Budget Tijuana Brass Bonanza - The Phony Baloney Bull - Segunda Parte (Part Two, for gringos)

Time flies when you’re having fun! Since I posted Budget Tijuana Brass Bonanza in September of 2021, I have added 15 more ersatz Tijuana Brass albums to our collection so it’s time for an update. I was contacted by Jorge Spahn last year about joining him and a few others to do a broadcast he called Mexploitation. The show features my wife and fellow Ding Dong Devil, Nepheria; another Ding Dong Devil alum, Caltiki; Senor Spahn, as Whorehay; and me using my DDD persona, Rama Lama. The show was a blast! And it was right up my alley!! You can check it out here: RADIO SHOW My 15 minutes were devoted to five album tracks, three of which are records I had picked up after publishing the original Devine Fancy article. If you like what you hear, check out other shows from Jorge’s Radio Free Bakersfield. My sombrero is off to my longtime buddy and musical cohort for including me, Julia and Brent and for starting a fire under my serape to share some insights about a few more thrift store scores. 

Two of the three recent acquisitions I used as Mexploitation fodder were by groups I already had albums from. “Double Shot” by the Mariachi Brass featuring Chet Baker is stunning on so many levels, the most obvious, of course, being that it’s Chet Baker noodling for all he’s worth on some infectious pop good time tunes. “Theme from Thunderball” by the Mexicali Brass is another fine album that stretches the Tijuana Brass formula to include a James Bond vibe. It’s not a consistent theme throughout, mind you (they do “Shine on Harvest Moon,” for Pete’s sake!), but the noir touch is there on enough material to warrant using “Thunderball” as the title piece. The other Mexploitation band I hadn’t previously covered is “Brasilian Beat ‘67” by Los Brasilios and the Juan Morales Singers. This one was included because I love it so much and there is a Herb Alpert connection, sort of, if you squint hard enough. Brazil is obviously not part of Mexico, but this is a rather blatant wannabe product of Brazil ‘66, an A&M staple. Los Brasilios were probably an actual band, but there is very little info included on the cover except that someone named Alberto played the marimbas and the songs were arranged and produced by “Bugs” Bower and Joe Abend. They sound just as smoothly delicious as Brazil ’66, in my humble opinion, and it’s possible some of the songs are band originals; I guess including musician and songwriter credits was a concept that Pickwick/Design didn’t quite have a handle on. Arghh!!!

When I first started buying these cheap platters it seemed like there would be an endless stream of entities ascribed to the derivative albums. I figured a label could pick virtually any city south of the US border, tack the word “Brass” on the end and, voila!, instant product potential. But instead of the plethora of one offs I expected, I found multiple albums attributed to a fairly limited number of bands (most of which I believe are studio concoctions rather than gigging artists, but what do I know??). The following are new finds for me by bands I had already discovered.

I added yet another Mariachi Brass (Chet Baker) album to our collection, “Hats Off,” which is just as spectacularly cheesy, soulful and fun as Double Shot (mentioned above) and “A Taste of Tequila,” which I featured in the original article. “Hats Off” is not radically different than the other two Mariachi Brass albums I’ve discussed thus far, but the songs all have their own life and Chet seems to have had a wealth of jazz gravy he could add to the musical meat and potatoes that took things to new heights. The patented groove thang plays out on, “These Boots are Made for Walking,” “Spanish Harlem,” “Bang, Bang (My Baby Shot Me Dead),” “Chiquita Banana” and eight others. I’ll find the other three albums one of these days!

 I turned up a couple more Mexicali Brass discs and both of them are prime examples of the mellow Tijuana Brass sound, with attention to details that were likely to fool a parent looking to pick up one of these records for their Herb Alpert loving offspring, that they were getting the real deal. “South of the Border” has a pretty girl, a hat brim and a trumpet on the cover and borrowed its title from Tijuana Brass. These horn happy cats were not tied to one label and this one was on Living Sound which, apparently, had ties to the Longines Symphonette Society. Verry hoity toity stuff and a worthy example of “the new sound of the gay Fiesta!” The other album, “Viva,” has even more cover eye candy, including a sombrero, a serape and a full-frontal view of the ubiquitous trumpet.

The kicker is the 99 cents label with the boast, “Guaranteed Perfect.” Who could argue with that?!!!

One of our favorite local thrift stores was shuttered last year. At least we scored some treasures while we could. Julia found a boxed set one day and showed it to me. I was a little reluctant at first because the cover was a bit beat up, but eventually I succumbed to her logic: three albums of bogus brass for one dollar is a total no brainer! I already had the two Guadalajara Brass albums, although I wasn’t aware of that at the time, but I certainly didn’t have the third one. I had to pull the image of the cover of the Chihuahua Marimba Band from the internet because the box just had paper sleeves for the albums and almost no other info on the cover, the back or inside. I had hoped the record might have someone doing high-pitched yappy dog melodies, but apparently the name comes from the region in Mexico rather than the tiny pooches. All the songs reference animals, they even close the album with “Chihuahua Bash,” but no barking…Rats! Maybe next time... This is some wonderful derivative manna that Baja Marimba Band fans will dig. Someone should have done an exploito Christmas album and listed the group as the Bah Humbug Marimba Band. Hell, I’d buy it!!

 Sometime between the original article and now I fully embraced marimba based bands (as I’m sure you are beginning to suspect). This next gem is one of my favorite albums that I picked up by a group I had already covered in the original piece. “Georgie Girl and Other Music to Watch Girls by” is by Living Marimbas, whose “Mexican Joe” was my first foray. I really dig this record, which was arranged and conducted by Leo Addeo. Like a lot of these records, this one includes plenty of Baja Marimba band swagger, but there is plenty more in the lush arrangements that add to the vibe rather than distract from it. The songs include, “Patricia,” “Anna,” and “Sweet Maria.” In case you missed the subtle theme, they close the album with, “Girls!, Girls!, Girls!”

 “Hair Goes Latin” by Edmundo Ros and His Orchestra is the biggest stretch I made to include a record in this piece. If the cover wasn’t so silly I would have left it on the shelf when I was rounding up the other gems. Young hippies, nude under serapes and a couple of acoustic guitars led me to believe this was a Tijuana Brass knockoff. The lack of a trumpet should have been a red flag (even without a lonely bull gearing up to charge it). This is a mashup of standard pop orchestra, Prez Prado style Cuban jazz and notable melodies from the famed ‘60s musical.

I recently picked up a couple albums at the same thrift store of a band that was new to me. Although Diplomat Records put out at least nine LPs by this outfit, I will not be looking to round out my Monterey Brass collection. They were obviously riding Herb’s coattails, but on the two records I have, there was no attempt to replicate the faux Tijuana sound. There is a Monterrey in Mexico, but Diplomat opted for the Northern California spelling. Some of the albums take their titles from Tijuana Brass albums like the one I have, “Standing Room Only,” as well as “The Lonely Bull,” “What Now My Love,” etc., but they also went with, “Blue Hawaii,” among others. The sound is pleasant enough adult contemporary, but you will never have to check the turntable to see if you accidentally put on a real TJB record. There is nothing to distinguish the music on, “Monterey Brass Goes Country & Western Again,” from the other one I own. There was an album released between the two I featured here, but the three musicians pictured on the covers are all wearing the exact same outfits… except for the paper mache horse head.

 “Taste of Honey/Tijuana Style” by the Tornadoes is one of several albums presented here that we picked up at a Parma record store, The Current Year. A big shout out to proprietors Mike and Marie! This one has all the hallmarks of a clever knockoff: a pretty girl, a sombrero and a couple trumpets on the cover; a smattering of Tijuana Brass covers; and attention to capturing the Alpert sound throughout, even on tracks like, “Banjo Boys” and “Beatle Hair.” As is usually the case with these exploitation records, there is no info about anyone involved with this project except what you see on the front cover.

“The Big Brass of…” The American Patrol is on the Warner Brother Records label so this one has info about the musicians involved, songwriter credits, etc. It also has liner notes that spin a fanciful narration about the band being Americans, playing “Ameriachi” music by night and keeping Mariachi musicians from sneaking over the border by day. The music is a hybrid of lush orchestral pop and trumpet happy groove on “Winchester Cathedral, “Born Free” and other pop standards. The blatant Latino cash in nature of the product is hinted at in the liner notes when it is claimed a bunch of folks from south of the border watched their set and yelled, approvingly, “Toro! Toro!” Bull indeed!

 The liner notes offer the perfect description of “Mexico Lindo” by Living Brass: “… it is happy music, joyously played, and it will whisk you up, up and away on a trip to the light, fantastic bubbling brass vibrations of today.” I couldn’t have said it better. This one is on RCA Camden, which means there is credit given to arranger and conductor Ray Martin. The Tijuana Brass is mentioned as inspiration and also the source of several songs covered. The overall sound is a bit more orchestral than some Herb Alpert fans might like, but there are many moments that are as exhilarating as your very first exposure to “The Lonely Bull.” Ole!

 My last entry is arguably the most derivative and deceptive of the bunch. “The Band I Heard in Tijuana” by Los Norte Americanos has more Tijuana Brass covers than all the other albums I have by these wannabes. It also cops a number of fonts from Mr. Alpert. If you are a big Tijuana Brass fan, you’ll love the sound on this disc, but… what’s the point?!; they are pretty much the same arrangements on the same songs! I suppose paying 99 cents for this in the day beat paying $3.49 for bona fide product, but really??? One last point: in much the same way clueless parents bought cheap knockoff platters for their kids in the ‘60s because the lads pictured looked scruffy and the cover had the word BEAT emblazoned across it, I can imagine someone going to a record store in the day and saying something like, “I don’t remember the name, but it featured horns and is from Tijuana, if memory serves,” and walking out with, ”The Band I Heard in Tijuana.”   

Part Two - Edwin Letcher March 10, 2026

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