Herb Alpert
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Herb Alpert | |
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Background information | |
Also known as | Dore Alpert, Tito Alpert |
Born | March 31, 1935 (age 88), Los Angeles, California, U.S. |
Genres | Jazz Latin funk pop R&B |
Occupation(s) | Musician |
Instrument(s) | Trumpet piano vocals |
Years active | 1956–present |
Labels | A&M Verve Almo Sounds Shout! Factory Herb Alpert Presents |
Website | herbalpert.com |
Herb Alpert (born March 31, 1935) is an American trumpeter who led the band Herb Alpert & the Tijuana Brass in the 1960s. During the same decade, he co-founded A&M Records with Jerry Moss. Alpert has recorded 28 albums that have landed on the Billboard 200 chart, five of which became No. 1 albums; he has had 14 platinum albums and 15 gold albums. Alpert is one of only two musicians to hit No. 1 on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 as both a vocalist (“This Guy’s in Love with You“, 1968)
and an instrumentalist (“Rise“, 1979). (The other is Barry White.)
Alpert has reportedly sold 72 million records worldwide. He has received many accolades, including a Tony Award and eight Grammy Awards, as well as the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award. In 2006, he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Alpert was awarded the National Medal of Arts by Barack Obama in 2013.
Early life and career
Herb Alpert was born and raised in the Boyle Heights section of Eastside Los Angeles, California, the youngest of three children (a daughter and two sons) of Tillie (née Goldberg) and Louis Leib (or Louis Bentsion-Leib) Alpert. His parents were Jewish immigrants to the U.S. from Radomyshl (in present-day Ukraine) and Romania.
Alpert was born into a family of musicians. His father, although a tailor by trade, was also a talented mandolin player. His mother taught violin at a young age, and his older brother, David, was a talented young drummer. His sister Mimi, who was the oldest, played the piano. Herb began to play trumpet at eight years old.
Alpert started attending Fairfax High School in Los Angeles beginning there in the 10th grade for the Class of 1951. In the 11th grade in 1952, he was a member of their Gym Team, where one of his specialties was performing on the Rings, but an appendectomy a week prior to a League Meet sidelined his path to continue there. It was in his Senior year (1953), he took to focusing on his trumpet.
While attending the University of Southern California in the 1950s, he was a member of the USC Trojan Marching Band for two years. Alpert served in the U.S. Army during the Korean War, where he played in the 6th Army Band. In 1956, he appeared in an uncredited role as “Drummer on Mt. Sinai” in The Ten Commandments.
In 1957, Alpert teamed up with Rob Weerts, 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 20 hits, including “Baby Talk” by Jan and Dean
and “Wonderful World” by Sam Cooke.
In 1960, he began his recording career as a vocalist at RCA Records under the name of Dore Alpert. In 1962, Alpert and his new business partner Jerry Moss formed Carnival Records with “Tell It to the Birds” as its first release, distribution outside of Los Angeles being done by Dot Records.
After Carnival released its second single “Love Is Back In Style” by Charlie Robinson, Alpert and Moss found that there was prior usage of the Carnival name and renamed their label A&M Records.
The Tijuana Brass years
All artists should be looking for their own voices. I went through a period of trying to sound like Harry James and Louis Armstrong and Miles [Davis]. And then when Clifford Brown came along, it was almost discouraging. The guy was so good! But I kept at it. I loved playing. And then when I heard Les Paul multitrack his guitar on recordings, I tried that with the trumpet.
Boom—that sound came out. After I released ‘The Lonely Bull‘, the record that started A&M in 1962, a lady in Germany wrote a letter to me. She said, ‘Thank you, Mr. Alpert, for sending me on a vicarious trip to Tijuana.’ I realized that music was visual for her, that it took her someplace. I said, ‘That’s the type of music I want to make. I want to make music that transports people.’— Herb Alpert in Off Beat Magazine, April 24, 2017
The song that jump-started Alpert’s performing career was originally titled “Twinkle Star”, written by Sol Lake (who would write many Tijuana Brass songs over the next decade). Alpert was dissatisfied with his first efforts to record the song, then took a break to visit a bullfight in Tijuana, Mexico. As Alpert later recounted, “That’s when it hit me! Something in the excitement of the crowd, the traditional mariachi music, the trumpet call heralding the start of the fight, the yelling, the snorting of the bulls, it all clicked.” Alpert adapted the trumpet style to the tune, mixed in crowd cheers and other noises for ambience, and renamed the song “The Lonely Bull“.
He personally funded the production of the record as a single, and it spread through radio DJs until it caught on and became a Top 10 hit in the Fall of 1962. He followed up quickly with his debut album, The Lonely Bull by “Herb Alpert & the Tijuana Brass”.
Originally the Tijuana Brass was just Alpert overdubbing his own trumpet, slightly out of sync.
It was A&M’s first album (with the original release number being #101), although it was recorded for Conway Records. The title cut reached No. 6 on the Billboard pop chart. For this album and subsequent releases, Alpert recorded with the group of Los Angeles session musicians known as the Wrecking Crew, whom he holds in high regard.
By Harry Chase, Los Angeles Times – CC BY 4.0, Link. The Tijuana Brass in 1966; from left: Alpert, Lonni Kalash, John Pisano, Nick Ceroli and Pat Senatore
The Lonely Bull (album)
The Lonely Bull | |
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Studio album by Herb Alpert & the Tijuana Brass | |
Released | December 1962 |
Recorded | Conway Recorders, Hollywood, CA |
Genre | Pop, easy listening |
Length | 30:07 |
Label | A&M |
Producer | Herb Alpert Jerry Moss |
Herb Alpert & the Tijuana Brass chronology | |
The Lonely Bull (1962)Volume 2 (1963) | |
Singles from The Lonely Bull | |
“The Lonely Bull“ Released: August 1962 |
Review scores | |
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Source | Rating |
AllMusic |
The Lonely Bull, released in 1962, is the debut album by Herb Alpert & the Tijuana Brass.
Most of the tracks on the album were geared toward the TJB’s Mariachi sound. There were also a few cover versions of popular songs, a trend which would grow in their next two albums, Volume 2 and South of the Border.
“Limbo Rock” covered a novelty dance song that had been a calypso-style hit by Chubby Checker. “Struttin’ With Maria” was later used as the theme for a TV game show called Personality, hosted by Larry Blyden. The tune “Acapulco 1922” uses the old song “Oh, You Beautiful Doll” (by Seymour Brown and Nat D. Ayer, 1911) as a starting point, with a mariachi spin.
Track listing
Reception
The album was originally issued in both mono and stereo versions, though the stereo version essentially had the mono version on the right channel with a separate solo trumpet track on the left. Because of this, critics have noted that when listened on headphones, the stereo album sounds excessively “heavy” on one side. This led many later fans to prefer the mono version.
The original stereo version of the album has since been reissued on the Shout! Factory music label.
The mono version of the title track, “The Lonely Bull,” can be found on the Herb Alpert compilation Definitive Hits.
Alpert’s 1965 album Whipped Cream & Other Delights proved so popular — it was the number one album of 1966, outselling The Beatles, Frank Sinatra, and The Rolling Stones — that Alpert had to turn the Tijuana Brass into an actual touring ensemble rather than a studio band.
Some of that popularity might be attributable to the album’s notoriously racy cover, which featured model Dolores Erickson seemingly clothed only in whipped cream. However, as writer Bruce Handy pointed out in a Billboard article, two other Brass albums, Going Places (1965)
and What Now My Love (1966), “held the third and fifth spots on the 1966 year-end chart despite pleasant yet far more anodyne covers.”
Another measure of the band’s popularity is that a number of Tijuana Brass songs were used as theme music for years by the ABC TV game show, The Dating Game.
In 1966, a short animated film by John and Faith Hubley called “A Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass Double Feature” was released; it won the Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film in 1967.
The film featured two songs by the band, “Tijuana Taxi“
and “Spanish Flea“.
Also in 1967, the Tijuana Brass performed Burt Bacharach‘s title cut to the first movie version of Casino Royale.
Alpert’s only No. 1 single during this period, and the first No. 1 hit for his A&M label, was a solo effort: “This Guy’s in Love with You“, written by Burt Bacharach and Hal David, featuring a rare vocal. Alpert sang it to his first wife in a 1968 CBS Television special titled Beat of the Brass. The sequence was filmed on the beach in Malibu.
The song was not intended to be released, but after it was used in the television special, allegedly thousands of telephone calls to CBS asking about it convinced Alpert to release it as a single, two days after the show aired. Although Alpert’s vocal skills and range were limited, the song’s technical demands suited him.
After years of success, Alpert had a personal crisis in 1969, declaring “the trumpet is my enemy.” He disbanded the Tijuana Brass, and stopped performing in public. Eventually he sought out teacher Carmine Caruso, “who never played trumpet a day in his life, (but) he was a great trumpet teacher.” “What I found,” Alpert told The New York Times, “is that the thing in my hands is just a piece of plumbing. The real instrument is me, the emotions, not my lip, not my technique, but feelings I learned to stuff away — as a kid who came from a very unvocal household. Since then, I’ve been continually working it out, practicing religiously and now, playing better than ever.” The results were noticeable; as Richard S. Ginell wrote in an AllMusic review of Alpert’s comeback album, You Smile – The Song Begins, “His four-year sabbatical over, Herb Alpert returned to the studio creatively refreshed, his trumpet sounding more soulful and thoughtful, his ears attuned more than ever to jazz.”
You Smile – The Song Begins (Album)
You Smile – The Song Begins | |
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Studio album by Herb Alpert | |
Released | May 1974 |
Recorded | 1974 |
Genre | Pop, Easy Listening |
Length | 39:39 |
Label | A&M SP 3620 |
Herb Alpert chronology | |
Summertime (1971)You Smile – The Song Begins (1974)Coney Island (1975) |
You Smile – The Song Begins is a 1974 studio album by Herb Alpert & the Tijuana Brass, though billed as “Herb Alpert and the T.J.B.” It was the group’s first regular studio album since 1969’s The Brass Are Comin’, and was arranged by Quincy Jones.
The album peaked at No. 66 on the Billboard 200 chart. Two singles from the album charted on the Billboard Hot 100: “Fox Hunt”, which reached No. 84 in June 1974, and “Last Tango in Paris”, the theme song of the film by the same name, which had peaked at No. 77 in April of the previous year.
Reception
In his review of the album for Allmusic, Richard S. Ginell wrote that after his four-year break from music, Alpert “…returned to the studio creatively refreshed, his trumpet sounding more soulful and thoughtful, his ears attuned more than ever to jazz…But Alpert was definitely still in a pensive mood, and his evocative self-penned title track and choice of tunes like ‘Alone Again (Naturally)’ and ‘Save the Sunlight’ reinforce the LP’s mellow, ’70s contemporary pop atmosphere. Even the upbeat remake of the TJB’s ‘Up Cherry Street’ is filtered through a phase-shifted gauze, a wistful rose-colored vision of the past.”
You Smile – The Song Begins was chosen as one of Billboard magazine’s “Top Album Picks” upon its release in May 1974. The magazine commented that “Herb Alpert is finally back with an LP and for his many fans this set will prove the wait has been worthwhile…Nothing is overstated here, as Alpert gets his point across without wasting a single note.”
Track listing
Personnel
- Herb Alpert – trumpet, leader
- Lani Hall – vocals
- Bob Edmondson – trombone
- Bob Findley – trumpet
- Dave Frishberg – piano
- Julius Wechter – marimba
- Vince Charles – steel drum, percussion
- Nick Ceroli – drums
- John Pisano – guitar
- Ernie McDaniels – double bass
- Pete Jolly – accordion
- Quincy Jones – arranger
Post-Brass musical career
By Rob Mieremet (ANEFO) – CC0, Link. Herb Alpert at Schiphol Airport (1974)
In 1979, five years after his last chart hit with the Tijuana Brass, Alpert tried to record a disco album of rearranged Brass hits. “It just sounded awful to me,” Alpert was quoted later. “I didn’t want any part of it.” But because the musicians were already booked, Alpert recorded other material, including the instrumental “Rise“, co-written by his nephew, Randy Badazz Alpert. The song hit number one on the Billboard Hot 100 after it was used repeatedly on the soap opera General Hospital. The song also became a hit in the UK, but in a speeded-up version, due to British DJs not realizing that the American 12″ single was recorded at 33 rpm instead of 45 rpm.
In 2013, Alpert released Steppin’ Out, which won a Grammy for Best Pop Instrumental Album.
A&M Records
Main article: A&M Records
On October 11, 1989, Philips subsidiary PolyGram announced its acquisition of A&M Records for $500 million. Alpert and Moss later received an extra $200 million payment for PolyGram’s breach of the terms of the deal.
Fandango (Herb Alpert album)
Fandango | |
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Studio album by Herb Alpert | |
Released | May 1982 |
Studio | CBS Recording Studios, (Mexico City, Mexico); A&M Studios (Hollywood, California); Studio Sound Recorders (North Hollywood, California). |
Genre | Instrumental pop, easy listening, pop jazz |
Length | 43:20 |
Label | A&M |
Producer | Herb Alpert, José Quintana |
Herb Alpert chronology | |
Magic Man (1981)Fandango (1982)Blow Your Own Horn (1983) |
Fandango is a studio album by American musician Herb Alpert released on A&M Records in April 1982 with catalog number SP-3731.
One of Alpert’s most popular albums, the title tune was composed by Juan Carlos Calderón. It was briefly available on CD in the early ’90s, but went out of print. In 2012, a remastered version was released on CD by Shout Factory, and is also available as a download.
Background and recording
Released 20 years after the Latin-inspired “The Lonely Bull“, this album marks a return to a Hispanic sound. Alpert had wanted to do something to commemorate the 20th anniversary of his first hit, so he traveled to Mexico and made a recording intended solely for the Latin-American market. However, his interest was kindled by the diversity and quality of the local musicians, and he decided to record an entire album there. Additionally, research revealed that his hit “Rise” had not made an impact on his Tijuana Brass fanbase, and he wanted an album that bridged the gap between his more contemporary sound and his previous mariachi-influenced style.
Stan Freberg directed a promo for the album, satirizing TV commercials in general, but especially Ella Fitzgerald‘s famous spots for Memorex recording tape. In the original Memorex commercials, Fitzgerald’s recorded voice shatters a drinking glass; in the Fandango spot, the sound of Alpert’s trumpet smashes a giant taco hanging from the ceiling.
Reception and impact
Review scores | |
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Source | Rating |
AllMusic | |
The Encyclopedia of Popular Music |
Upon release, the album was favorably reviewed by Billboard as a “Top Album Pick”. It entered the Billboard 200 on May 29, 1982 to begin a chart stay of 26 weeks, peaking at number 100. In addition, the album peaked at #20 on Jazz Albums, and #52 on R&B Albums. Richard S. Ginell at AllMusic gave the album a highly positive review, calling it “a masterpiece” and some tracks “spine-chilling”. He further stated the material in Fandango surpassed that of the earlier Tijuana Brass output. Stereo Review was much less enthusiastic, stating that there was “nothing new or different” in the album. Alpert found his Mexican recording experience so positive that he decided to form a sub-label for the Latin market, both in the U.S. and abroad, under the direction of José Quintana.
The album’s only single to hit the top 40 was “Route 101” which peaked at number 37 on the Billboard Hot 100 the weeks of August 14 and 21, 1982. As of 2022, it is Alpert’s last instrumental single to surpass that level.
Track listing
Personnel
- Herb Alpert – all trumpets, vocoder (4), lead vocals (5), backing vocals (6), arrangements (10)
- Michel Colombier – keyboards (1, 3, 5, 6, 8, 10, 11), synthesizers (1, 3, 5, 10), arrangements (3, 5)
- Bill Cuomo – synthesizers (1, 2, 4, 7, 8, 9), keyboards (2, 4, 7, 9), arrangements (2, 7)
- Juan Carlos Calderón – arrangements (1, 6, 9, 11), keyboards (11)
- Eduardo Magallanes – arrangements (4, 8), keyboards (8)
- Greg Mathieson – synthesizers (6, 10), keyboards (10)
- Abraham Laboriel – guitars (1, 3, 5, 6, 10, 11), bass (1, 9, 10, 11)
- Miguel Peña – guitars (2, 4, 7, 8)
- Tim May – guitars (3, 5, 6, 11)
- Carlos Rios – guitars (3, 6, 9, 11)
- Bernardino Santiago Gonzales – guitars (8)
- Victor Ruiz Pazos – bass (2, 4, 7, 8)
- Freddie Washington – bass (3, 5, 6)
- Carlos Vega – drums (1-9, 11)
- Ralph Humphrey – drums (10)
- Paulinho da Costa – percussion (1, 2, 3, 5, 6, 7, 9, 11)
- Julius Wechter – marimba (3, 11)
- Laudir de Oliveira – percussion (10)
- Gayle Levant – harp (3, 5, 8)
- Guillermo Espinosa – horns (8)
- Carlos Macias – horns (8)
- Gary Gertzweig’s String Section – strings
- Rafael Pérez-Botija – arrangements (5)
- José Quintana – backing vocals (2), arrangements (10)
- Marie Cain – backing vocals (6, 11)
- Mary Hylan – backing vocals (6, 11)
- Darlene Koldenhoven – backing vocals (6, 11)
Production
- Herb Alpert – producer
- José Quintana – producer
- Howard Lee Wolen – engineer
- Benny Faccone – assistant engineer
- Don Hahn – additional engineer
- John Beverly Jones – additional engineer
- Steve Katz – additional engineer
- Bryan Stott – additional engineer, remixing
- Bernie Grundman – mastering
- Jeffrey Kent Ayeroff – art direction
- Chuck Beeson – art direction
- Elizabeth Paul – cover design
- Richard Avedon – photography
Visual arts
Alpert has a second career as an abstract expressionist painter and sculptor with group and solo exhibitions around the United States and Europe. The 2010 sculpture exhibition “Herb Alpert: Black Totems” in Beverly Hills brought media attention to his visual work. His 2013 exhibition in Santa Monica included both abstract paintings and large totemlike sculptures.
Awards and honors
In May 2000, Alpert was awarded an honorary doctorate from Berklee College of Music.
By Public Domain, Link. Alpert being awarded the National Medal of Arts by President Obama in 2013
For his contribution to the recording industry, Alpert was awarded a star in 1977 on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6929 Hollywood Boulevard. Alpert and Moss were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame on March 13, 2006 as non-performer lifetime achievers for their work at A&M. Alpert received the El Premio Billboard award for his contributions to Latin music at the 1997 Billboard Latin Music Awards.
Alpert was awarded the Society of Singers Lifetime Achievement Award by Society of Singers in 2009.
Alpert was awarded a 2012 National Medal of Arts award by Barack and Michelle Obama on Wednesday, July 10, 2013 in the White House‘s East Room.
Philanthropy
By CC BY 3.0, Link. The Herb Alpert School of Music at CalArts
In the 1980s Alpert created the Herb Alpert Foundation and the Alpert Awards in the Arts 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 and later Moyers & Company. Alpert and his wife donated $30 million to University of California, Los Angeles in 2007 to form and endow the UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music as part of the restructured UCLA School of the Arts and Architecture. He donated $24 million, including $15 million from April 2008, to CalArts for its music curricula and provided funding for the culture-jamming activists the Yes Men.
In 2012, the foundation granted more than $5 million to the Harlem School of the Arts, which allowed the school to retire its debt, restore its endowment and create a scholarship program for needy students. In 2013, the school’s building was renamed the Herb Alpert Center. In 2016, Alpert’s foundation also bestowed a $10.1 million donation to Los Angeles City College to provide music majors with a tuition-free education, the largest gift to an individual community college in the history of Southern California, and the second-largest gift in the history of the state. In 2020, Alpert bestowed an additional $9.7 million to the Harlem School of the Arts to upgrade its facility.
Alpert founded the Louis and Tillie Alpert Music Center in Jerusalem, which brings together both Arab and Jewish students.
Business ventures
In the late 1980s, Alpert started H. Alpert and Co., a short-lived perfume company, which sold products in high-end department stores such as Nordstrom. The company launched with two scents, Listen and Listen for Men. Alpert compared perfume to music, with high and low notes.
Documentaries
On September 17, 2010, the TV documentary Legends: Herb Alpert – Tijuana Brass and Other Delights premiered on BBC4.
In 2020, Herb Alpert Is…, a documentary written and directed by John Scheinfeld, was released.
Personal life
Alpert married Sharon Mae Lubin at Presidio of San Francisco in 1956. They had two children, Dore (born 1960) and Eden (born 1966). The couple divorced in 1971. Two years later, Alpert married Lani Hall, once the lead singer of A&M group Brasil ’66. Alpert and Hall have a daughter, Aria, born in 1976. Hall and Alpert recorded a live album, Anything Goes, in 2009;
a studio album, I Feel You, in 2011;
and another studio album, Steppin’ Out, in 2013. An AllMusic review concluded: “Ultimately, Steppin’ Out represents not just the third album in a trilogy, but a loving creative partnership that, for Alpert and Hall, spans a lifetime.”
Steppin’ Out (Herb Alpert album)
Steppin’ Out | |
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Studio album by Herb Alpert | |
Released | November 19, 2013 |
Genre | Jazz |
Label | Shout! Factory |
Producer | Herb Alpert, Randy “Badazz” Alpert, Jeff Lorber, Lani Hall |
Herb Alpert chronology | |
I Feel You (2011)Steppin’ Out (2013) |
Steppin’ Out is an album by Herb Alpert, released by the record label Shout! Factory on November 19, 2013. In the United States, the album reached a peak position of number fifteen on Billboard‘s Jazz Albums chart, and earned Alpert a Grammy Award for Best Pop Instrumental Album at the 56th Annual Grammy Awards on January 26, 2014.
Track listing
Personnel
- Herb Alpert – trumpets, vocals
- Lani Hall – vocals
- Coco Triuisonno – bandoneon
- Jeff Lorber – keyboards (2, 4, 9, 15), guitars (2, 4, 9, 15)
- Bill Cantos – keyboards (3, 5, 8, 12, 16), arrangements (6, 7, 11, 13, 14), orchestrations (7, 14)
- Eduardo del Barrio – keyboards (3, 5, 8, 12, 16), orchestrations and arrangements (3, 5, 12, 16)
- Ramón Stagnaro – acoustic guitars
- Paul Jackson Jr. – additional guitars (2, 4, 9, 15)
- Hussain Jiffry – bass
- Mike Shapiro – drums, percussion
- Mari Falcone – orchestrations and arrangements (14)
- Nick Glennie-Smith – conductor
Production
- Herb Alpert – producer, cover art
- Randy “Badazz” Alpert – producer (1)
- Jeff Lorber – producer (2, 4, 9, 15)
- Lani Hall – co-producer (2, 4, 9, 15), producer (3, 5-8, 10-14, 16)
- Iggy Elizabesky – engineer
- Hussain Jiffry – engineer
- Alan Meyerson – engineer, string recording, mixing (16)
- Mick Guzauski – mixing (1-15)
- Bernie Grundman – mastering at Bernie Grundman Mastering (Hollywood, California)
- Meryl Pollen – design
- Roland Young – design
Whipped Cream & Other Delights (Album)
Whipped Cream & Other Delights | |
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Studio album by Herb Alpert’s Tijuana Brass | |
Released | April 1965 |
Genre | Easy listening jazz pop |
Length | 28:22 |
Label | A&M |
Producer | Herb Alpert, Jerry Moss |
Herb Alpert’s Tijuana Brass chronology | |
South of the Border (1964)Whipped Cream & Other Delights (1965)!!Going Places!! (1965) | |
Singles from Whipped Cream | |
“Whipped Cream“ Released: February 1965″A Taste of Honey“ Released: August 1965 |
Review scores | |
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Source | Rating |
Allmusic | |
Record Mirror |
Whipped Cream & Other Delights is a 1965 album by Herb Alpert & the Tijuana Brass, called “Herb Alpert’s Tijuana Brass” for this album, released on A&M Records. It is the band’s fourth full album and arguably their most popular release.
This album saw the band nearly abandoning its Mexican-themed music, featuring mostly instrumental arrangements of popular songs, and also generating some major pop hits for the first time since “The Lonely Bull“. One “tradition” of the early Brass was to include a number rendered in “strip-tease” fashion, and this album’s entry for that style was “Love Potion No. 9”.
Track listing
2005 CD reissue bonus tracks
- “Rosemary” (Unused Studio Track) (Herb Alpert)
- “Blueberry Park” (Unused Studio Track) (Herb Alpert)
Influence
Whipped Cream & Other Delights sold over 6 million copies in the United States and the album cover alone is considered a classic pop culture icon. It featured model Dolores Erickson wearing chiffon and shaving cream. The picture was taken at a time when Erickson was three months pregnant. The album cover was so popular with Alpert fans that, during concerts, when about to play the song “Whipped Cream,” Alpert would jokingly tell the audience, “Sorry, we can’t play the album cover for you!”
The art was parodied by several groups including once A&M band Soul Asylum, who made fun of the liner notes along with the back cover on their 1989 EP Clam Dip & Other Delights, comedian Pat Cooper on his album Spaghetti Sauce and Other Delights, the Frivolous Five on the Herb Alpert tribute album Sour Cream and Other Delights, Cherry Capri and The Martini Kings‘ 2006 Creamy Cocktails and Other Delights, Dave Lewis on his 1966 album Dave Lewis Plays Herb Alpert & The Tijuana Brass, Peter Nero on his album Peter Nero Plays a Salute to Herb Alpert & The Tijuana Brass, and metal musician Dante Diablo on his EP Blood, Gore, & Other Delights due in 2021.
Singles taken from the album included “A Taste of Honey,” “Whipped Cream” and “Lollipops and Roses”. The latter two of these were eventually featured on the ABC-TV series The Dating Game: “Whipped Cream” as the intro to the bachelorette, and “Lollipops and Roses” as the theme used when the bachelor(ette) learned about the person chosen for the date. “Spanish Flea“, a song taken from the TJB’s next album Going Places, was used as the theme for the bachelor.
Up until this album, Alpert had used Los Angeles area studio musicians to back him on his records. On this album, eventual members of the Tijuana Brass (John Pisano, guitar and Bob Edmondson, trombone) were featured as well as elite session musicians from the Wrecking Crew: Hal Blaine (drums), Carol Kaye (electric bass), Chuck Berghofer (double bass), and Russell Bridges (who would later become famous in his own right as Leon Russell). With the success of Whipped Cream & Other Delights came huge demands for concert appearances. It was at this time that Alpert formed the public version of the Tijuana Brass which included: Pisano, Edmondson, Nick Ceroli (drums), Pat Senatore (bass), Tonni Kalash (trumpet), Lou Pagani (piano) as well as Julius Wechter on marimba and vibes (studio only).
A remix of the album was released in 2006 on the Shout Factory label with model Bree Condon “clothed” on the cover in a similar fashion to the original.
The album is seen briefly in the movie The Big Lebowski when the Dude is looking through Maude’s record collection. It is also seen in The Boondock Saints when Rocco frantically gathers his possessions after killing three associates in a diner. It is seen among other period albums early in The Honeymoon Killers, and can also be spotted in the living room of the Weir household in multiple episodes of Freaks and Geeks.
Chart positions
Year | Chart | Position |
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1965 | Billboard Pop Albums (Billboard 200) | 1 |
1966 |
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