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 1963. 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 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.


Whipped Cream and Other DelightsAlpert'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 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 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 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, 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: 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, but this song also had a limited range, and it worked for him. The single debuted in April 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.