Viva Miami

David S

Well-Known Member
With the Super Bowl tomorrow, time to relieve a program that was on the night before the Super Bowl in 1989 when the game was in Miami and hosted by our man:





We just need some good lip-synching, don’t you? (Alpert is so clearly not playing when performing with Alonso)
 
This was the TV special that introduced me to the world of AyM Discos. Until this special, I had no idea that Herb and A&M had done anything with the Latin market. At the time, there were very few Spanish-speaking folks in the Philly area so record stores had next to no Latin music sections.

Nevertheless, armed with the fact that Herb Alpert had recorded something with Maria Conchita Alonso, I headed to our local Sam Goody's within days. All I knew was Maria's name, but my English-only ears never picked up on the possibility of a song title of "Noche de Copas", even though that seems blatantly obvious now.

I found a small Latin section in the record store and if you recall, in 1989, the record world was in its changeover from vinyl to compact disc, with cassettes dominating everything else. The Latin section had only cassettes, so if I found anything, it would have to be in cassette form. Looking through the "A" section for Alonso, I found two albums, MIRAME and O ELLA, O YO. Figuring that Herb's track would be on one of them, I bought both.

Quickly perusing the rest of the Latin cassettes, I spotted three from Lani Hall that I'd never heard of, so those were an instant buy too. The three were LANI HALL, LO MEJOR DE LANI, and ES FACIL AMAR. So now, with five albums to listen to, all in cassette form, I headed back to work from this lunch hour trip to the record store.

What to listen to first? Well, since I KNEW Herb had played on a Maria album, and cassette credits were few and far between, I started with what looked like the latest from her, MIRAME. Up first was "Ganar O Perder", and though it had nothing to do with Herb Alpert, the song grabbed me, so I knew my purchase wasn't in vain.

Working my way through both of Maria's albums, I realized that Herb wasn't anywhere to be found, and it wouldn't be until I found her first album on AyM that I learned of "Noche de Copas" being the song she recorded with Herb. That occurred a week or so later when I found it at another record store.

But I HAD found lots of Herb Alpert's trumpet and vocals all over Lani Hall's Latin albums.

So this little special on CBS-TV gave me the push I needed to explore a little of the world of Latin music, which, I suppose, it was meant to do. I recall seeing a listing in TV Guide at the last minute and I raced to set up a VHS tape to record it. It's that tape that I later uploaded to YouTube. It was an early experience with YouTube's uploading, so that's probably why it's in two halves.
 
Wow. Sam Goody...there’s a memory. Bought my first Herb Alpert album on cd at a SG In NYC near Penn Station. It was the album Magic Man.

in Philadelphia, I first saw a solo Hugh Masekela album, Techno-Bush, in cassette. I didn’t purchase it and later regretted it because I could never find it afterwards. Took me years to locate one that I was able to obtain. Leaderboard his excellent Uptownship album out an SG in Delaware county.
 
We had a Musicland store here in Moscow idaho which became Sam Goody sometime in the mid 90s sadly by the time I knew about AyM discos recordings Polygram had long since bought the label and the recordings were all out of print but thankfully they did have a great selection of music I was interested in until they finally closed for good in the late 2000s Harry you were one fortunate fellow to have been able to collect those Latin Goodies
 
Yeah, with diligent subsequent searches, since cassettes were just not good enough for me, I found CDs of MIRAME and LO MEJOR DE LANI.

Then later, there were a bunch of compilations for Maria Conchita Alonso on CD, most of which didn't quite sound right. By 2000, her greatest hits album was finally remastered correctly.

I became somewhat contented when I finally located a lot of clean vinyl for the albums I couldn't get on CD, and even those I didn't know about initially, like LANI, her first Latin LP. It's become my favorite of that bunch.
 
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