I didn’t really “get” rock until I was in college (which is weird, when you consider that I grew up right alongside the 1950s and ’60s). My appreciation of a certain Liverpool quartet’s songs was postponed for years thanks to the kids across the street, who stood on the sidewalk and annoyed passersby (and neighbors) by shrieking repeatedly, Yea, yeah, yeah! And in the house where I grew up, it seemed that the big hi-fi cabinet’s tuner had been spot-welded in place — allowing only the sounds of a nearby station’s 24-hour Big Band playlist to enter the living room.
I settled on neither rock nor Big Band music for my first playlist. For some reason, I settled on Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass, and bought around a half-dozen of their LPs.
The band had a string of perky pop hits, often including weird special-effects instruments like cowbells and bicycle horns: “Spanish Flea,” “The Mexican [a/k/a Teaberry] Shuffle,” “Tijuana Taxi,” and so on. Of course, these songs made it onto their albums. But the LPs featured other music as well — also “Ameriachi”-sounding, vaguely, but slower and moodier. These were my favorites. What I didn’t know about loss back then could fill a stadium, but these tunes seemed to me drenched in it.
(An ongoing family joke centers around my teenage habit of whistling to myself while doing my laundry in the basement. The songs I whistled most often — at least as I imagined — were Alpert/TJB numbers: the slow ones.)
Here’s Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass’s interpretation of “Tangerine,” by Victor Schertzinger and Johnny Mercer:
When first written, the song perched at #1 on the Billboard list for six or seven weeks in 1942. The subject and lyrics? Unusual but not exactly melancholy. No, it’s something about the trumpet which affected me (and still does). Even the little upbeat curl at the very end feels rueful — as if backing the last line of that bitter poem by Dorothy Parker: You might as well live.
Lyrics:
Tangerine
(as performed by the Jimmy Dorsey Orchestra,
with vocals by Bob Eberly and Helen O’Connell)(Male singer)
Tangerine,
She is all they claim
With her eyes of night and lips as bright as flame
Tangerine,
When she dances by
Senoritas stare and caballeros sigh
And I’ve seen
Toasts to Tangerine
Raised in every bar across the Argentine
Yes, she has them all on the run
But her heart belongs to just one
Her heart belongs to Tangerine(Female singer)
Tangerine,
She is all they say
With mascara’d eye and chapeaux by Daché.
Tangerine,
With her lips of flame
If the color keeps, Louis Philippe’s to blame.
And I’ve seen
Clothes on Tangerine
Where the label says “From Macy’s Mezzanine.”
Yes, she’s got the guys in a whirl
But she’s only fooling one girl
She’s only fooling Tangerine!
Nance says
Perfection. A favorite song, nicely performed, and a favorite poet/author.
At my house, in addition to big band, it was show tunes from big Broadway hits: Camelot, Westside Story, etc. When I finally started buying music for myself, there were 45’s by the usual bebop suspects for dance parties at our house, but the big bucks went for jazz. Brubeck, Herbie Mann, Thelonious Monk. These choices seemed peculiar to my parents, but just about everything I did after age 12 struck them the same way. I loved my jazz AND those show tunes.
marta says
I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone who grew up when and where you did say they came later to those Liverpuddlians.
When I was growing up, everyone (meaning as far as I knew) liked Journey, REO Speedwagon, and Van Halen. I have NEVER come around to them ever. I liked Prince, The Cure, and The Psychedelic Furs…and very few friends to commiserate with.
Do we ever get over the music from our teen years?
s.o.m.e.one's brudder says
@marta – and I bet even fewer got there AFTER going through the Tijuana Brass or Baja Marimba Band. To say that it was curious to hear those sounds in a suburban NJ life in the 60’s, even to the youngest of the household is a fairly decided understatement. And yes, he’s spot on about the basement laundry room whistling. As John was my older brother, I devotedly ‘knew’ that he had an insight that escaped my novice ears. However, even with Tangerine, I’m not sure that I’ve grasped the subtlety and nuance. I do wonder what he whistles in the laundry today? Guess I’ll have to reach out to ‘the missus’ for that clarity.
John says
marta: The Beatles revelation — shocking, isn’t it? I can’t tell you how many times I’ve yielded to the temptation to just go along with people’s natural assumption: Oh, of course you always liked that great music back then — Beatles, Stones, Hendrix…
Part of the problem was that I just wasn’t listening very carefully. Our hi-fi (as I mentioned) but also our car radio never got tuned to Philadelphia rock-and-roll stations on AM (WFIL, WIBG), and forget FM. Closest we came to that was WIP, which in between talk shows might play (say) Dusty Springfield or somebody like that. A shame, because Philly radio really was great.
And I was just an insular personality in general. (Still am, in some ways.) By going away to a good college where I knew no one at all, luckily (and utterly inadvertently), I broke from that behavior pattern — especially in music and movies. One of my freshman suitemates had been at Woodstock; another one introduced me to Roger Altman’s films; and my own roommate played Ten Years After with about the same consistency as I’d reached for the next TJB album. My first real rock album was Crosby, Stills, and Nash — and my second, the White Album.
I don’t know what the hell s.o.m.e.one’s brudder, down there, is talking about. I never understood his Pink Floyd and Led Zeppelin things, either.
John says
Nance: We got more than our share of show tunes, too, but most of that was courtesy of the younger of my two sisters. Because she had no seniority, except to my kid brother, I always imagined that her taste didn’t count. As I recently told her, it took me many years — decades — to appreciate the brilliant music and lyrics of My Fair Lady.
Really, I was such a dolt about some stuff.
Brubeck, Mann, Miles Davis, et al. — no one I knew listened to them. I had to pick them up on my own.
Regarding (non-Big Band) jazz, show tunes, and classic rock, I sometimes wonder in what ways I’d have turned out differently (I’m sure it would have been differently) if I’d just paid attention to music sooner.
Ashleigh Burroughs says
Come on down to Tucson, JES, and we’ll show you some real mariachi trumpeting. Herb et al were fine, but Luz de la Luna…. ahhhhhhhh
a/b
John says
a/b: I love your infectious enthusiasm for your adopted hometown. So many people move to a place, fall in love with it, and for the rest of their lives grumble about how all the newcomers annoy them. :)
I’m guessing this is the troupe you speak of:
You’re right: I can’t see HA and the TJB doing this!
Froog says
Another unexpected point of contact! My dad was a huge Herb Alpert fan, and had all of the Tijuana Brass albums, I think. I particularly remember the rather naughty album sleeve of Whipped Cream & Other Delights! Their Christmas Album was a particular favourite. There’s something about that jaunty – but at times slightly mournful – horn sound that brings memories of childhood Christmases flooding back.
I turned up some Herb Alpert videos here.
John says
Froog: I won’t say everybody remembers that Whipped Cream..album cover. But anybody who saw it is unlikely to forget it.
For the innocents among my readers, if there are still any:
You might be interested in this recent interview at the Performing Songwriters site — model Dolores Erickson talks about shooting that cover:
Heh.
Jayne says
You did your own laundry?! I’m going to have to have my son read this. Jazz was a staple as far back as I can remember–Alpert being a part of it, of course. And all the Louis. My mom still has all the old LPs. That and Lenny Bruce.
Love me that mariachi sound! I did an FNF on Calexico back in October. How my dad would have loved them. Arriba!
John says
Jayne: Laundry — I know. All credit to Mom for her early training; ditto ironing. I don’t think I whistle(d) while ironing, though. And I still do my own laundry and ironing. Not often enough, mind you. :)
Took me a long time to cotton to jazz in general; I’m pretty sure Miles Davis’s Bitch’s Brew was my first non-Big Band jazz album.
How funny that your mom has Lenny Bruce albums. My mother, I think, would keel over if she ever listened to more than 60 seconds of an L.B. performance!
…and, because Jayne was too modest to lay it out there herself, here’s her Calexico post for those still following the conversation.