HERB ALPERT'S NINTH

Original released as A&M LP 134/SP 4134

(US, December 1967)

«Introducing the first Brasil '66 record, I became aware of the incredible music coming out of that country. A handful of Brazilian artists were pushing the envelope. "A Banda" was one of the songs that lent itself to the TJB sound. That was our first but certainly not our last attempt at recording the extraordinary and innovative music of Brazil» (Herb Alpert)

This was the very first album that in the late sixties has introduced me to the swingin' Herb Alpert and to the excitement of the Tijuana Brass sounds. Since then I've bought all the great albums of the band, but this was my first one. And the sentence «there's no love like the first one» applies here too: I felt wonderfully happy when I received a couple of days ago this special deluxe packaging cd with a meticulously remastered sound. Issued in December 1967, Herb Alpert's "Ninth" reached the #4 spot on the Pop Albums chart, spending a total of 18 weeks in the Top 40. "A Banda" (a track written by brasilian Chico Buarque de Hollanda), was a Top 40 Pop hit, and "Carmen" and "The Happening" both made the AC Top 5. The cover art of Herb Alpert's "Ninth" is hilarious - a bust of grim old Beethoven wearing a Herb Alpert sweatshirt, a parody of the pop icon fad going around at the time and maybe a comment on the rock world's newfound pretensions in the wake of the Beatles' "Sgt. Pepper". In any case, Herb Alpert's "Ninth" does introduce some highbrow pretensions of sorts to Alpert's Ameriachi sound - some very subtly applied strands of strings on several numbers and a madcap, multi-sectioned fantasy of tunes from Bizet's "Carmen" that is full of in-jokes from the opera and the TJB's hits. Alpert is also quite aware of the brave new world around him; he does a spare, lazy, yet entirely novel-sounding cover version of Sgt. Pepper's "With a Little Help from My Friends" and gives the Supremes' "The Happening" a bouncy workout.