| This thread about Herb led me back to some old ideas. My original trumpet idol when I was in seventh and eighth grade was Herb Alpert and I got all the Tijuana Brass records. My first gig where I actually made money was with a Herb Alpert cover band. It started when one Xmas I got a 45 with Taste of Honey and Third Man Theme. I haven't heard those things in nearly 40 years, so I went to iTunes tonight and downloaded maybe a dozen random tracks to see what they sounded like. Funny, some tunes I remembered really well and some I had no memory of whatsoever. The best thing I can say about Herb's trumpet playing is that he was in tune and projected some personality, even though he was pretty limited technically. Really pop stuff, well-crafted if insipid. It's really not mariachi at all, except for the trumpet in thirds thing, the marimbas remind me of Veracruz and Chiapas, the Mexican music I much prefer to the Guadalajara mariachi tradition. One thing that impressed me, Nick Cerolli was a hell of a drummer. I'm sure Bob Edmondson and Tonni Kalish and the guys in the band grinned through it all, took the big paychecks and went home happy. From Herb Alpert I moved to Blood, Sweat and Tears, then Miles Davis and when I saw Miles at the age of seventeen in 1971 at the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis I knew what I wanted to do with my life even though it would take another four years to really jump in with both feet.
A nice stroll down memory lane.......
Michael McLaughlin
"Not the intensity but the duration of high feelings makes high men." Nietzsche
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Chicago MM |