TJB music used in "The Adventures Of Ozzie & Harrie

[daveK]

I got a couple of DVD's from the library recently that contained 20 episodes of "The Adventures of Ozzie & Harriet". I've heard about the show all my life, but other than a Christmas episode that PBS airs every year, I've never seen any episodes. I was pleasantly surprised at what a great show it is -- thoroughly entertaining! Unfortunately the quality of the transfers is low and all of Rick Nelson's songs are cut out, possibly due to licensing restrictions. Then again, these may not even be legitimate releases of the show.
Anyway, the last show on the second disc is about Ozzie and his friend flying to Mexico and the whole show is laced with TJB tracks as background music. It starts off with almost all of "Tijuana Taxi" and then segues into "Crawfish", "Mexican Corn", "Mexico", "Spanish Flea", "Numero Cinco", "El Lobo" and "Felicia". Then "Mexico" and "Crawfish" are used again, followed by "Tijuana Sauerkraut", then "El Lobo" is used again. Finally during the last scene Ozzie dances a little jig to "Limbo Rock" and then "Tijuana Taxi" plays again over the credits, where we eventually read "Special Music by Herb Alpert & The Tijuana Brass".
This is probably one of those instances where I'm discovering something that many others at the forum have known about for a long time, but I found it exciting and wanted to comment on it.
One thing that I found interesting was that "Crawfish" was the mono version with the original horn break, and "Tijuana Taxi" was the mono LP version that's missing a taxi horn beep, but I was sure that they played the stereo mix of "Mexico" with the additional trumpet overdubs.
Anyway, it was my introduction to a great sitcom that I'd love to see more of and the music in the last episode made it even better.

 

[Steven J. Gross]

Interesting-I did not know that!

 

[Harry]

This is news to me too. I'll have to check it out.

Harry

 

[rmos]

I've known about this episode, titled "Flying Down to Lunch" for a long time. I have an old Shokus Video VHS tape compilation which contains this program, that, IIRC, I bought back in the early 1990s.

The episode originally aired during Ozzie and Harriet's final season on ABC (and network TV as well) in November, 1965.

 

[jimac51]

That is interesting,as you can see,news to many regulars here(and many of the regulars here grew up during the original broadcast of the TV version of Ozzie's show). By the time of the TJB,my interest in the Nelson show had faded so I missed this first time around. Ozzie was a fairly big orchestra leader during the 1930s and Harriet(Hilliard)was his vocalist-a fairly new concept in 1932. Ozzie was also one of the smartest people in show business,having complete ownership of his show-a fictitious version of his real life(a la Jack Benny) and the family's life as well. Ozzie was also guiding force behind Ricky's singing career. Looks like Herb studied some of Ozzie's business ideas over the years. It is also interesting to note that,outside of Elvis Presley,Ricky Nelson was probably the most popular of the pre-Beatles rock era acts and even eclipsed Elvis during Elvis' Army hitch. And today, many of those Ricky Nelson sides stand up just fine(partly due to guitarist James Burton and the Jordanaires as backup vocalists) alongside Elvis,Chuck Berry and Fats Domino. Mac