The Mojo Collection. Various Mojo Magazine
album from MOR kings, six weeks at Number 1.
Record label: A&M
Produced: Jerry Moss
Recorded: Goldstar Studios, LA; 1965
Released: September 1965
Chart peaks: 5 (UK) 1 (US)
Personnel: Herb Alpert (t); Tonni Kalash (t); Julius Wechter (marimba/vibes); Bob Edmondson (tb); Pat Senatore (b); John Pisano (electric 12string guitar); Lou Pagani (p); Nick Ceroli (d); Larry Levine (e)
Track listing: Tijuana Taxi (S); I’m Getting Sentimental Over You; More And More Amor; Spanish Flea (S); Mae; 3rd Man Theme (S); Walk, Don’t Run; Felicia; And The Angels Sing; Cinco De Mayo; A Walk In The Black Forest; Zorba The Greek (S)
Running time: 29.27
Current CD: High Coin SABRECD2009
Further listening: The Lonely Bull (1963); Whipped Cream And Other Delights (1965)
Further reading: www.tijuanabrass.com; www.herbalpert.com
Download: iTunes
In the mid-’60s, while the kids were in thrall to the Fabs and their guitar-wielding, hair-shaking contemporaries, there was a parallel music market that catered for the less spicy tastes of their parents. Unassailably dominant in that market was the phenomenally successful Herb Alpert and his Tijuana Brass.
Twenty-five-year-old Los Angeles ex-actor and trumpeter Alpert had been keen to find a distinctive sound on his instrument and in 1962, fooling around on a tape recorder in his garage with a tune written by friend Sol Lake called Twinkle Star, he noticed that the melody worked well played in Mexican-style thirds – the Mariachi sound of the Tijuana bullfights Alpert occasionally frequented.
‘I liked the Mariachi sound,’ said Alpert, ‘but it hadn’t progressed much over the years and it seemed to me you could add an undercurrent of American sound, updating the bass-line and the guitars and timpani.’
Forming a label with partner Jerry Moss – changing the title of Lake’s tune to The Lonely Bull and naming the studio-creation (which soon became a real band) The Tijuana Brass – the ensuing single and album began a wave of popularity that saw The Tijuana Brass at their peak outselling the Beatles 2-to-1 and making A&M Records the most successful artist-owned label of all time.
Going Places was the fifth Tijuana Brass bestseller and typifies their exuberant, cheeky charm. Alpert’s customised ‘Ameriachi’ style was by now so focused that the apparently incongruous, daringly juxtaposed material (Zorba The Greek, I’m Getting Sentimental Over You and The Third Man Theme on one album!) is vividly adapted, with the listener seduced into barely caring how these tunes originally sounded.
‘It’s a wild, happy sound, like the Mariachis,’ Alpert said, attempting to explain The Tijuana Brass’s appeal. ‘It’s good-natured and full of humour. It’s not a protest and not a put-down. I think people were bugged with hearing music which had an undercurrent of unhappiness and anger, even sadism. But our music you can get with in a hurry, tap your feet and hum along.’ As The Tijuana Brass’s popularity faded, Alpert, never a jazz player, continued making records in contemporary pop styles and on the back of A&M’s success with The Carpenters, The Police and others, sold the label in 1990 to Polygram for $500 million.
Vernon Haddock’s Jubilee Lovelies
Vernon Haddock’s Jubilee Lovelies
The most obscure album ever made.
Record label: Columbia
Produced: Peter Eden and Geoff Stephens
Recorded: Summer 1965
Released: Autumn 1965
Chart Peaks: None (UK) None (US)
Personnel: David Elvin (g, v, banjo, kazoo); Vernon Haddock (mandolin, swanee whistle, jug); Alan Woodward (g); Alan ‘Little Bear’ Sutton (pc, washboard); David Vaughn (hm, bv); Sid ‘Piles’ Lockhart (v, 12string guitar).
Track listing: Coney Island Washboard; Don’t Let Your Deal Go Down; Clementine; Coloured Aristocracy; Mandy, Make Up Your Mind; Boodle-Am Shake; Viola Lee Blues; Vickyandal; Stealin’; Little Whitewashed Chimney; I Wish I Could Shimmy Like My Sister Kate
Current CD: Not currently available
Further listening: The website below may be a decent starting point for more peculiar obscure folk gems.
Further reading: www.theunbrokencircle.co.uk/albums_history_1_1959–66.htm
Download: Not currently legally available
Among the many obscure acts that recorded for major labels in the 1960s, perhaps the most extreme example was the memorably named Vernon Haddock’s Jubilee Lovelies, who made one very peculiar album in 1965 before vanishing for good.
In 1965 Peter Eden and Geoff Stephens were hot property after discovering Donovan. Eager to produce as well as manage, they easily landed a four-album deal with EMI. The first fruits, ‘Songs For Swingin’ Survivors’ by Mick Softley and a folk album by Bob Davenport and the Rakes, both flopped. Unfazed, Eden and Stephens turned their attention homewards to Southend, where a group of their friends from school and art college were gigging as ‘Vernon Haddock’s Jubilee Lovelies’.
I’d always liked the word ‘Lovelies’. Then I saw the word ‘Jubilee’ on a row of cottages and put them together’, says their leader David Elvin of their bizarre moniker. ‘Vernon was in the band. His name sounded good, so we added it – it’s pure nonsense.’
Keen to capture their good-natured, inclusive atmosphere on record, Eden was glad to offer his friends a deal. ‘I liked what they were doing,’ he says. ‘They were having fun – the opposite of earnest folk.’ And so it was that one summer’s evening in 1965 the Lovelies made their way to London to make an album. ‘We started at five and were done by midnight’, says Elvin. The result is a charming, skilfully-played and very eccentric folk record, reflecting both their earlier influences and contemporary acts like Jim Kweskin’s Jug Band and the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band.
Mainly comprising vigorous interpretations of standards like ‘Coney Island Washboard’, ‘Viola Lee Blues’ and ‘Stealin”, the only original is ‘Vickyandal’, a belated tribute to Queen Victoria and Prince Albert. The percussion throughout is deft, and added atmosphere comes courtesy of a swanee whistle, surprisingly similar in sound to a theremin. Released in the autumn in an eye-catching red and blue sleeve, the album sold, um, 400 copies, all at gigs.
But Eden and Stephens had another album to make before fulfilling their obligation to EMI. When the well-regarded young guitarist Eric Clapton left the Yardbirds to pursue the blues more seriously, Eden immediately got in touch. Clapton readily agreed to make a solo acoustic recording, only to renege a few days later after joining John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers. Frustratingly, the album was never made and the final quarter of Eden–Stephens’s production contract remains unfulfilled. As for the Lovelies, all that remains today is a handful of extremely rare records and the members’ fond memories.
Sun Ra
The Magic City
Pioneering big-band free jazz.
Record label: Saturn
Produced: Alton Abraham
Recorded: Live at Olatunji’s Loft, New York City; April 1965
Released: