Songoftheday 7/13/12 - a trip down Route 101...

Herb Alpert - "Route 101"

from the album Fandango (1982)

Billboard Hot 100 peak: #37 (two weeks)

Weeks in the top-40: 4

Today's song of the day is by the musician and record mogul Herb Alpert. Alpert started out as a songwriter, and helped write one of the classic songs of the 60's, "Wonderful World", which Sam Cooke would make a hit. Inspired by watching a bullfight, Alpert recorded an instrumental track in 1962 called "The Lonely Bull", overdubbing himself on the trumpet, which became a top-10 hit in the US, and even crossed over to the top-40 in Britain. He then put together a touring and recording band called the Tijuana Brass, even though neither he nor the band were Latin (Herb is a Jewish Russian/Romanian-American himself). They really took off in 1965 with the release of Whipped Cream (And Other Delights), which not only topped the album charts, but gave the group another top-10 instrumental with "A Taste Of Honey", which was also recorded with vocals by the Beatles. All told, the group had ten top-10 albums in the sixties, and the decade was closed out with "This Guy's In Love With You", with Herb singing lead, becoming their first #1 hit.

As the 70s dawned, Alpert disbanded the Tijuana Brass and began to release albums under his name only. With the mainstreaming of harder rock and R&B, Alpert's jazz and Latin instrumental music wasn't as big during most of that time (though he was consistently hitting the soft-rock adult-contemporary chart) and selling albums. Then, in 1979, Alpert released the album Rise!, which incorporated disco rhythms into his music, and in return had his first top-40 single since "This Guy's...", the title track "Rise", all the way to #1. He also made the R&B top-5, paving the way for his music being played more and more on those stations. And he set an unparalleled record of having both an vocal and instrumental #1 to his name.

In 1982, Alpert released the album Fandango, which went back to his Latin music roots, and the first single released from the album, the instrumental "Route 101", was written by Alpert's studio bandmate Juan Luis Calderon, and presumably named for the highway that stretches from Washington to Southern California...

The song also was a big hit on the adult-contemporary (soft-rock) chart, making it up to #4. The title track  from Fandango also made that list's top40 as well. Five years later, Alpert would return to the top-40 in a big way with some help from Ms. Janet Jackson on "Diamonds".

Up tomorrow: some Working Men play a little Knock, Knock...