Everything about Herb Alpert totally explained
Herbert "Herb" Alpert (born
March 31,
1935) is an
American musician most associated with the group variously known as
Herb Alpert & The Tijuana Brass or as
Herb Alpert's Tijuana Brass or just
TJB for short. He is also famous for being a recording industry executive — he's the "A" of
A&M Records (a
recording label he and business
partner Jerry Moss founded and eventually sold). Alpert's musical accomplishments include five number one hits, twenty-eight albums on the
Billboard charts, eight
Grammy Awards, fourteen
Platinum albums and fifteen
Gold albums. As of 1996, Alpert had sold 72 million albums worldwide..
Early life and career
Born in
Los Angeles, California, Alpert began
trumpet lessons at about the age of eight and played at dances as a teenager. Acquiring an early
wire recorder in high school, he experimented with recording on this crude equipment. After graduating from
Fairfax High School in 1952, he joined the
U.S. Army and frequently performed at military ceremonies. After his service in the Army, Alpert tried his hand at
acting, but eventually settled on pursuing a career in
music. While attending the
University of Southern California in the 1950s, he was a member of the
USC Trojan Marching Band for two years. He graduated with a BM in 1954.
In 1957, Alpert teamed up with
Lou Adler, another burgeoning lyricist, as a songwriter for Keen Records. A number of songs written or co-written by Alpert during the following two years became top twenty hits, including "Baby Talk" by
Jan and Dean, "
Wonderful World" by
Sam Cooke, and "Alley-Oop" by The Hollywood Argyles and by Dante and The Evergreens. In 1960, Alpert began his recording career as a vocalist at
RCA Records under the name of Dore Alpert, where he recorded early vocals.
"Tell It To The Birds" was recorded as the first release on the Alpert & Moss label, Carnival Records. When Herb & Jerry found that there was prior usage of the Carnival name, their label became A&M Records.
The Tijuana Brass years
Alpert set up a small
recording studio in his garage and had been
overdubbing a tune called "Twinkle Star", written by Sol Lake, who would eventually write many of the Brass' original tunes. During a visit to
Tijuana,
Mexico, Alpert happened to hear a
mariachi band while attending a
bullfight. Following the experience, Alpert recalled that he was "inspired to find a way to musically express what [he] felt while watching the wild responses of the crowd, and hearing the brass musicians introducing each new event with rousing fanfare." Alpert adapted the
trumpet style to the tune,
mixed in crowd cheers and other noises to create ambiance, and renamed the song, "
The Lonely Bull". He paid out of his own pocket to press the record as a single, and it spread through
radio DJs until it caught on and became a Top Ten hit in 1962. He followed up quickly with his debut
album,
The Lonely Bull by "Herb Alpert & the Tijuana Brass". The initial version of the Tijuana Brass consisted of
studio musicians. The title cut reached #6 on the
Billboard Pop Singles Chart. This was also
A&M's first
album (the original number was 101), but was recorded at Conway Records.
By the end of 1964, due to a growing demand for live appearances by the Tijuana Brass, Alpert
auditioned and hired a team of crack
session men. No one in Alpert's band was actually
Hispanic (Alpert himself is Jewish). Alpert used to tell his audiences that his group consisted of "Three
pastramis, two
bagels, and an
American cheese":
John Pisano (
electric guitar);
Lou Pagani (
piano);
Nick Ceroli (
drums);
Pat Senatore (
bass guitar);
Tonni Kalash (
trumpet); Herb Alpert (
trumpet and
vocal);
Bob Edmondson (
trombone). The band debuted in 1965 and quickly became one of the highest-paid acts then performing, having put together a complete
revue that included
choreographed moves and
comic routines written by
Bill ("Jose Jimenez") Dana.
The Tijuana Brass's success helped spawn other
Latin acts, notably
Julius Wechter (long-time friend of Alpert's and the
marimba player for the Brass) and the
Baja Marimba Band, and the profits allowed
A&M to begin building a repertoire of artists like
Chris Montez and
The Sandpipers. Wechter would also contribute a number of the Brass' original songs, usually at least one per album, along with those of other Alpert friends, Sol Lake and Ervan "Bud" Coleman.
In addition, the Tijuana Brass's style was adopted by American bands as well, most notably
Chicago and
Earth, Wind & Fire. Both bands would score major hits in the 1970s and early 1980s.
An
album or two would be released each year throughout the 1960s. Alpert's band was also featured in several TV specials, each one usually centered on visual interpretations of the songs from their latest album - essentially an early version of the kinds of music videos later made famous by
MTV. The first Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass special, sponsored by the
Singer Sewing Machine Company, aired on
April 24,
1967 on
CBS.
Alpert's style achieved enormous popularity with the national exposure
The Clark Gum Company gave to one of his recordings in 1964, a Sol Lake number titled "The Mexican Shuffle" (which was retitled "
The Teaberry Shuffle" for the
television ads). In 1965, Alpert released two
albums,
Whipped Cream (and Other Delights) and
Going Places.
Whipped Cream sold over 6 million copies in the
United States. The album cover is considered a classic. It featured model
Dolores Erickson wearing only what appeared to be whipped cream. In reality, Erickson was wearing a white blanket over which were scattered artfully-placed daubs of shaving cream--real whipped cream would have melted under the heat of the studio lights (although the cream on her head is real whipped cream). In
concerts, when about to play the song, Alpert would tell the audience, "Sorry, we can't play the cover for you." The art was
parodied by several groups including one-time
A&M band
Soul Asylum(External Link
) and by comedian
Pat Cooper for his album
Spaghetti Sauce and Other Delights. The singles included the title cut, "
Lollipops and Roses", and "
A Taste of Honey." The latter won a
Grammy Award for Record of the Year.
Going Places produced four more singles: "Tijuana Taxi", "
Spanish Flea", "Third Man Theme", and "Zorba the Greek". "Whipped Cream" became the theme song for the popular American television show "
The Dating Game."
The Brass also covered the
Bert Kaempfert tune "The Happy Trumpet" retitling it "Magic Trumpet". Alpert's rendition contained a bar that coincided with a
Schlitz beer tune, "When you're out of Schlitz, you're out of beer". ("The Maltese Melody" was another Alpert cover of a Kaempfert original). Another commercial use was a tune called "El Garbanzo", which was featured in some
Sunoco ads ("They're movin', they're movin', people in the know, they're movin' to Sunoco").
In 1967, the TJB did the title cut to the first movie version of
Casino Royale.
Many of the tracks from
Whipped Cream and
Going Places received a great deal of
airplay, and still do at times; for example, they're frequently used as
incidental music in
The Dating Game on the
Game Show Network, notably the tracks
Whipped Cream,
Spanish Flea and
Lollipops and Roses. Despite the popularity of his singles, Alpert's
albums outsold and outperformed them on the
charts.
Alpert and the Tijuana Brass won six
Grammy awards. Fifteen of their
albums won
gold discs, and fourteen won
platinum discs. In 1966, his music outsold
The Beatles by two to one - over 13 million Alpert recordings were sold. That same year, the
Guinness Book of World Records recognized that Alpert set a new record by placing five
albums simultaneously on the
Billboard Pop Album
Chart, an accomplishment that has never been repeated. In April of that year, four of those albums were in the Top 10 simultaneously.
The dearth of in-depth, unauthorized biographical/historical material on Alpert is somewhat curious given that so much has been written about the only three recording artists who outsold him in the 1960s -
Elvis Presley,
Frank Sinatra, and the
Beatles. This is perhaps explained by the apparent lack of any outrageous, dramatic, or tragic elements in his life. There were, however, hundreds of articles written about Alpert by mainstream general and music newspapers and magazines.
Alpert's only number one single during this period (and the first #1 hit for his A&M label) was a solo effort
(External Link): "
This Guy's in Love with You" (written by
Burt Bacharach and
Hal David), featuring a rare
vocal. Alpert sang this to his first wife in a 1968
CBS Television special titled
Beat of the Brass. The sequence was taped on the
beach in
Malibu. The song wasn't intended to be released, but after it was used in the
television special, thousands of
telephone calls to
CBS asking about it, convinced
label owner Alpert to release it as a single, two days after the show aired.
(External Link). Alpert's
vocal skills were limited, but this song also had limited technical demands and it worked for him. The single debuted in May 1968, topped the national chart for four weeks and ranked high among the year's biggest hits. Initially dismissed by the critical cognoscenti and "hip" music-lovers as strictly a housewife's favorite, Alpert's unusually expressive recording of "This Guy's in Love with You" is now regarded as one of the monumental ballads in pop. In 1996 at London's
Royal Festival Hall,
Noel Gallagher (of British rock band
Oasis) performed the song with Burt Bacharach.
Life after the Brass
Alpert disbanded the Tijuana Brass in 1969, but released another album by the group in 1971. In 1973, with some of the original Tijuana Brass members and some new members, he formed a group called the T.J.B. This new version of the Brass released two albums in 1974 and 1975 and toured. Alpert reconvened a third version of the Brass in 1984 after being invited to perform for the
Olympic Games athletes at the
Los Angeles Summer Games. The invitation led to the Bullish
album and tour.
In the 1970s, '80s, and '90s, Alpert enjoyed a successful
solo career. He had his biggest
instrumental hit, "
Rise" (from the album of the same name), which went number one in October of 1979 and won a
Grammy Award, and was later
sampled in the 1997
rap song "
Hypnotize" by the late
rapper Notorious B.I.G. "Rise" also made Alpert the only
artist ever to hit #1 on the
Billboard pop singles
charts with both a
vocal piece and an
instrumental piece. The song "Route 101" peaked at number 37 in
Billboard in August 1982. In 1987, Alpert branched out successfully to the
R&B world with hit album
Keep Your Eye On Me, teaming up with producers
Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis on "Diamonds" and "Making Love In the Rain" featuring vocals by
Janet Jackson and
Lisa Keith.
From 1962 through 1992 Alpert
signed artists to
A&M Records and
produced records. He discovered the West Coast band
We Five. Among the notable
artists he worked with personally are Chris Montez,
The Carpenters,
Sergio Mendes and Brasil '66,
Bill Medley,
Lani Hall (Alpert's second and current wife), and Janet Jackson (featured
vocalist on his 1987 hit
single "Diamonds"). These working relationships have allowed Alpert to become one of only a handful of artists to place singles in the Top 10 in at least three different decades ('60s, '70s, and '80s).
Alpert and A&M Records
partner Jerry Moss received a
Grammy Trustees Award in 1997 for their lifetime achievements in the
recording industry as
executives and the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 2007.
For his contribution to the recording industry, Herb Alpert has a star on the
Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6929
Hollywood Blvd.
Moss also has a star on the Walk of Fame. Alpert and Moss were also inducted into the
Rock and Roll Hall of Fame on
March 13,
2006 as non-performer lifetime achievers for their work at A&M.
Today
Alpert continues to play his
trumpet today, but also devotes time to his second
career as an
abstract expressionist painter and
sculptor with shows around the
United States. He has also worked as a
Broadway theatre producer, with his production of
Tony Kushner's
Angels in America winning a
Tony award.
In the 1980s he created
The Herb Alpert Foundation and the
Alpert Awards in the Arts(External Link) with
The California Institute of the Arts (CalArts). The
Foundation supports youth and
arts education as well as
environmental issues and helps fund the PBS series "Bill Moyers on Faith and Reason."
He has provided funding for the
culture jamming activists known as the
Yesmen.
Although he hasn't released an
album of new material since 1999's "Herb Alpert and Colors", he's actively overseeing the reissue of his
music library. In 2000, Alpert acquired the rights to his music from
Universal Music (current owners of
A&M Records), in a legal settlement and began
remastering his
albums for
CD reissue. In 2005,
Shout! Factory began distributing
digitally
remastered versions of Alpert's
A&M output, including a new
album,
Lost Treasures, consisting of unreleased material from Alpert's Tijuana Brass years. In the spring of 2006, a remixed version of the
Whipped Cream album, entitled was released and climbed to #5 on the Billboard Contemporary Jazz chart.
He continues to be a guest artist for friends like
Gato Barbieri,
Rita Coolidge,
Jim Brickman, Brian Culbertson and
David Lanz.
His songs have been in various TV shows such as
Saturday Night Live.
Alpert was also credited with an acting role in the
Beastie Boys music video, "Ch-Check It Out," although he didn't appear.
Apart from the reissues, the
Christmas Album continues to be available every year during the holiday season.
He has donated $30,000,000 to
UCLA, founding the Herb Alpert School of Music, and $24,000,000 (including $15M in April 2008) to the
California Institute of the Arts (CALARTS) for its music program.
Herb Alpert and his Music in Modern Culture
- The song "Tijuana Taxi" is played in an episode of The Simpsons where Bart assumes that the family misses him when he's forced to be 200 feet away from Lisa, but inside the house, Marge, Homer, Lisa, and even Maggie, are "celebrating" by playing "Tijuana Taxi". At the very end of the episode, where everything is back to the way it was, the family, minus Bart again, plays this song again outside in the backyard, while Bart chases an animal around. The song also features in another episode when Mr. Burns gives testimony in a civil trial.
"Spanish Flea" is played in another episode of The Simpsons to which Homer sings along in his car while waiting for Bart to emerge from a Spinal Tap concert, oblivious to the riot police outside entering the arena en masse. This song has appeared in 4 other times in 4 other episodes of the show.
Some of "Spanish Flea" is played in American Pie 2 in a scene at the band camp by a senior member of the camp on a trumpet.
In the King of Queens, Carrie's father Arthur dances to the song "Tijuana Taxi" as the record Carrie replaced (she had broken her father's Herb Alpert "South of the Border" record 15 years ago) plays on the record player. He dances at the very end of the episode.
Alpert's biggest hit of his post-TJB career, "Rise", is used as the main hook for the The Notorious B.I.G. single "Hypnotize".
English Football League One (soccer) team Leyton Orient (from East London) run out at the start of each match to the strains of "Tijuana Taxi." This is a tradition dating back to the late 1960s of unknown/uncertain origin.
The song 'Beanbag' is best remembered in the UK as the theme music to the long running British physical game show It's A Knockout.
The Cover & Title of Soul Asylum's 1989 album Clam Dip & Other Delights is a parody of Herb Alpert & The Tijuana Brass's Whipped Cream & Other Delights.
The track, Tijuana Taxi, can also be heard on an episode of 'Just Shoot Me', as Dennis commits a number of mischievous deeds.
Herb makes a cameo appearance in the Jeff Beck music video Ambitious.
In the movie Matchstick Men (film), the Nicholas Cage character is playing the song "The Lonely Bull."
"Casino Royale Theme" is featured on Saturday Night Live during the guest appearance of Peyton Manning.
The punk rock band NOFX covers one of his songs "What Now My Love" on their 2007 live album They've Actually Gotten Worse Live!.
The song "Route 101" was the main song of the Argentinian TV game show "Seis para triunfar"
"Spanish Flea" is also featured in the film Perdita Durango as characters played by Javier Bardem and Rosie Perez kidnap two teenagers for their nefarious purposes.
Discography
Herb Alpert & The Tijuana Brass
The Lonely Bull (1962) LP-101 (mono)/101S (stereo)
Volume 2 (1963) LP-103/SP-103
South of the Border (1964) LP-108/SP-4108
Whipped Cream & Other Delights (1965) LP-110/SP-4110
Going Places (1965) LP-112/SP-4112
What Now My Love (1966) LP-114/SP-4110
S.R.O. (1966) LP-119/SP-4119
Sounds Like... (1967) LP-124/SP-4124
Herb Alpert's Ninth (1967) LP-134/SP-4134
The Beat of the Brass (1968) SP-4146
Christmas Album (1968) SP-4166; reissued as SP-3113
Warm (1969) SP-4190
The Brass Are Comin' (1969) SP-4228
Greatest Hits (1970) SP-4245
Summertime (1971) SP-4314
Solid Brass (compilation) (1972) SP-4341
Foursider (compilation) (1973) SP-3521
You Smile - The Song Begins (1974) SP-3620
A Treasury of the Award-Winning Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass plus selections from the Baja Marimba Band (1974) Longines Symphonette LWS-500-505
Coney Island (1975) SP-4521
Greatest Hits Vol. 2 (compilation) (1977) SP-4627
Bullish (1984) SP-5022
Classics Volume 1 (compilation) (1986) CD-2501
Lost Treasures (2005)
Whipped Cream & Other Delights Rewhipped (2006) Shout Factory
Herb Alpert
Just You and Me (1976) SP-4591
Herb Alpert/Hugh Masekela (1978) SP-728
Main Event Live! (1978) SP-4727
Rise (1979) SP-4790
Beyond (1980) SP-3717
Magic Man (1981) SP-3728
Fandango (1982) SP-3731
Blow Your Own Horn (1983) SP-4919
Wild Romance (1985) SP-5082
Classics Volume 1 (1987)
Keep Your Eye On Me (1987) SP-5125
Under a Spanish Moon (1988) SP-5209
My Abstract Heart (1989)
North on South St. (1991)
The Very Best Of Herb Alpert (compilation of Tijuana Brass and solo material) (1991)
Midnight Sun (1992)
Second Wind (1996)
Passion Dance (1997)
Colors (1999)
Definitive Hits (compilation of Tijuana Brass and solo material) (2001)
Rise (reissue) (2007) Shout! FactoryFurther Information
Get more info on 'Herb Alpert'.
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