Wikipedia has ruined my night.
Well damn. I grew up listening to The Lonely Bull, and found it extremely evocative. Now I find it was just a bunch of session artistes in LA.
I was, however, inspired to look up Herb after hearing a track by Pérez Prado, who was in fact really latino, and I realise for nostalgic reasons I really like the style. So, does anyone have any more recommendations for that kind of 1960s brass mariachi music - but authetnic?
The Baja Marimba Band. 
Meanie! 
I had listened to them too when I was growing up. I always had assumed the TJB were studio musicians, and not an authentic Latino band. His music was memorable, though. Anyone can instantly recognize such songs as Tijuana Taxi or Spanish Flea. But Alpert didn’t try to hoodwink anybody into thinking they were authentic mariachis. He always used to refer to his band as consisting of “Three pastramis, two bagels, and an American cheese”:
He also called it a “sextet plus one, or an oversextet.”
C’mon, you have to be a pretty damned good performer to make a living in LA even as a studio musician. Give them credit. Those guys were exactly as good when you thought they were Mexicans as they were after you found out otherwise.
What, only Mexicans can play mariachi? Can only Jews play klezmer? Can only old black men from Mississippi play the blues? Music is music. Talent is talent.
Oh, I do give them credit! I don’t deny their talent or abilities. They were great, and very convincing. I’ve spent the past 30-something years thinking Herb Alpert was a Mexican guy with a load of musicians from Tijuana, playing the music of their forefathers. I’ve only just found out they weren’t. I never bothered reading the back of my parents’ album covers, and the singles were just contained in blank orange paper wrappers, as I remember.
Anyway, I’m not really upset - I’m just surprised and a little amused.
I’ve just learned that Eric Clapton is not in fact a blind Negro from the Mississippi Delta.
My only beef with non-whatever guys playing whatever music is that they often (actually, like Clapton) think they are more whatever than the whatever guys, or that they overanalyze it. I’m reminded of some stories I heard about Japanese tourists raptly touring Harlem and then taking classes in just how to sway and wave their hands when doing their version of testifying gospel style.
But other than that – eh. Last I checked Raul Malo was a Miami Cuban boy, but The Mavericks’ version of country (or “country”) is/was not half bad . . . .
Next, somebody will probably try to tell us that the Nairobi Trio was just 3 guys in gorilla suits who’d never even been to Africa.
hmmm I enjoyed their music for all those years without ever giving their heritage a thought. Guess I’m just wired different.
I never particularly considered the Tijuana Brass as being Mexican, especially after I read how “The Lonely Bull” had a completely different name (“Twinkle Star”) and flopped until it was renamed and given a “Mexican” feel (This was in Newsweek when the TJB were at the top of their fame). If you look, most of the TJB songs were by composers whose names were not even remotely Hispanic: Burt Bachrach, Julius Wechter, Ervan Coleman, Anton Karas, Dimitri Tiomkin, Sol Lake, Jerry Leiber, and Herb Alpert.
Alpert, BTW, is the “A” in A&M Records. The TJB gave the company a firm footing, and it’s been one of the most successful record labels even today.
Ever heard a real Mexican brass band play live? We occasionally host Mexican dances at the convention center where I work, and the last one had one of these bands. Good god, they’re freakin’ loud! I was standing behind the stage, and they practically blew my head off. I can’t imagine what it was like for the people crowded up against the front of the stage!
jjimm writes:
> Oh, I do give them credit! I don’t deny their talent or abilities. They were great,
> and very convincing. I’ve spent the past 30-something years thinking Herb
> Alpert was a Mexican guy with a load of musicians from Tijuana, playing the
> music of their forefathers. I’ve only just found out they weren’t. I never
> bothered reading the back of my parents’ album covers, and the singles were
> just contained in blank orange paper wrappers, as I remember.
Did you look at the front of the albums? Alpert isn’t a Mexican name, and he doesn’t look remotely Mexican. At the time the first Tijuana Brass album came out, Alpert was a 27-year-old songwriter and producer who decided to start a record company with his partner Jerry Moss. A lot of the songs on The Lonely Bull don’t sound very authentic at all. They sound like early 1960’s pop with only slight mariachi flavoring.
I had known that. Another reason I always knew the TJB was a group of competent studio players. I figured as the head of the record label, Alpert was his own A&R man and put the musicians together.
On a side note, my uncle had the album *Whipped Cream and Other Delights *on vinyl. Damn, that’s one memorable album cover!
jjimm do you have the soundtrack of Buena Vista Social Club? It doesn’t have exactly the same sound as '60s Tijuana Brass, but it’s authentic. (Or I’m pretty sure it’s authentic; the songs selected sound a bit Ry Cooderish, but maybe he was just always strongly influenced by that kind of music.)
I hate telling the OP that those go-go dancers were not Mexican either…
I still listen to them.
My favorite is What Now My Love. They do it in a really upbeat, almost jolly way. Which is totally impossible to do if you had the vocals but they didn’t have a singer so, who cares? We can do it as a happy song.
Continuing the hijack, and bumping this in the process -
My husband was watching TV one day and a commercial for some phone company came on, containing the unmistakeable voice of Michael McDonald. He’s a Steely Dan fan, who McDonald worked with, and likes the work McDonald did with the Doobie Brothers as well.
Then they show McDonald’s face. This triggers an E-mail to me at work: “Oh my god, Michael McDonald is WHITE?!!?!”
I’m glad no one walked by my office right then, as it would have been really hard to explain why I was laughing at whatever serious thing I should have been doing.
I thought it was pretty well known that Hal Blaine was the drummer of the Tijuana Brass (and of the Monkees and the Beach Boys and the Carpenters, for that matter).
Alpert has always given credit to Blaine and the real musicians in the band. Blaine is a bit miffed that other acts (like Richard Carpenter) refuse to do the same.
Did you ever see Pat Cooper’s parody of it, Spaghetti Sauce and Other Delights?:
