Herbert "Herb" Alpert (born
March 31, 1935) is an American
musician most associated with the group variously
known as Herb Alpert & the Tijuana Brass,
Herb Alpert's Tijuana Brass or just
TJB. He is also a recording industry
executive — he is 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".
Originally the Tijuana Brass was just Alpert overdubbing his own
trumpet, slightly out of sync. The title cut reached #6 on the
Billboard Pop Singles Chart. This
was
A&M's first album (the
original number was 101), although it was recorded at Conway
Records.
By the end of 1964, because of 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 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
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.
An album or two would be released each year throughout the 1960s.
Alpert's band was 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
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 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".
The Brass covered the
Bert Kaempfert
tune "Happy Trumpeter" 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 are 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 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.
Alpert's only number one single during this period (and the first
#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 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 was not 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. Alpert's
vocal skills were limited; this song 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, then 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 TJB. 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 athlete at the
Los Angeles Summer Games. The
invitation led to the
Bullish album
and tour.
In the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s, 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 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" made Alpert the only
artist ever to hit #1 on the
Billboard pop singles
chart with both a
vocal
piece and an
instrumental piece. The
song "Route 101" off the
Fandango album 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.
Alpert
performed the Star-Spangled
Banner prior to Super Bowl XXII
in San
Diego
in January 1988. It was the last non-vocal
rendition of the national anthem at the Super Bowl.
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), Liza Minnelli and Janet Jackson
(featured
vocalist on his 1987 hit
single "Diamonds"). These working
relationships allowed Alpert to become one of only a handful of
artists to place singles in the Top 10 in at least three different
decades (1960s, 1970s, and 1980s).
Alpert and A&M Records
partner Jerry
Moss both agreed in 1987 to sell A&M to PolyGram Records for a
reported $500 million. Both would continue to manage the label
until 1993, when they left due to frustrations with PolyGram's
constant pressure to force the label to fit into its corporate
culture. Alpert and Moss then expanded their
Almo Sounds music publishing company to produce
records as well, primarily as a vehicle for Alpert's music. Almo
Sounds imitates the former company culture embraced by Alpert and
Moss when they first started A&M.
Awards and honors
Alpert and Moss received a
Grammy
Trustees Award in 1997 for their lifetime achievements in the
recording industry as
executive 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.
Herb Alpert was referenced in the second show of the third season
of
Get Smart where one of the
code signals between Maxwell Smart and his contact was "Herb Alpert
takes trumpet lessons from
Guy
Lombardo."
Recently
Alpert and his wife (Lani Hall) released a new album in the summer
of 2009.
Anything Goes is Alpert's first release of new
material since 1999's
Herb Alpert and Colors.
Alpert
continues to play his trumpet, and also devotes time to his second
career as an abstract
expressionist painter and sculptor with shows around the United States. He has 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 with
The California
Institute of the Arts . 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 is 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
compact disc
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
Whipped Cream and Other Delights:
Re-Whipped 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, including
Saturday Night
Live. Alpert was credited with an acting role in the
Beastie Boys music video, "Ch-Check It
Out," although he did not appear. Apart from the reissues, the
Christmas Album continues to be available every year
during the holiday season.
He and
his wife Lani Hall Alpert donated $30
million to University of California, Los
Angeles
in 2007 to form and endow UCLA Herb Alpert School
of Music as part of the restructured UCLA School of the Arts
and Architecture. He gave $24 million, which included $15
million from April 2008, to CalArts
for its music curricula, and provided much funding
for the culture jamming activists
Yesmen.
On
Sergio Mendes' 2008 album
Encanto, Alpert
performed trumpet solos backing lead vocals by his wife on the song
"
Dreamer". It marked the first time Alpert,
Mendes and Hall had all performed together on the same song.
Discography
- 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
- Just You and Me (1976) SP-4591
- Greatest Hits Vol. 2 (compilation) (1977)
SP-4627
- 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
- Bullish (1984) SP-5022
- Wild Romance (1985) SP-5082
- Classics Volume 1 (compilation) (1986) CD-2501
- 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)
- Lost Treasures (2005)
- Whipped Cream & Other Delights Rewhipped (2006)
Shout Factory
- Rise (reissue) (2007) Shout! Factory
- Anything Goes (2009) Concord
Jazz CJA-31441-02
See also
References
- tijuanabrass.com
- songfacts.com
- alpertawards.org
- The Yes Men
External links
Wikis
Quiz
Facts
Map
Misc
Search