topic, I finally decided to vote for Tijuana Sauerkraut because, of the six that I really like on this album, it is the most creative.
 
I voted "Acapulco", but only if it's the original mono version. "Desafinado" is the runner-up here, along with "Crawfish". I like most of the rest, but these three do it for me.
 
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