Anything Goes [Digipak]

Performer: Herb Alpert
Engineer: Mike Harrison; Bill Schnee; Mike Harrison
Producer: Herb Alpert; Lani Hall; Herb Alpert; Lani Hall
Distributor: UMG

Notes: Personnel: Herb Alpert (vocals, trumpet); Lani Hall (vocals); Bill Cantos (piano, keyboards, background vocals); Hussain Jiffry, Hussain Jiffry (electric bass); Michael Shapiro (drums, percussion). Audio Mixer: Bill Schnee. Recording information: Anthology, San Diego, CA; Blues Alley, Washington D.C.; Jazz Alley, Seattle, WA; Joe's Pub, New York, NY; Napa Valley Opera House, Napa Valley, CA; Red Cat, Los Angeles, CA; Scullers, Boston, MA; Yoshi's, San Francisco, CA. Photographers: Chris Stoehr; Chris Jensen; Chris Stoehr; Gerry Wersh; Chris Jensen. Arrangers: Hussain Jiffry; Hussain Jiffry; Herb Alpert; Lani Hall; Michael Shapiro; Bill Cantos. Herb Alpert has never really embraced his inner jazzman over the course of an entire album before; the closest he came was 1992's MIDNIGHT SUN, ultimately a highly controlled cocoon of a recording. But LIVE: ANYTHING GOES, at long last, is it, and it represents a string of firsts for the protean trumpeter--his first truly straight-ahead jazz project, his first all-new album of any kind in ten years, his first complete album with his wife, singer Lani Hall (who gets co-billing), and his first released by a label which he did not co-own. The concept grew out of a series of live dates that he and Hall played in various cities, from which these tracks were assembled. Despite some apparent lightly applied overdubs, it remains an intimate small group album of mostly standards, the kind of thing one might run across at Vibrato--Alpert's jazz club in the hills above Los Angeles. Hall appears in tandem with Alpert on nine of the 14 tracks--with Alpert taking five for himself--which guarantees an additional unique layer of intimacy as the trumpet man wraps his pithy horn lovingly around Hall's voice. Hall has kept her Portuguese in gear, doing well by Ivan Lins' "Dinorah, Dinorah" and the rapid-fire syllables of "Para-Raio." She adopts a dark, dusky tone on "That Old Black Magic," and for "Let's Face the Music And Dance," she takes on an air of desperation, focusing on the words, "there may be trouble ahead." Still in good shape in his seventies, Alpert retains the marcato bravado of the Tijuana Brass days and the more recent, terse, moody, muted tones of a Miles accolade; in "It's Only a Paper Moon," these two personas go mano a mano rather humorously. "The Trolley Song," done at an unusually lazy, loping pace by the Tijuana Brass more than four decades before, is taken at a more traditionally quick, Latin-accented tempo here, and this is the third time around for "I've Grown Accustomed to Your Face" -- now a casual vocal showcase for Alpert with a witty coda that sneaks in a horn lick from "This Guy's in Love with You." The adept backup trio of Bill Cantos on keyboards -- who comes up with a few nifty quotes himself -- Hussain Jiffry on electric bass, and Michael Shapiro on drums and Latin percussion goes down agreeably. This is a classy, welcome return to album-making for Alpert, and a good fit for Concord's adult-oriented roster.

A fine trumpet player, hit-making bandleader, and co-founder of A&M records and later Almo Sounds (both with Jerry Moss), Herb Alpert found his greatest success as an artist during the 1960s. With his band the Tijuana Brass, Alpert created a unique easy-listening style (dubbed "Amerachi") that mixed elements of rock, swing, cool jazz, and pop, all with a distinctive Mexican/Mariachi tinge. His records sold millions of copies and were extremely influential to the '90s lounge revival.

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