Herb Alpert & The Tijuana Brass -- Bittersweet Samba

 

From Walmart

The above is an image of the April 1965 album by Herb Alpert & The Tijuana Brass, "Whipped Cream & Other Delights". Well, that cover certainly had a lot of people talking when the album hit the record shelves, and I recall Alpert coyly telling fans at the Brass' concerts that he had to apologize but he couldn't play the album cover for them. 😁

Now, judging from the fact that I'm talking about Herb Alpert & The Tijuana Brass here today, you'd all be forgiven for thinking that this is a special Reminiscings of Youth article but it really isn't. The track here is "Bittersweet Samba", a short song at under 2 minutes that I've heard from time to time over the decades, probably through commercials or those "Technical Difficulties" situations on the telly way back when.

But what I hadn't known was that "Bittersweet Samba" has had a much more significant presence in Japanese radio history in that it's been the theme song for the Nippon Broadcasting System program "All Night Nippon" which has been keeping night owls up almost every overnight in the week since October 1967. My impression is that if there's something that the Japanese are absolutely aces at, it's having mellow radio talk shows deep into the wee hours...in the case of "All Night Nippon", it's been from 1 am. The above program has the veteran Osaka comedy duo 99 and depending on the night, a whole range of celebrities are there to keep folks entertained in bed or other settings such as singer-actor Gen Hoshino（星野源）and aidoru group Nogizaka 46（乃木坂46）.