"What Now My Love" by Herb Alpert & the Tijuana Brass (April, 1965)

Dad's Take:

Herb Alpert & the Tijuana Brass are just plain fun. With their combination of pop, jazz, and Latin rhythms, with an occasional bit of folk music thrown in for good measure, all impeccably produced with enjoyable (and sometimes amazing) arrangements, they are the perfect background music for a sixties-style cocktail party.

Alpert continued his career at least through the seventies when he had a (no, really) disco hit or two (his 1979 "Rise" won a Grammy and was later sampled by rapper Notorious B.I.G.), but this is his classic sound. It's not the record Mom had when I was a kid (at least I don't remember this one), but Alpert was a big part of my childhood musical memories. OK, not a big big part, but I remember hearing him often.

Alpert won six Grammies with the Tijuana Brass, and in 1966 they outsold the Beatles. They were huge. Even now, they are fun to listen to once in a while, mostly due to the strength of the arrangements. The sound might be dated and a bit cheesy, but I like cheese and some of those arrangements still amaze.

Brad's Take:


I really like the combination of the Latin backing music by the Tijuana Brass with Herb's poppy trumpet melodies that he plays over it. It's fun and pretty unique. The music makes me want to dance around with a cheesy grin on my face. 

What Now My Love is a roller coaster ride though. There are a couple fast songs, then a couple slow songs, then a couple fast ones again. The album slows down quite a bit with the Broadway Musical sounding "It Was A Very Good Year." This song felt kind of empty to me. I feel like I should have been watching a scene being acted out while the song should have just been in the background, if that makes sense. It just feels like a soundtrack kind of song to me.

I felt this way with a few of the other songs on this album. When I did a quick Wikipedia search to learn more about Herb and this record, I discovered that some of these songs have indeed were Broadway songs and some were even used for American TV shows, such as the game show The Face Is Familiar. (I don't know what that is either, don't worry.)

The one song that I recognized was "If I Were A Rich Man," which was originally written for the musical Fiddler On The Roof, but I wouldn't know anything about that. Wikipedia helped me out with that fun fact, as well. I couldn't quite pinpoint where I'd heard the song before though until the chorus repeated. Then, I remembered it was sampled by Gwen Stefani and Eve in their hit song "Rich Girl" that came out in 2004.

All in all, What Now My Love doesn't sound much different than some of the other albums we've already reviewed, such as Jazz Samba by Stan Getz and Charlie Byrd. The mix of Latin music and jazz isn't all that new here. It was a really fun listen, but I can see myself forgetting about it pretty quickly, unfortunately.