Da-da-da da-da-da da-da-da-daaaaa
Continuing my trip back through the 1968 album charts.
17/03/68 : !!Going Places!! - Herb Alpert and The Tijuana Brass
I think I'm aware of the Herb sound, but I could just be leaning in to the mariachi stereotype in a tired manner - it does feel like a whole album of it could well get very tiresome though.
Well, I never knew that track was called "Tijuana Taxi" - and I bet you didn't either! I'm sure Wikipedia will give me a million places it's been used, but none of them spring to mind just at the minute. "Spanish Flea" is also another well known track - and I'm going to kick myself when Wikipedia tells me where that's used. I was also surprised to recognise "Cinco De Mayo" and "Zorba The Greek" (which works surprisingly well with the brass) - which meant I actually knew a third of the album before I started. The rest of it definitely tends towards samey-ness, but I didn't find it as tedious as I was expecting. High praise indeed, but the album is only 29:27 long, so it would harsh of me to moan too much.
We're at #22 in the charts this week on their 104th week of a 147 week run - WHAT?!? I really can't understand how that happened given it's such an un-English sound - but it most definitely did, with it having peaked at #4. The top five this week were Bob, the Supremes best-of, TSOM and the Four Tops and Otis best-ofs, the highest new entry was Tony Bennett (#29 - and it only hung around for five weeks, which feels surprising given the other similar albums we've seen do much better in this year) and there are no new women on the chart.
Wikipedia has more on the album than I was expecting but there's very little on interest there - it was well received critically and very well commercially, spending six weeks at #1 in the US (Herb had five #1 albums in the late 60s over there). It doesn't tell me where "TIjuana Taxi" is used and is only slightly less useless on "Spanish Flea" telling me that is "has been used in a variety of film and television soundtracks". To make up for this, his entry gives me a load of fascinating Herb facts - none of the original members of the group were Latinx (Herb is Jewish and still with us at the grand old age of 88), he co-wrote Sam Cooke's "Wonderful World", he used The Wrecking Crew on several of his albums, he co-created the A&M record label (which Polygram bought in 1989 for $500m!) and, my favourite, he's one of only two artists to have had a US #1 as both a vocalist and an instrumentalist. And I'll be very impressed if you can guess the other one...
"Customers also listened to" Al Hirt, The Bob Crewe Generation, Hugo Montenegro and Boots Randolph - oh yeah, that lot. I was surprised how much of this I recognised and whilst I wouldn't say I enjoyed it, as I have previously lavished it with praise, I wasn't nearly as tedious as I was expecting.
(And the other artist is Barry White!)
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