The Beat Of The Brass (Herb Alpert Signature Series) (1968)

"Meant as the companion to a TV special of the same name, this album came out amid signs that Alpert's hot streak was finally beginning to run out. Not quite. Viewer requests for a new Burt Bacharach song, "This Guy's in Love with You" -- featuring an Alpert vocal -- were so strong that A&M released it as a single, which shot up to number one and took the album with it to the top op the US charts. Herb's vocal is touching in its strained naïveté; he sounds sincere, and that overrides the lush, overbearing Bacharach orchestral arrangement. The rest of the album generated an often nostalgic quality then and now; the tunes by John Pisano and Sol Lake are exquisite, and Alpert's arrangements of songs like "Thanks for the Memory" seem autumnal in quality, as if an era were about to close. The band still has the ability to groove; the vamp on Julius Wechter's bossa nova "Panama," with Wechter's jazzy vibes and Pisano's strong rhythm guitar, could have been stretched to half an hour." (Richars S. Ginell, Allmusic)