First off, please accept my apologies for being gone last week unannounced; some unexpected work in the “real world” interfered…
I was out driving recently and heard a teaser on NPR for an upcoming story on remixed versions of Herb Alpert and Sergio Mendez music. Didn’t get a chance to hear the story at the time, but looked it up on line later. I admit I had serious reservations/trepidation about the entire idea of remixed versions of these classics, but I couldn’t not listen to the story, given my history with Mr. A.. The clips sounded intriguing, as least for the Alpert album, “Rewhipped,” a reworking of all the tunes in the 1965 Tijuana Brass hit album “Whipped Cream and Other Delights” (the Mendez project did less for me, but hey, you might like it just fine – tell me below if you do and why).
For the under-40 set, the original album that this album is a riff on is an icon of the era – It spent eight weeks at No. 1 and more than a year in the Top 10. Eventually, it would spend almost three years in the Top 40. The single “A Taste of Honey” peaked at #7, and the title track “Whipped Cream” was used as the theme for the TV show “The Dating Game.”
Alpert played all the trumpet parts in the original album, sometimes overdubbing multiple times, so it’s not surprising to hear him add new trumpet tracks on this album. While he sounds great on these new tracks, the mood is more mellow, the colors less sunny – on some tracks he riffs off the old phrases in totally different directions, sounding almost like Miles in his “modal” period.
A couple of days later I was in the big-chain-bookstore-with-coffee-shop and found the CD. Scanned it into the player, and tried out the tracks. Well, a pleasant surprise! This stuff sounded really interesting. So I got it, and have been playing it all week going to and from work whenever NPR had a story that didn’t pique my interest. Collecting impressions. So here we go:
I think what I like about this album, as compared to the (admittedly few) remix efforts I’ve heard is that it is totally respectful towards its source material. You may think me old fashioned, but I find the idea of taking five seconds of, say, Miles or Coltrane and working it into some gangsta rap the artistic equivalent of shoplifting. This album is different. While it certainly does creative things with the original material, it’s more like the original soundtrack is an instrument unto itself, being played alongside the new trumpet tracks, the rhythm line (which was only too intense for me on a couple of tracks), and the various other studio effects.
An interesting effect on “A Taste of Honey” was a little tickety-clickety sound that repeats at just the right interval to remind you, amusingly, of some badly scratched vinyl. Several of the tunes are playful like that; the next tune, “Green Peppers,” is cut, diced and respliced and – if you listen carefully – the three note descending theme of “Tangerine” is worked in on the new horn solo. “Peanuts” and “El Garbanzo” become a surreal, LSD-laced fiesta. “Ladyfingers” is now languid, dreamy in its reworked incarnation. “Lollipops and Roses” is now certainly funkier, perhaps reflecting its past use on “The Dating Game” when we got to meet the contestants. “Bittersweet Samba” is still sunny, despite its name, but maybe the wattage is turned down just a tad [The entire original Whipped Cream album was so sunny you needed sunscreen to play it – perhaps that’s why it was so popular, reflecting the pre-Vietnam zeitgeist]. On the final track, “Butterball” the mood has been totally changed. The new tracks move the whole piece into a minor key, and with a recoded voice that comes in from nowhere, sounding like it’s from the days of Edison, saying “I am feeling well, and hope to hear the same from you” and “To be, or not to be; that is the question,” it almost is a meditation on the aging of the Boomer generation. A much more substantial piece of music than the original tune, unless you like living in the sunshiny world of complete denial.
There are two tunes where it’s really interesting to consider the arc over which the melody and presentation evolved from its original incarnation, to its 1965 TJB version, to the present version. One of these is “Love Potion #9,” the other is “Lemon Tree.”
“Love Potion #9” was originally recorded in 1959 by the Clovers (in fact, it was their last hit), a group with roots going back to rhythm and blues that first started recording in 1950.
Love Potion #9
I took my troubles down to Madame Rue
You know that gypsy with the gold-capped tooth
She’s got a pad down on Thirty-Fourth and Vine
Sellin’ little bottles of Love Potion Number NineI told her that I was a flop with chics
I’ve been this way since 1956
She looked at my palm and she made a magic sign
She said “What you need is Love Potion Number Nine”She bent down and turned around and gave me a wink
She said “I’m gonna make it up right here in the sink”
It smelled like turpentine, it looked like Indian ink
I held my nose, I closed my eyes, I took a drinkI didn’t know if it was day or night
I started kissin’ everything in sight
But when I kissed a cop down on Thirty-Fourth and Vine
He broke my little bottle of Love Potion Number Nine—— guitar solo ——
I held my nose, I closed my eyes, I took a drink
I didn’t know if it was day or night
I started kissin’ everything in sight
But when I kissed a cop down on Thirty-Fourth and Vine
He broke my little bottle of Love Potion Number Nine
Love Potion Number Nine
Love Potion Number Nine
Love Potion Number Nine
In its 1965 reworking, the vocal track is gone, and the tune becomes “A fun little cheesy pseudo-stripper music number,” as one reviewer at Amazon put it. You can hear the hips swinging. In 2006, the lyrics are back in a hip-hop incarnation, and with the first two verses gone. I found it kind of amusing; Mrs. K.P. did not care for it at all…
“Lemon Tree” was originally a tune of a father’s admonition to his son about the deceptive sweetness of love, from the folk group The Kingston Trio, and later by Peter, Paul, and Mary (among others):
Lemon Tree
When I was just a lad of ten, my father said to me,
“Come here and take a lesson from the lovely lemon tree.”
“Don’t put your faith in love, my boy”, my father said to me,
“I fear you’ll find that love is like the lovely lemon tree.”Lemon tree very pretty and the lemon flower is sweet
but the fruit of the poor lemon is impossible to eat.
Lemon tree very pretty and the lemon flower is sweet
but the fruit of the poor lemon is impossible to eat.One day beneath the lemon tree, my love and I did lie
A girl so sweet that when she smiled the stars rose in the sky.
We passed that summer lost in love beneath the lemon tree
the music of her laughter hid my father’s words from me:Lemon tree very pretty and the lemon flower is sweet
but the fruit of the poor lemon is impossible to eat.
Lemon tree very pretty and the lemon flower is sweet
but the fruit of the poor lemon is impossible to eat.One day she left without a word. She took away the sun.
And in the dark she left behind, I knew what she had done.
She’d left me for another, it’s a common tale but true.
A sadder man but wiser now I sing these words to you:Lemon tree very pretty and the lemon flower is sweet
but the fruit of the poor lemon is impossible to eat.
Lemon tree very pretty and the lemon flower is sweet
but the fruit of the poor lemon is impossible to eat.
The 1965 version is pretty much straight-up; the 2006 version is decidedly more melancholy than any previous version, due to both the new trumpet lines and the additional of some “spacey” sound effects. The melody is pruned down to the chorus; just enough for you to know what the original melody is that’s being reworked… The poor tree’s been transplanted to one of those melancholy biospheres in “Silent Running.” I shouldn’t be so snarky – I thought this was one of the best songs on the album. 🙂
The artists involved in these creative efforts include Thievery Corporation, Medeski Martin & Wood, John King, Mocean Worker, DJ Foosh, Camara Kambon, Anthony Marinelli and Ozomatli.
The whole album is full of clever technical tricks, creative shifts in mood (on the whole, the album is less sunny than the 1965 original – perhaps due to the times we live in; perhaps due to Alpert himself being 71 not 31. On the other hand, it makes up for that in sophistication – multicultural, multi-viewpoint, multi-track, multiple musical themes explored in a given song, and done so more creatively. This new whipped cream isn’t “bubblegum” anymore. Highly recommended.
And, of course, we couldn’t close the discussion without acknowledging how they revisited one ff the most iconic album covers of the 1960’s. WAIT! – Not that side! The other side!! There you go. [Good help is so hard to find these days] The new version uses a bit less cream; maybe the price, like oil, has escalated in 40 years…
In case you were wondering: Whipped Cream’s cover depicted the [three months pregnant] model Dolores Erickson wearing nothing but whipped cream [actually shaving cream], and the “artwork for Rewhipped salutes this trailblazing iconography with a beguiling shot of cream-clad Guess girl Bree Condon.” Or so the press release says. Go flame them. [I guess we’re supposed to believe it’s Reddi-Whip, as there’s a reworked photo of a can visible inside the case when you remove the CD, that now cleverly says “Rewhipped” in the Reddi-whip script.] CD reviewers on line – and Mrs. K.P. – said the whipped cream looks “phony” and “computer generated.” You tell me.