The Tijuana Brass (TJB) number was originally recorded by Herb Alpert in a home studio he built in his garage and he played almost all the instruments himself and shopped it around to local LA DJs; it became a local area hit and he rerecorded it, using studio musicians friends (some form the famous Wrecking Crew) as an off-the-books, under-the-table, non-union session where the musicians did their work for very little pay; the song became a huge hit nationwide and Alpert, when he received his first royalty check, immediately wrote checks for union scale wages for the musicians in the sessions and he also went to the union and disclosed the "scab" session and offered to pay the union fines...
Although there was no actual TJB band, Alpert assembled a group of session musicians to meet public demand for performances by the TJB; it is also interesting that there were no Mexican or Latino members in the TJB: Alpert was a Los Angeles-born descendant of Russian Jews and the session players in the TJB were mainly of Italian or Jewish descent...
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