why do YOU listen to A&M records?

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chaco75

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Where/why/how did everyone here discover the magic of A&M records? I remember being 5 years old and walking around an ice-cream shop one night in Acapulco (where I lived in the 70s) and my mom pointing out Herb Alpert and Lani Hall walking around...
I didn't buy my first A&M record, on vynil at a charity shop (Herb Alpert's Beat of the Brass), until I was 15 (1989), this stemming from the fact that I have always had more than a light obsession with my youth in Acapulco and the 70s...decade in which of course I listened to so much music from A&M records since it was pretty much the soundtrack of my childhood. I believe Herb Alpert had a weekend (or more?) house in Acapulco in the 70s, and his music -as well as Sergio Mendes, Claudine, etc etc- was huge there and then. So to me, it's not just about the musical mastery and innovation, but also about the wonderfully bitter-sweet nostalgia it brings me, it's like a soundtrack to memories; in soft-focus lens, of course.
 
My earliest memories of a fascination with A&M goes back to the '60s. I'd not followed much in pop music at the time, and instead looked to older records I'd been given and my studies on the piano to fuel my musical interests. I must've heard "A Taste Of Honey" on the radio and equated it to the sound I'd heard on the Teaberry Shuffle commercials on TV. Something about those sounds grabbed me, and it wasn't too long after that I saw Herb & the boys on a Grammy show. With the quick-in-succession releases of WHIPPED CREAM, GOING PLACES, and WHAT NOW MY LOVE, and the bombardment of those songs and albums on the charts, my interest began to grow. I'm pretty sure that I got the WHIPPED CREAM album first and probably played it to death that year. That "change-in-tempo" arrangement on "A Taste Of Honey" was a real hook for me, and the rest of the album was no slouch either.

As I recall, at Christmas that year, I received the great bulk of the TJB albums that were then out as presents, along with a Magnavox portable stereo record player, one of those fold-up jobbies with the removable wing speakers. If memory serves, WHAT NOW MY LOVE and SOUTH OF THE BORDER were stereo copies, while the balance were in mono, except VOLUME TWO, which I didn't get for a while.

Those albums were played endlessly on my new stereo with it's crappy ceramic cartridge and midrange-y speakers, and I loved both what was ON those records as well as a burgeoning fascination with the idea of stereo separation of sound.

Who among us back then didn't spend hours not only listening to the record, but studying the jacket and innersleeve, looking at pictures of other A&M albums and wondering what they sounded like? After obtaining FAMILY PORTRAIT, the A&M sampler album, I began to appreciate the sound of Sergio Mendes & Brasil '66. It wasn't long until all of those albums were "in rotation."

I'd have to say that THAT very time was the beginning of my fascination for the label itself. No longer was it just Herb and the TJB, but other nifty artists as well that recorded for this label that Herb built.

Then along came the Burt Bachacarch period in music, where seemingly every third song on the radio was composed by Burt. And lo and behold, he too records for A&M Records.

After that, the fascination continued with Carpenters, Lani Hall, and Cat Stevens in the '70s, all the while continuing with the old stand-bys.

It was my own stupidity that prevented me from appreciating the Baja Marmiba Band for all those years. For some reason, I always viewed them as a Tijuana Brass clone, somehow in competition with the TJB, and I continued to side with Herb & the boys. Why I didn't comprehend that they recorded on A&M and were in fact PRODUCED in the early going by Herb, I'll never know. Suffice it to say that I've made up for lost time and have the advantage that the BMB stuff still sounds fresh to me today.

In all of the intervening years, I still held a special place in my heart for things A&M. I'd go on spurts where I'd play catch-up and buy up all of the Herb product I'd missed, make compliation tapes on the cassette recorder, upgrade stuff to CD as it came out, and always feeling like I must've been the only one out there who did so, never dreaming that there'd be others out there like me.

Thanks to the A&M Corner, (then known as Rudy's Corner), I've been able to connect with others who've been bitten by the same bug as me. And I've learned so much in the past few years, filling in the collection with the missing and rare stuff that I didn't even know existed.

Harry
...that's my story and I'm sticking to it, online...
 
That's like asking me why I brush my teeth. A&M has been in the blood since age 10 when my folks bought WHIPPED CREAM in stereo. We were only allowed to play mono records on the cheap portable turntables, so spinning those stereo discs was a 'living room event.'
Yes, those color inner sleeves got me started collecting the A&M family - without regard to the style of music . Thank God nobody told me I shouldn't, or that I should stop at a certain point --- although I took a break from it during the late 70s, resuming in the 80s.
To this day I'm likely to pick up a strange album in the used/cutout racks, if the A&M logo is there. Taking a chance that was has always been rewarding.
JB
NP: Jimmie Rodgers TROUBLED TIMES (SP 4242) "Baby Go out and Play"
 
There was an Admiral in my early life. Not an Admiral in the military sense, but in a hi-fi sense. This Admiral hi-fi, in all its mono, tubed, idler-wheeled glory, had a chair next to it, and it was a certain 3-year-old who would spend hours in the basement standing next to it, watching the records drop down the spindle onto the platter, and spin around for hours as various albums in the household would get their turn. It most likely was the sounds, but it also could have been the warm and inviting ochre label that drew this 3-year-old to the A&M label, as well as the colorful innersleeves that pictured more albums than this 3-year-old could ever imagine. Also interesting were those black-labeled "New Orthophonic" or "DynagrooVe" gems adorned with a dog and a "funny-looking funnel thing" and bold serifed silver print proclaiming "RCA Victor" on the top. A couple of other labels were fascinating (Columbia's deep red, a favorite color, with six eyes, or rainbow-bordered Capitols), while one was even a bit scary, adorned with a large silver spike which, I later learned, was a mild foreboding of the great music hidden in those wonderful Verve grooves.

At this point, around 1967, A&M's success was already ensured. About all we had around the house at this point were mono LPs, a couple of 45's, and a few boxes of 78's. A&M vinyl consisted of all the Tijuana Brass albums up to Sounds Like..., and the first two Brasil '66 waxings. It wasn't until 1969 when we got a big Magnavox console for the living room, in stereo, that we acquired a lot more LPs, but now *gasp* in STEREO. Playing them on the old Admiral was verboten (even though it had now been retrofitted with a newer hand-me-down Heathkit turntable), but there were some great new albums awaiting play: the TJB's Ninth, Christmas Album and Beat Of The Brass (and possibly the next two, I can't recall), Brasil 66's Look Around and Fool On The Hill, and the first two Baja Marimba Band albums. Grandmother was also an LP collector, and she'd discovered some of the newer Baja Marimba Band albums at the time, which we ended up buying ourselves. My mother, somehow, got on a kick of Burt Bacharach, and it wasn't long before we had the first three A&M Bacharach albums stored in the hi-fi. In fact, Make It Easy On Yourself was a day-long adventure; I recall us driving all over town, going from one record store to another, trying to find this one...and she got quite tired of my constant false alarms whenever I'd see the similar-looking Jimmie Rodgers album Child Of Clay from afar. Other than the Sandpipers' Greatest Hits (another of Grandmother's discoeries), the rest of the Baja Marimba albums, and then the first few in a long string of early Carpenters albums, they didn't buy much A&M after that. (My mother did start buying Cal Tjader albums in the meantime, which led to another life-long fascination of mine.)

By that time, I'd purchased my own little green G.E. stereo (with green/white cube-shaped speakers) and was getting my own collection of LPs built up. I didn't get any other new A&M artists, but did follow those I was already familiar with. But once I got out of school and started working, I ended up replacing all of the battered A&M vinyl with newer and better stereo copies, and also started looking for some of those interesting innersleeve items that I'd never been able to hear in the past. With that and a lot of recommendations (through Compuserve at first, and now at the Corner), I've ended up getting a few more A&M interests out of the deal.

So, it's not like I have an overwhelmingly huge collection of A&M, but do have nearly complete selections of all the artists I'm interested in.

-= N =-
 
How great it must have been to be able to purchase A&M vynil new from the shops, and the expectation of the new signings and releases! But still I feel lucky to be able to associate such magnificent music to the favourite period of my life...
I myself bought Herb Alpert and Claudine first, and then, as many it seems, I started to get into the label going by the colourful pictures on the innersleeves; then I started to get Baja Marimba Band, Sandpipers and Brasil 66, etc. My collection isn't huge and its not complete, although I do have quite a bit of A&M vynil that I've been adding to in the last 13 years, and thanks to the internet I don't have to rely on not-great quality copies from the charity shops...also thanks to great websites like this, Im able to get my discography right!
Just now I'm listening to Herb Alpert's WARM and it evokes images in my head of a soft-focused landscape: Acapulco, on the beach at sunset, seagulls moving in slow-motion, and a beautiful tanned blonde girl slowly turning her face to mine, and the smell of that 70s Coppertone mixes with that of our tropical drinks while the lush trumpet plays... You can imagine the rest. Sometimes the landscape turns more melancholy, sometimes happier, but always evoking those images of that place in that decade...
But my interest is not only for nostalgic reasons, I also love the music for music's sake; I believe A&M artists were a far more substantial lot than all the easy-listening sugared-water artists that shared the charts back then...sure, some of the music was easy, but it had a backbone and strength, it had a whole ideology behind it, it wasn't just aural wallpaper, or sonic perfume for your living room....come to think of it, I like aural wallpaper music, but I surely don't put A&M artists on the same section of my music library.
 
chaco75 said:
Where/why/how did everyone here discover the magic of A&M records?

For me it was 1972 when I was 12. For a few years I had been tinkering with my parent's 8mm movie camera. I finally decided I needed music to play along with my otherwise silent epics of hamsters, animated clay characters and silly science fiction films starring my friends. While watching The Ben Hunter Show in with my mom -- Ben Hunter was a staple of LA television, running classic films and giving anecdotes at the commercial breaks like AMC does today -- I heard his theme song and thought it would go great with the film I was working on. I asked my mom if she knew the song and artist and she said, wrongly, "I think it's by Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass." I immediately went to the family record collection and found four TJB LPs. The song wasn't on any of the albums, but I did find a song that worked. I immediately fell in love with the music and even started thinking of films to make just to use certain songs. I also went through the collection again and found Sergio's B66 and a BMB LP. I lisgened to others (non A&M) as well but found that the music with that funny "A&M" logo was the most appealing.

It was only a matter of time before I started asking for more and my dad took me to a used record shop not too far from home. Soon my TJB and BMB collections were complete. I also discovered samplers like Million Dollar Sound Sampler, Family Portrait and Music Box, and I soon branched out to the CTI jazz series, Phil Ochs, Merry-Go-Round, Claudine, Sandpipers, We 5ive and Chris Montez. Though these were not usable for my 8mm cinematic efforts, I still fell in love with the music...

As far as "Rock & Roll" goes it was not until something about the punk and new wave music happened, that I found "Rock & Roll" appealing (and I still am very selective as to what sort of "regular rock" appeals to me). For the most part I think it was the number of bands in the "new wave/punk" era that used keyboards and horns that hooked me moreso than the lyrical content... I admit I own NO Rolling Stones recordings and didn't own a Beatles recording until I was in my mid 20s...

To this day I still listen to my A&M family of recordings more than any other. My biggest idols are Herb Alpert and Walt Disney, whose work led me to my career in film and TV. And the film career has been interesting. Though I never broke into the "theatrical film industry" I've spent many years in infomercial, PSA and documentary production as well as a long stint as a sound engineer in interactive television. I got most of my training in the Navy including a year at USC Film School (where Herb's music and other A&M artists were prominently featured, of course). I'm now back (happily) making documenatries for the Navy again...

By the way, the song that WAS used for The Ben Hunter Show was "Big Red" from the BMB album Those Were The Days...

And that's my "A&M Story." Read more at my website (sister to this one) on the home page and the "About Mr Bill Page":

www.irscorner.com

--Mr Bill
 
chaco75 said:
Where/why/how did everyone here discover the magic of A&M records?

Hmmm, time to get deep, eh? :cool:

My first introduction to A&M actually came way via TV. I remember sitting around our living room reading a Life magazine, and my dad got up to switch channels on the tube, and he stopped on this one show where I first heard the strains of "The Lonely Bull". I remember looking up and saying "Wow, who is this???" (I think it was a Hollywood Palace show, but I'm not 100% certain of that). Shortly thereafter we watched the Kraft Hall of Fame show that had both Herb Alpert and Louis Armstrong, and I was all excited about this music. My dad eventaully bought the What Now My Love album, and I played it relentlessly on our old hi-fi stereo. I used to gaze at the inner sleeve all the time to look at the other albums that were available, and wondered what they sounded like.

By 1971 our town had its own library, and they had all kinds of LPs to check out. So I started looking for those albums that I had seen on those inner sleeves, and wound up listening to Bacharach, K & JJ, BMB, etc. Eventually I started mowing lawns or shoveling snow to make money to buy my own albums. It just took off from there.

One thing that's always impressed me with A&M recordings: they always sounded clean and warm. I thought this was really evident on albums like Michel Colombier's Wings and albums by Gino Vanelli and Supertramp. Only ECM came close to the quietness of the vinyl IMHO. A&M also had an interesting mix of artists, some of whom may never have been able to be on any other label, but A&M seemed to have a lot of "underdog" in them. I always liked that.


Capt. Bacardi
...choosing music wisely, online...
 
I seem to have heard a lot of the Old A&M Stuff, myself, though at a rather young age. :wink: So while I was not even born when a lot of the old A&M Stuff and Stuff I Listen To on Other Labels came out, I feel I must have existed then, in some Spiritual Way. :D

I guess the idea of collecting EVERYTHING Numerically (First w/ A&M, then w/ abc, abc/dunhill, Chelsea, Roxbury, Myrrh, Sparrow, RCA, MCA, even Capitol, Columbia, Warner Bros. Asylum, Atco, Atlantic, etc.) never quite occurred to me until Rudy's Corner came along. Though I have at least been collecting the sleeves which displayed (most of) the recent albums concurrent with the records they were in. :cool: That begin, or at least the awareness of the Uniqeness came with a tattered old IH-6 (Sandpipers, We Five, Roger Nichols, Sergio Mendes, Jimmie Rodgers, Chris Montez--favorites which I still enjoy and comprehensively collect today) Sleeve, which had been kicked around (and sprayed on by my cats, or at least one of 'em :laugh: ) the basement before that section of the basement got partitioned off and somewhat renovated and became my BEDROOM, which to this day is chock full of as many records as I have the time to listen to and responsibility to keep up the condition of , though still can't quite pay for. :sad: (Most were charged on my credit card--ordered on the internet, when I couldn't find here, and seem to be trapped like Sysyphus, as more gets discovered and/or put on CD... :cry: )

Dave

Gioccho Adesso: Evie Sands "It's This I Am" ANYWAY THAT YOU WANT ME A&M SP 4239

...Just put in an order for the CD Reissue w/ Bonus Track "Maybe Tomorrow" from the Quincy Jones-scored JOHN AND MARY Soundtrack... :wink:
 
Mssr. DEEP is currently making a nuisance of himself at the Blue Note board, using the handle "Wingy." Wonderful human being. :|


Back on topic, my A&M story is a lot shorter than everyone else's -- it started only ten years ago and didn't get "heavy" until five years ago. My parents had a mono copy of Whipped Dream which I spent a lot of time staring at in the early '90s, when I was about 9 or 10. I must have also listened to it a few times, since a few of the songs sounded familiar when I later became interested in that album as part of the "lounge music" fad that was going around in the late '90s. The lounge thing passed pretty quickly, but I remained interested in the pop-cultural and artistic climate of the swinging '60s for some reason. Fashion, style, art music, pop music, you name it. So I seriously got into the TJB around 1997, when I was 15. They were the only A&M act I listened to for a while, but I was becoming more and more interested in jazz and Brazilian music (a la Verve) around the same time, which led me to the A&M/CTi series and Brasil 66. That, in turn, led me to more "pure" (I hate that word but I can't think of anything better) forms of jazz, which is now my main interest alongside the jazz/pop/Brazil thing. I never have acquired a taste for rock or folk, so my A&M listening is basically confined to Alpert, Bacharach, Pete Jolly, early Quincy Jones, and a little bit of Claudine--and a bunch of artists on CTi and Horizon imprints. (I've also been meaning to investigate Wechter's BMB work for several years, but my wallet disagrees...)


- William
 
I can't helping adding my story to the above, but also cannot help but think of Dr.Evil and his "quite typical, really..." story of his own childhood...

Anyway, I re-discovered Herb after I had forgotten him or so I thought. My mother died in 1997 and I found her lps amongst the closets of memory at mom and dads....And there were the Herb Alpert and the Brass lps mom played, and played me at bedtime, and that I then played in early teenhood in the late 70s -- some still with the tracks on the back of the lps "circled" to indicate my favorite tracks :) From that discovery, I found other similar artists in the A&M family, most signifigantly the Brasil 66 IMHO.

Progression to easy listening radio (980 WONE) was natural, then on to a rediscovery of jazz in general. There you have it, in a nutshell,... :D
 
Attracted to instrumental music more than vocals,my 45 collection (starting in 1964)consisted of Bert Kaempfert,Horst Jankowski,etc. and I always loved hearing the Village Stompers break out of the melody during "Washington Square". There was little encouragement from family but radio(WIP 610AM,Phila.Pa.) and a friend who didn't laugh while our peers were Beatle collecting helped lots. The summer of 1965,before starting high school,I remember hearing a trumpet ballad with a cool drum beat. It would turn out to be "Mae" by the TJB and I was hooked. That song was so sweet and yet bouncy-I just couldn't get it out of my head. I also couldn't find it,even though record stores often stocked 45s of all kinds,not just teen pop or R&B. But by the end of the year,my freind gave me a copy of "Whipped Cream"(maybe the third LP that I really owned and the first I wouldn't store in Mom's LP cabinet). I was hooked. I played that sucker till the rings were white. I only recently pulled it out of my regular collection and still can't throw it out. It would be a short time till I got "Going Places",so I finally had a copy of "Mae". The following winter,I remember using snow shovel money to buy the first Brasil '66 "HAP" album and that went into regular rotation immediately. Gradually found out that the "Teaberry Shuffle" commercial was really "The Mexican Shuffle" on the TJB's "South of the Border" album and that "Lonely Bull",though I never heard it on the radio,was an earlier hit. Add hearing the BMB's "Ghost Riders"(which I did get on 45) and suddenly that A&M/trumpet logo and ochre background was a big part of my record collection. I remember sorting through Woolworth's 3 for a buck 45 table looking for that ochre color(it seemed that most labels were red or black,so they stood out) and finding so many of their releases were right up my alley. In a parallel universe,I was also listening to jazz via WHAT-FM,courtesy of Joel Dorn(as a DJ,not record producer) and Sid Mark(the Sinatra guy who used Maynard's "Frame for the Blues" as a theme song) and found that music was this hidden world with a new treasure everyday. It hasn't stopped yet....Mac
 
I probably didn't pay much attention to the label - rather it was the music on the record that caught my attention.
First started listening to Herb Alpert back about 1965 when I was in the 9th grade and started taking the trumpet seriously.(I started in the 6th grade,but didn't have much interest until my father - a high school band director - brought home some albums one day and TJB were among them - also Al Hirt and Rafael Mendez. Shortly thereafter, my father arranged for me to take lessons from a good teacher who was able to motivate me, and then I started to do the work necessary to make progress).
Later on in high school,I got together with some friends in the high school band and we started playing Herb Alpert/TJB tunes from the song books with all the parts arranged - Bb,rhythm,etc., that you were able to get back in the sixties(now out of print,I guess). This became a more serious enterprise and a real band was formed and for several years, we did a lot of playing as a group, and expanded our repetoire. But TJB was the foundation or idea behind the creation of the group, and that was the sound that it was based on instrumentally and that we wanted to achieve. Even other,non-TJB music that we played ended up sounding TJB.
This also led to discovering some of the other artists that were on A&M,such as the Baja Marimba Band and Sergio Mendes and Brasil 66. I became acquainted with Claudine Longet's music,although never much of a fan.
I think that A&M was reflective of a certain sound and style in the sixties and I tended to personally like a lot of the sound and musical styles that A&M seemed to be involved with bringing to the public. There was something about what I called the "West Coast - California" sound that reminded me of sun,beaches,the Southern California lifestyle that I heard in A&M, and I guess I thought,being "captured" here in Ohio, that it was "cool."
Probably being involved in a successful band that played a lot of the music that A&M artists were known for had some effect also.
Moreover, I was not into the guitar based,harder,more psychedelic stuff of the later sixties anyway,and a lot of what A&M was recording appealed to me more from the standpoint of my personal musical tastes. I guess being a trumpet player may have had something to do with that also.
So......I think my interest and involvement as a serious TJB fan drew my attention to A&M. Perhaps it was also interesting that Herb Alpert was the founder/owner of A&M as well as the leader/founder of the TJB.
The music,the sound,the artists,the times,things going on in my life,etc., probably all blended together to make it happen for me. :D
 
All of my favorite artists are on A&M records...seriously, I think it was Divine Interference that led me to A&M...


When I was a kid, I thought Herb Alpert was "cool"...I STILL can't really describe what it is about the sound that grabbed me, except maybe the fact that his arrangements were VERY creative, and he is a master showman...


Whatever the reason, I was HOOKED, and HOOKED GOOD on the TJB...and it bothered a lot of people because they were all I ever talked about...one day, I think it must have been my 12th birthday, my father brought home my present...a brand new Baja Marimba Band album, WATCH OUT. I was kinda disappointed until I heard it for the first time, and I began to realize just how important this Julius Wechter guy was to my favorite music, and he and Herb together became my musical muses... I learned a lot from them, basically that there is often more than one way to interpret not just music, but a lot of things...and that there was and always is value in the thoughts and opinions of others, and that finding that out can be a real blast!

Herb provided a place for artists with differing takes on the music scene to be heard...A&M was a forum for the artist who in Herb's words..."Hit the long ball..." They might not be as commercially hip as some other artists, but the music was good, ALWAYS good, and I learned about so many different cultures and musical styles, from Brasil 66 to THE WINTER CONSORT...with stop-offs like Rick Wakeman and Wes Montgomery along the way...

A&M Records seemed to care about the people that they represented, and had a philosophy that even I could understand...


Years later, while sufferng through a personal illness, I would discover that none other than Julius Wechter had a similar problem and had counselled with people who shared my personal affliction...and that gave me the courage to seek help on my own. I'm slowly but surely getting a leg up on the situation, and it might never have happenned if I hadn't discovered A&M Records and Herb Alpert and Julius Wechter...

I had no idea that one record album could have such an impact on my life as WATCH OUT did, or that I could learn as much about the world around me as I have from listening to all the A&M records that I have...I'd hate to think what my life would be like without A&M.


Dan
 
I think my introduction to A&M recording artists came via radio and later
television in about 1965(?) and I was an instant fan of Tijuana Brass and
later BMB and Brasil '66. I began at a much later age than most of you, I was about 26 years old, married and mother of 4 young children. In moving
from California to Washington state (Yakima) in 1966 I began sending each
new issue of TJB and BMB LPs as gifts to my mother, thinking back on it now she would have been the age I am today and she became as big a fan
as I am now. When she passed away in 1974 I gathered up all of the LPs
I had sent her and kept them for sentimental reasons, little did I know just
how rare they would become. I got my first computer in 2000 and in learning
how to use a search engine I just typed in A&M records and came up with
the A&M Corner site, I was delighted to see how many younger people were
interested in this music and how knowledgeable on the subject. Amazing the
things I have learned here. With suggested internet sites from members I
have been able to replace many of my LPs with CDs and now when I listen to them they take me right back to a happy time in my past and remind me
of how helpful and friendly A&M fans can be. I have received some great
CDs as gifts from members and even some of the old shows on video tape.
Never imagined that I would be able to attend a tribute to my favorite marimbist (Julius Wechter) and to actually meet some of the posters from the corner as well. Thanks to everyone here for sharing and getting me back
to the music I love most. :D
 
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