Okay, this is an odd one to pick up on a random April morning without any known external stimuli:
The song was recorded before I was born, but my grandfather had the record, which is where I heard it first. Both of my grandfathers loved music, and it sums up their personalities to some extent to note that one was a big fan of “Hee Haw” while the other rarely missed an episode of “The Lawrence Welk Show.”
“The Lonely Bull” record owner was the “Hee Haw” man. He was a native Floridian, and as a young soldier, he took part in the D-Day invasion, nearly froze to death in the Battle of the Bulge and eventually returned to sunny Florida unscathed, at least on the outside.
He was an uncommonly kind man who was an indulgent husband, father and grandfather. He married a woman who balanced out those traits by being a legendary hard-ass.
Anyway, “The Lonely Bull,” ladies and gents: mysterious earworm of the week so far. Open thread!
satby
Great, I remember when that was a current play on the AM radio. Way to make me feel old.
mrmoshpotato
I finally gave in to the mashups YouTube kept pushing on me.
I give you – SLAY-52s – Raining Lobsters
raven
Herb Alpert & Hugh Masekela – Skokiaan
debbie
My dad liked Herb Alpert, so yeah, part of my childhood.
Geminid
I was puttering around, hummimg “Amazing Grace,” and it turned into Tanya Tucker’s “Delta Dawn.” I thought, well, that was some crafty songwriting.
raven
and right on that youtube page
“Love Can Make You Happy” released in April 1969, reached over one million sales on July 15 of that year and was awarded a gold record by the R.I.A.A., Written by band member and singer Jack Sigler, Jr., the clip here is from the film, Fireball Jungle.
Baud
That’s a fine looking bull. The music was perfect.
Betty Cracker
Queen Elizabeth turns 94 today!
;
PST
When I was in junior high, in the mid-sixties, some friends and I formed a band to play Tijuana Brass covers. Why? I don’t know. It seems like a strange idea now. But we called ourselves the Marijuana Brass and got away with it, even playing in school talent shows and the like. Those were innocent times.
Baud
@Betty Cracker:
I hope she don’t die before there’s a vaccine. She deserves a big send off.
Betty Cracker
@Baud: I think her mom lived to be 100 and something, and the Queen seems to be mentally sharp and in good health, so I like her chances. I hope she lives long enough to decline an invitation to attend Trump’s funeral.
WereBear
And that she has no end of shade-throwing brooches to wear.
Rob
Last week my wife and I heard a version of “The Lonely Bull”, or else we heard a song sampling it, on either kexp.org or wfmu.org. She remembered the song, I didn’t. (And obviously I can’t remember much about it, now.) It’s a lovely song.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
The GEICO commercial with the RATT infestation cracks me up – I never liked that song, and now can’t get it out of my head.
OzarkHillbilly
@raven: A Taste of Honey..
John S.
I have multiple Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass albums on my playlists, even though I am way too young for such fare. So many good and easily recognizable tunes.
For me, it was a gateway ear worm to other classic ensemble bands like Sergio Mendes and Bert Kaempfert. And if you’re not careful, you can end up down a dark path listening to exotica from Martin Denny and Les Baxter.
debbie
@WereBear:
Gotta love those brooches!
John S.
@OzarkHillbilly: Whipped Cream & Other Delights is a terrific album! Going Places is really good, too. They always had such campy album art.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
Can we talk about these medication commercials and the futility of announcing side effects?
My favorite is the one for Otezla, where the kinda lumpy dude is getting into the pool, confident that his plaque psoriasis won’t show, all as the announcer is describing potential explosive diarrhea.
As he swims toward a couple of the women, they move aside, I assume to avoid the spreading cloud behind him.
debbie
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:
Most of them seem to list death as the first side effect, which would put me off taking any of them.
Betty Cracker
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: Ha! I despise pharma ads of all kinds, but I especially resented having to explain erectile dysfunction to my six-year-old daughter back in the day when we were just trying to watch a damned football game.
Baud
@Betty Cracker:
Funny how the “think of the children” crowd didn’t fight hard on that issue.
OzarkHillbilly
@John S.: My favorite HA & TB album is South of the Border, but Whipped Cream is a close 2nd..
mrmoshpotato
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: Sure, but I’d rather talk about Cheating Death with Dr. Stephen T. Colbert DFA.
mrmoshpotato
@debbie: Side effects may include death, getting tackled by a tuna, slapped with a swordfish, boneitis, explosive platypus or uncontrollable dancing from squirrels in your pants.
Mousebumples
Fyi to anyone wanting some of Alain’s sourdough starter, there’s details on how to request some , officially , in that thread. I’m on my phone so linking the thread is more time consuming than I can manage for now , but I’m not sure who is all keeping up on the comments of that old thread …
mrmoshpotato
@Betty Cracker: LOL
Salty Sam
My parents were big Herb Alpert fans. I loved those albums myself, and still set up playlists on Spotify that include his work.
As a young teenager, I struggled with the confusing feelings in my body whenever I gazed (longingly) at the album “Whipped Cream And Other Delights”, with that gorgeous, dark haired woman clad only in mounds of whipped cream, giving me that shouldering look…
Whew, excuse me, I’ll be back later…
PST
@OzarkHillbilly: Whipped Cream was certainly the best album cover.
Bruuuuce
@Betty Cracker: Your story reminded me of this tweet, which was making the rounds on FB yesterday:
Salty Sam
@Salty Sam: ETA: SMOULDERING, not shouldering. Fuck you AutoCorrect!
OzarkHillbilly
Today, from The Dept of Unintended Consequences: Coronavirus-driven CO2 shortage threatens US food and water supply, officials say
Ooopps.
Baud
@OzarkHillbilly:
I should roll some more coal.
OzarkHillbilly
@Salty Sam:I never struggled with those feelings in my body, wasn’t confused at all. :-)
OzarkHillbilly
@Salty Sam: Once while at Cascades de Micos I got that smouldering look from a young Mexican beauty which led to an evening of comedic errors ending in a very lonely hammock stretched between 2 trees in a cow pasture.
sigh…
I’ll never forget that look.
hueyplong
Still have the Whipped Cream album, uh, cover. Any straight male my age who denies knowledge of it is a liar of Trumpian proportions.
Also recall Love Can Make You Happy in AM radio rotation. That one I had forgotten.
Odd, but Herb Alpert’s sound evokes the 60s every bit as effectively as do the opening notes of Satisfaction.
arrieve
As a teenager I was too embarrassed to admit how much I loved Herb Albert singing “This Guy’s in Love with You.” It was so not cool. But oh so sexy.
Hoodie
My parents had a collection of Herb Alpert on eight-track, an underrated medium. It was the sound track when they sold everything, bought an Airstream trailer, packed me and my sister up and embarked on an epic, troubled journey from Spokane WA, down the Pacific coast and then back east, ending at my grandfather’s place in TN, where they tried to build back their lives. Whenever I hear that, it takes me back to those days. Very bittersweet.
oldster
Not born in ’62??
Why am I hanging around with these infants….
Yup, Herb Alpert could play the horn and sing the hell out of a Burt Bacharach song (though he was no Dionne Warwick).
He was also the “A” in A&M Records:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/A%26M_Records
Dorothy A. Winsor
@OzarkHillbilly: Well, crap. I wish I had confidence that the administration would be on top of this. But, you know, Trump.
tom
Alpert is still playing into his 80s. This is (I think) a delightful version of Puttin On the Ritz he put out 5 years ago
ETA: Notice the bus driver, barber, and bartender.
Tom Streeter
@oldster: I wasn’t born in ‘62. I waited until ‘63.
Pretty sure I wore the grooves off my Herb Alpert albums. “Mine” in that my parents bought them, but I absconded with them.
WaterGirl
@Mousebumples:
FYI, the sourdough thread is in the sidebar for easy access
It’s in the Calling All Jackals section on the right. (on mobile, it’s at the bottom, after comments.)
Bob7094
I remember that song being sung by Petula Clarke. It began “J’avais le soleil dans les yeux,” I don’t remember any more.
RAM
I was, and still am, very much into instrumentals when I was a teen. Liked “The Lonely Bull,” “The Lonely Surfer” (lots of loneliness in the 60s, I guess), “Telstar,” “A Taste of Honey,” “Green Onions,” “Stranger on the Shore,” and others too numerous to mention.
Just One More Canuck
my mom loved Herb Alpert
After listening to it, youtube sent me down a rabbit hole that included Rumble, Misirlou and the theme from Endless Summer (great movie about surfing)
laura
@RAM: Cast your fate to the wind!
Uncle Cosmo
@Salty Sam: Remember to wash your
hands before you put your fingers on this thread again…Uncle Cosmo
@arrieve:
Long ago & far away….
frosty
@John S.: My folks had a bunch of Herb Alpert albums. Whipped Cream had the best cover!
frosty
@RAM: A few years ago I found the singles I’d bought growing up. Like you, lots of surf instrumentals: Out of Limits / Marketts and Penetration / Pyramids are two that I remember.
Origuy
I played trumpet in junior high band. I think The Lonely Bull was one of the pieces we played. I know I used to listen to Herb Alpert
ETA. The band director’s name was Jerry Lewis. He used to play Spike Mulligan records during class sometimes.
MoxieM
Herb Alpert! I can’t be the only one who did that weird kind-of-like-jump rope, only with long bamboo (?) poles inside on gym days when it was raining. They always used Herb Alpert music. Sounds extremely perverse put down in writing, but I swear they did it both in my suburban NY and my suburban Boston grade schools…
Spinoza Is My Co-pilot
Great track for an earworm, Betty! Though most of the music I enjoyed best (i.e., bought the albums) in my “growing up” years of the 60s and early 70s was stuff like Pink Floyd and Fever Tree and King Crimson and Mahavishnu Orchestra (and Beatles, natch) I also had “Whipped Cream” and “Going Places” by HA & TB and played them so much on the stereo that they wore out.
These days I’m much more into contemporary stuff like witch house and black metal and dark techno and electropop than anything from days of yore, but I’ll still occasionally listen to some of my digital copies of Tijuana Brass (more so than pretty much any other music from my misspent youth). Nostalgia’s seldom my thing, but that’ll do it.
piratedan
i was always partial to their version of South of the Border…. it always evokes a certain dreamlike quality about it, in a kind of Disney-esque exotic destination kind of way.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JjEPX_WHNXY
Ben Cisco
This came out the year I was born. LP is still in the old stereo at Mama Cisco’s place.
Anybody have a modern turntable? Is it worth the trouble?
Comrade Colette Collaboratrice
@tom:
Not to mention the gorilla.
I remember the Whipped Cream album cover soooooo well … because as a very little girl, seeing it in my parents’ record collection, I thought it looked really weird and uncomfortable to be covered in all that whipped cream, and I couldn’t figure out why that lady seemed to like it!
Mohagan
A family I babysat for while in junior high school had all the TB albums and I can remember playing them after the kid had gone to bed. This was 1962- 1964.
zonker
Mrs. Cracker, I am a longtime reader of this site and of your take on things. I want to thank you for making me laugh out loud with “married a woman who balanced out those traits by being a legendary hard ass”! Reminded me of my Grandmother here in southern WV. Miss her, my Mom, and my Aunts. Tough broads, all of them!
mario
Herb Alpert is the boss.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herb_Alpert