25th Anniversary

The Americachi formula is fairly simple: Alpert's trumpet defines the melody over a Latin rhythm section, sometimes with airy wordless vocals by nameless singers. The twenty-songs collected on "Classics, Volume 1" date from Herb Alpert's first chart success, 1962's "The Lonely Bull (El Solo Torro)" (#6) to one track from 1970, "Jerusalem" (#74). In between we have "Marching Thru Madrid" (#96), "The Mexican Shuffle" (#85), "Taste of Honey" (#7), "Whipped Cream" (#68), "Mame" (#19), "Spanish Flea" (#27), "Tijuana Taxi" (#38), "What Now My Love" (#24), "Zorba the Greek" (#11), "The Work Song" (#18), "Casino Royale" (#27), "A Banda" (#35), and "This Guy's in Love With You" (#1). Not everything here made the charts (e.g., "Acapulco 1922" and "Love Potion #9"), and some of the songs that did are not here, such as "Third Man Theme" (#47), "Flamingo" (#28), "Wade in the Water" (#37), "Cabaret" (#72), "My Favorite Things" (#45), and "Without Her" (#63). Consequently, while this is an impressive collection of singles, this is not a comprehensive collection. But I think that is to be expected with an artist that had five #1 albums and I can see people picking up this CD for the car while at home they have several of the Tijuana Brass albums.

Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass are the most successful instrumental artists between the end of the Big Band era and today. When you look at their competition you are usually talking piano players like Roger Williams and Richard Clayderman, along with orchestras led by the likes of Henry Mancini, Montavani, and Lawrence Welk. But with most of those artists you are talking about elegant and sophisticated covers of songs associated with others (Mancini being the exception that proves the rule here). Alpert had a hand in writing only four of these tracks (10, 12, 17 and 22) but with most of these songs these are the versions you hear when you think of "A Taste of Honey" or "Spanish Flea" (okay, that last one makes you think of "The Dating Game," because that was the intro music for the bachelor, while "Whipped Cream" was the intro music for the bachelorette, and the intro music for the date was "Lollipops and Roses"-What can I say? Chuck Barris liked Herb Alpert).