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 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 .[1] As of 1996, Alpert had sold 72 million albums worldwide.[2] [3] He is married to Lani Hall (1974-present) 1 child and was married to Sharon Mae Lubin (1956-?) (divorced) 2 children.
Early life and career
Alpert was born in Los Angeles, California , into a Jewish family of Russian and Romanian origins. His father Louis was from Radomyshl (present-day Ukraine ) and although a tailor by trade, was also a talented mandolin player . His mother, Tillie, had her roots in Romania on her father's side; she herself taught violin at a young age. His older brother David was a talented young drummer . Alpert himself began trumpet lessons at the age of eight and played at dances as a teenager. Acquiring an early wire recorder in high school, he experimented 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. In 1956, he was credited as one of the trumpet players in the film "Ten Commandments".[citation needed ] . In 1962, he had an uncredited part in a scene in " Mr. Hobbs Takes a Vacation" where he played ( and performed a solo ) in a dance band.
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 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 Alpert and Moss 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 for ambiance, 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 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 used to tell his audiences that his group consisted of "Three lasagnas , 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 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 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 type 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 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 was real). 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 Sunoco ads ("They're movin', they're movin', people in the know, they're movin' to Sunoco").
In 1967, the Tijuana Brass 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 ; 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 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. Alpert's vocal skills and range were limited, and the song's unchallenging technical demands suited him. The single debuted in May 1968, topped the national chart for four weeks and ranked among the year's biggest hits. Initially dismissed by the critical cognoscenti and "hip" music-lovers as strictly a housewife's favorite[citation needed ] , Alpert's unusually expressive recording of "This Guy's in Love with You" now enjoys appeal well beyond the so-called mainstream. In 1996 at London's Royal Festival Hall , Noel Gallagher (of British rock band Oasis ) performed the song with Burt Bacharach . Former Beatle George Harrison has sta
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