"By late 1966, it seemed as if every TV commercial and every pop arranger had latched onto the Herb Alpert "Ameriachi" sound. S.R.O. (Standing Room Only), referring to the Tijuana Brass' string of sold-out concerts, is an accurate title, for this LP is about a seven-piece band loaded with experienced jazzers who groove and swing together to a greater degree than on their previous albums. Sure, the arrangements don't allow much room for spontaneity, but they still sound fresh and uninhibited, and Alpert often allows the flavor of jazz to come through more clearly. Indeed, 2 of the album's 3 hits, "The Work Song" and "Flamingo," are jazz tunes and the third, "Mame," gets a Dixieland treatment a la Louis Armstrong, with Alpert singing one verse. The sleeping gem of the record is guitarist John Pisano's "Freight Train Joe," a wistfully evocative tune that won't quit the memory, and the mournful Alpert/Pisano/Nick Ceroli tune "For Carlos" later became Wes Montgomery's "Wind Song"." (Richard S. Ginell, Allmusic)
Vele mensen zullen trompettist Herb Alpert vooral kennen van zijn ensemble Tijuana Brass, waarmee hij in de jaren '60 easy listening-hits scoorde als "Spanish Flea". Vergeet niet dat hij ook een prima jazztrompettist is, die wel aan de 'smooth'-kant van het genre opereert. In 1996 had hij juist een smooth jazz-album voor het Verve-label gemaakt in de vorm van "Second Wind". Hij ging vervolgens op tournee met de band van toetsenist Jeff Lorber. Die combi deed ook het Montreux Jazz Festival aan. Daar combineerde hij nieuw materiaal met zijn uitvoeringen van de standard "My Funny Valentine" (natuurlijk geënt op Chet Bakers cool jazz-trompetversie) en de Burt Bacharach/Hal David-evergreen "This Guy's In Love With You". Aardig is, dat hij ook enkele van zijn sxitiessuccessen in een nieuw, soms bijna onherkenbaar smoothjazz-arrangement heeft gegoten.
"Time and further exposure has revealed this record's homey charms, which no doubt is one reason why it continues to be available on CD where other TJB best-sellers have fallen by the wayside." (Allmusic).
"The cover art of Herb Alpert's Ninth is hilarious -- a bust of grim old Beethoven wearing a Herb Alpert sweatshirt, a parody of the pop icon fad going around at the time and maybe a comment on the rock world's newfound pretensions in the wake of the Beatles' "Sgt. Pepper". In any case, the album does introduce some highbrow pretensions of sorts to Alpert's Ameriachi sound -- some very subtly applied strands of strings on several numbers and a madcap, multi-sectioned fantasy of tunes from Bizet's Carmen that is full of in-jokes from the opera and the TJB's hits. Alpert is also quite aware of the brave new world around him; he does a spare, lazy, yet entirely novel-sounding cover version of Sgt. Pepper's "With a Little Help from My Friends" and gives the Supremes' "The Happening" a bouncy workout. The TJB still churns out the Latin American rhythms, but sometimes with a shade less exuberance." (Richard S. Ginell, Allmusic)
"For one week in June 1967, this album was able to break the Monkees' 31-week hammerlock on the number one slot on the US charts -- just two weeks before the Beatles' "Sgt. Pepper" took over and changed the world. This shows, lest you forget -- and many have -- just how popular Herb Alpert & the Tijuana Brass were, still spanning the generations during the Summer of Love, still putting out records as fresh and musical and downright joyous as this one. Alpert was on a roll; everything he tried in the TJB's heyday seemed to work. The lesser-known tunes back-loaded on side two are a string of pearls -- John Pisano's appropriately titled bossa nova "The Charmer," Roger Nichols' tense "Treasure of San Miguel," Ervan Coleman's catchy "Miss Frenchy Brown." Finally, Alpert takes a flyer and concludes the album with an extravagant Burt Bacharach orchestration of his theme from the film Casino Royale -- an artifact of '60s pop culture, to be sure, but still a perfectly structured record." (Richard S. Ginell, Allmusic)
"With this album, Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass settle into their hitmaking groove, the once strikingly eclectic elements of Dixieland, pop, rock, and mariachi becoming more smoothly integrated within Alpert's infectious "Ameriachi" blend. They sound more like a band now; along with Alpert's trumpet sound, we can recognize jazzman John Pisano's distinctive rhythm guitar, Lou Pagani's piano, the droll Bob Edmondson's dulcet trombone, etc. Pisano, who debuted as a composer on Going Places, comes up with a memorably whistleable song "So What's New," and the rest of Alpert's songwriting brigade (Ervan Coleman, Julius Wechter and Sol Lake) chime in with some lively, catchy tunes. There is also an assortment of pop, film, and Broadway standards of the day, all impeccably arranged by Alpert, whose production instincts grew sharper and surer with every release. Result: another hugely entertaining hit LP, one that stayed at number one longer than any other TJB album (nine weeks)." (Richard S. Ginell, Allmusic)
"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)
Album uit 1997.
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