THE ESSENTIAL HERB ALPERT - U.K.

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Steve Sidoruk

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Without having much detail, this appears to be a U.K. upcoming release. It would hit just days before the Herb Alpert Documentary, which will be broadcast on BBC4 on September 17th.


The Essential Herb Alpert, a two-disc set featuring ‘Anything Goes
will be released on September 13th 2010

August 11, 2010, 07:37 PM

For more than fifty years, Herb Alpert has come to mean many things to many people. To generations of music fans, Alpert is the dark-haired, trumpet-playing songmaker whose name instantly brings to mind memorable songs like The Lonely Bull, A Taste of Honey, This Guy’s in Love with You and Rise. These are but a few of the tunes Alpert recorded either as leader of the legendary Tijuana Brass or as an artist in his own right, yielding five #1 popular hits, 8 Grammy awards, 14 Platinum and 15 gold albums – plus a staggering 72 million albums sold worldwide.

To a global circle of musicians, Alpert’s name implies an immediately recognizable group sound as well as a distinctly relaxed, economically-spoken instrumental style. Trumpeters especially are hip to his musical signature: “You hear three notes and you know it’s Herb Alpert” said Miles Davis in 1989; “He gets right to the point of what he’s playing,” remarked Wynton Marsalis more recently, “very melodic and nothing extraneous.” To the entire music business, Alpert remains the “A” in A&M Records, one of the most visionary record labels of the last half century.

Yet all these high profile achievements only begin to define the generous extent of Herb Alpert’s creative spirit. Today, the litany of Alpert’s public and lesser-known accomplishments also include his work as a widely acclaimed painter and sculptor, his success as a Broadway producer with a talent for sniffing out prize-winning theatre, and his philanthropic work which has seen his foundation donate in excess of $100 million to worthy causes.

Biography:

He was born Herbert Alpert on March 31, 1935 in Los Angeles, the youngest of three children born to a tailor who had emigrated from Russia, and his California-born wife. He attended Melrose Elementary School where, at the age of eight, he was drawn to the trumpet in a music appreciation class. “They had a room with a bunch of different instruments on a table and I picked up the trumpet,” recalls Alpert. “It took a long time before I made any sense out of it. I was very fortunate that I stuck with it.”

Alpert’s aptitude on his chosen instrument soon blossomed and began to perform on a regular basis, but was yet to be sold on the idea of music as a career. “I was playing weekends and making a moderate sum of money but I still wasn’t sure where it was going to lead,” he says. In 1962 however, Alpert found his sound and struck paydirt. With a new partner, Jerry Moss, a music promotion man from New York City, Alpert released the single on a fledgling record label they established together. The Lonely Bull by “The Tijuana Brass featuring Herb Alpert” – single #703 on A&M Records – shot into the Top Ten before the year ended.

The following chapters in Alpert’s life are musical history. The sound of the Tijuana Brass proved as ubiquitous – and profitable – as that of the best known music makers of the era, on a par with the Beatles, Elvis Presley and Frank Sinatra. Hit singles and albums seemed to pour out effortlessly on the A&M label, as Alpert continued to craft the Tijuana Brass sound.

With Moss at the helm of the label’s business dealings and Alpert steering its musical direction, the label expanded its musical horizons. In an amazingly short period, the label signed and delivered hit-producing music by a plethora of popular acts working in a wide range of styles: Sergio Mendes & Brasil ’66 and Waylon Jennings, The Sandpipers and Burt Bacharach, Wes Montgomery and Quincy Jones, Procol Harum, Joe Cocker, Cat Stevens and many others.

Balancing the running of such a hugely successful label with a career as a recording artist was an understandingly challenging task, and from the late ‘60s Alpert decided to focus on matters closer to home, dismantling the Tijuana Brass to concentrate more on the label. As the ’70s progressed, A&M continued to demonstrate the shrewdness of its leaders, signing artists including the Carpenters and Carole King, Billy Preston and Peter Frampton, Cheech and Chong, Supertramp, Styx and Joe Jackson to name but a few. In 1979 Alpert recorded another of his now-signature tunes; Rise went on to become the theme for the 1980 Olympic Games and the world-conquering roster of A&M artists continued to grow – R.E.M., The Police, Janet Jackson, Iggy Pop, Squeeze, Bryan Adams...

In 1990, A&M remained the sole independent record company among the few that had grown to full maturity but had yet to sell out to a major conglomerate, and when Polygram came calling with a generous offer, Alpert and Moss – acutely aware of the ever-increasing stakes of staying in business – decided to accept. “We were in competition with the big corporations like Warner Bros and EMI. It was getting harder and harder to compete with that, so Jerry and I felt that the timing was right.”

With one of the most successful musical careers of modern times under his belt, Herb had more than earned the right to take a step back and relax. Nonetheless it is hardly surprising, given the incredible work ethic necessary to run a globally thriving record label as well as meeting the demands of personal pop stardom, that after he hasn’t left the music business behind. “I loved being the ‘A’ of A&M,” he says. “I think we did great things, I know we treated artists right, we were honest and put out great product. But with where the business was going, I don’t look back at our decision to sell at all.”

Alpert still chooses to remain as busy as he ever was, but these days it’s a personal muse rather than a personal secretary whom he allows to plan his schedule. “I’m a creative guy – 80 to 85% on the right side of my brain. I think about music all the time.” In addition to his creative outlets, Alpert oversees a restaurant/jazz club in Bel Air that opened in 2004, as well as all activities of the Herb Alpert Foundation in Santa Monica, which he founded in 1982. ”I’m trying to reduce my life to just things that I like to do, like doing some concerts with Lani [Hall, his Grammy Award winning wife]. Making money is not my goal; having fun at this age in my life is.”

Summing up, Alpert now approaches life with the following philosophy: “It’s that never-ending quest of discovering and trying to be the person that you’re intended to be. Not what those strong influences that were around us while growing up wanted us to be like. If we didn’t have any of those pulls on us, how different would we be? I’m still working on that. That’s my end game.”
 
Amazon has an album cover photo available now, and unfortunately it has the name "Albert" on it underneath the main title (Herb Albert's Greatest Hits). I hope they fix it before it gets released.

51WrxlsM%2BSL._SL500_AA300_.jpg


UK+HERB+LG+FIXED.jpg

Corrected




Capt. Bacardi
 
Herb's assistant, Gerry Wersh, informed me that the error was on the advance art, but is correct for the 2CD Set. :D
 
That link also features a comeback recording by another A&M group, OMD -- Orchestral Manouevres In The Dark (not the Ozark Mountain Daredevils). Their first album of original material in 14 years... The samples/videos sound pretty good (but nothing compares to their 1984 LP Junk Culture)

--Mr Bill
 
I'm prepared to be shot down here, but I'm not convinced by this release. It appears to be aimed at those who will remember Herb from the 60's, will probably be able to hum a number of TJB tunes and might recognise him from his photo and that's fine, particularly to coincide with the documentary. I love the TJB and, from 1974, grew up on it. It was through the TJB and other A&M artists that I found my interest in jazz but Tijuana Taxi and, for example, the beautiful and exciting Para Raio don't belong in the same compilation.

Anything Goes is perfect jazz release. You have 14 (or 15!) perfectly conceived tracks performed by three top quality younger musicians and two lead musicians at the peak of their game. It would have stood up on its own without being tacked on to another TJB hits compilation. I was always disappointed that AG wasn't released here and, but for A&M Corner, I wouldn't have known about it or had the wonderful opportunity to hear the band in person.

I just wonder whether attention will be diverted from Anything Goes and towards the TJB era. If it were not too late, I would suggest that AG be actively promoted here as the wonderful jazz release it is.

Start firing........

Stephen
 
I look at it as a "Herb Alpert - Then & Now" Compilation. Which is probably a good companion to the BBC Documentary that I am looking forward to finally seeing.

Since these two discs already exist, no remastering, editing etc is required. Just a run off of the old masters and add some new artwork. If they really wanted to get someone like us who already own both of these recordings to buy this package, they probably would have added one of the numerous outtakes from the Anything Goes Concerts that have not seen the light of day, besides "Night & Day" which of course did see the light of day on the Japanese version.

Bottom line, if someone who is not familiar with Herb's Legacy buys this package and "discovers" Herb, then it has done it's job and I'm all for it.
 
Essential?

1) Strange 2 CD combination, and the
2) Title is a misnomer

Disc 1: representing 25 years of some of Herb's essential songs.
Disc 2: representing 1 effort within about a year, and not all of the songs are essential. BTW, Lani, who is essential to AG, is not even listed on the front cover.

I still lament that the great album, which will remain nameless, whose release is essential to completing the original Tijuana Brass' catalog remains unreleased in digital format.
 
I wonder what label this set will fall under. Universal still owns the rights to DEFINITIVE HITS, does it not? Concord Jazz released ANYTHING GOES, and Herb's Tijuana Brass stuff has been under license to Shout! in the US. In the US, DEFINITIVE HITS had/has an A&M logo on it.

In the UK, where this set will originate, DEFINITIVE HITS is listed by Amazon as a Polydor release. That's got to fall under Universal's umbrella. Concord also has ANYTHING GOES in Great Britain, and Amazon UK lists "Decca (UMO)" as the label.

Harry
 
The Essential Herb Alpert is listed as DECCA, part of Uni. Concord is distributed by Uni. Ta-Da! :D
 
Apparently Herb has some sentiment for the U.K. market. The Very Best Of Herb Alpert album and video was originally done for them.

It was the strategy to have a release to go along with the upcoming BBC Herb Documentary. The finished Documentary was well received by Herb & Lani, and so the rest fell into place.
 
The UK release makes perfect sense to me - I guess I am just curious if an A&M logo might grace any part of the new package, given the DEF HITS connection.

Harry
 
Honestly, it's brilliant marketing. The upcoming BBC documentary concentrates on Herb's life story and his work with TJB, not his recent music. This is designed to follow up on the TV exposure, providing people with an overview of his music from that period but also introducing them to the fact that he (and Lani) are still making great music. If they'd been released separately or with a different title, the greatest hits CD would have moved and virtually no one would have even been made aware that these folks are still recording. This is truly a GREAT idea.
 
Agreed, it's a great idea. I assume the actual release will be somehow "stickered" with news of the "new" music included as a bonus.

I'm hoping that this BBC documentary somehow makes it to video -- be it YouTube or some kind of commercial release -- so us stateside folks can see it. Or is there some kind of online broadcast in the works?
 
Thought I'd be in the minority!

Either way, I'm buying the release and can't wait for the show :)

Stephen
(listening to Morning Coffee as I write!)
 
Mike Blakesley said:
Agreed, it's a great idea. I assume the actual release will be somehow "stickered" with news of the "new" music included as a bonus.

I'm hoping that this BBC documentary somehow makes it to video -- be it YouTube or some kind of commercial release -- so us stateside folks can see it. Or is there some kind of online broadcast in the works?

I'm sure the documentary will show up here somehow after it airs. It better. I'm counting on it!
 
It may be well suited for PBS, as it clocks it at just seconds under sixty minutes. It's great because we get essentially a full one hour program without commercial interruptions, as it is planned on BBC4 for September 17th.
 
Steve Sidoruk said:
It may be well suited for PBS, as it clocks it at just seconds under sixty minutes. It's great because we get essentially a full one hour program without commercial interruptions, as it is planned on BBC4 for September 17th.

Well hell, if it clocks in at nearly an hour that's perfect for PBS. They can cut it up and stretch it into an 2 and half hour Pledge Drive! :D

Really glad to hear that Herb & Lani "approved" and I am also looking forward to seeing it and all of Steve Sidoruk's great photos.
 
After the BBC FOUR documentary next Friday, the channel is also showing a 25 minute version of the 1967 studio show the TJB made at the BBC.
 
TonyCurrie said:
After the BBC FOUR documentary next Friday, the channel is also showing a 25 minute version of the 1967 studio show the TJB made at the BBC.



Oh, to be in England...




Dan
 
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