The Mexican Returns…
Since the 70’s, Babe Ruth’s go to anthem, “The Mexican”, has been covered and remixed into many different tracks and genres for its distinctively South/Latin American vibe and their straight-up, tightly grooving drums and bass. Their influence from South of the border has been a defining feature of the act, taking influence from Ennio Morricone’s enchanting score for the Sergio Leone film “A Few Dollars More”, making the originally whistled tune the main melody for the dueling, harmonised guitar sections.
The initial bars of “The Mexican” were ideal for making music in B-Boy scenes because of it’s looping drum and bass groove, allowing DJs to beat mix for as long as they want. This made Babe Ruth’s sound a solid part of the block party scene and common practise for turntable artists.
The iconic track inspires an obvious passion for creativity in producers and DJs alike within the diverse electronic dance music communities, covered by acts including; “The Bombers” in 1978, “John ‘Jellybean’ Benitez” in 1984, and Tod Terry in the 1988 House classic, “Dreams of Santa Ana”.
Terry’s reimagining, which features the haunting Morricone melody reworked for a more electronic and synthesized production, accompanied with a single line of Jenny Haan’s original vocals, helped provide some of the original frameworks on how sampling, specifically in the genre of House, could be utilised to its full potential in productions.
It is the same case today, with Babe Ruth having re-recorded the 70′s Hit in 2007 under a new title; aptly named “The Mexican Millennium”, which is inspiring a fresh wave of remixed productions into the next decade – The most recent being DJ Deekline and Tim Healy’s reworking of some the Hertfordshire based Babe’s most renowned works.
This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 19th, 2011 at 1:02 pm and is filed under Artists, General News, Label Trivia, Latest Releases. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.