Producers: Herb Alpert and Jerry Moss
Track listing: Tijuana Taxi / I’m Getting Sentimental Over You / More and More Amor / Spanish Flea / Mae / 3rd Man Theme / Walk, Don’t Run / Felicia / And the Angels Sing / Cinco de Mayo /A Walk in the Black Forest / Zorba the Greek
March 5, 1966
6 weeks, nonconsecutive
Herb Alpert and A&M Records were so hot by the spring of 1968 that the artist and label scored their second Number One album by knocking out their first, as Going Places dethroned Whipped Cream & Other Delights. Although Whipped Cream had been temporarily displaced for six consecutive weeks by no less a force than the Beatles’ Rubber Soul, the album rebounded back to Number One for two weeks before being topped by Going Places.
While Going Places didn’t have the immediate impact of Whipped Cream‘s famed cover art — Whipped Cream cover girl Dolores Erickson was in the latter stages of pregnancy and was unable to reprise her role — it did offer more of Alpert’s trademark sound, which some compared to mariachi music.
“I never listened to mariachi music,” Alpert says. “I was just trying to make the music, for the most part, which was just coming out of me. It had a Latin flavor, probably because I was using some percussion instruments in a non-traditional way. Using the trumpet and having the harmonies sometimes gave one the feeling of that Mexican-flavored music, but it was never a direct attempt on my part. I’m a jazz musician at heart and I tried to be spontaneous and real and respond to what I was feeling.”
Unlike Whipped Cream, Going Places had no thematic thread running through the material. In fact, “3rd Man Theme” first appeared as the B-side of “Taste of Honey,” from Whipped Cream, but it too charted, reaching number 47 in October 1965. Alpert’s arrangement of the film theme, which was a Number One hit in 1950 for Anton Karas, was inspired by another Gold Star Recording Studio regular, Phil Spector.
“I was caught up in the wall of sound Phil Spector was caught up in doing,” says Alpert. “I thought that’s what I need, I need some heavier artillery, so I got two drummers and seven or eight guitar players, and I loaded up the studio, thinking that would be the answer.”
Alpert’s cover version of the the film Zorba the Greek became album’s biggest hit, reaching number 11 in February 1966. “I knew that was a great song, but with the first recording I didn’t feel we captured the spirit of composition, so we attempted it three different times,” he says. “The last time was at Radio Recorders. The combination of that recording and Larry Levine’s excellent engineering put that one over the top.”
Although it only reached number 27, “Spanish Flea” is one of the best-known Tijuana Brass tracks. It was written by Julius Wechter, who played marimba on several of the group’s songs and recorded with labelmates the Baja Marimba Band. When The Dating Game made its debut in October 1966 on ABC-TV, the song was adopted as its theme, which was okay with Alpert. “It was used the right kind of humor,” he says.
THE TOP FIVE
Week of March 5, 1966
1. Going Places, Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass
2. Whipped Cream & Other Delights, Herb Alpert’s Tijuana Brass
3. Rubber Soul, The Beatles
4. The Sound of Music, Soundtrack
5. September of My Years, Frank Sinatra