Herb Alpert is my all-time favorite musician, and this goes back all the way to my earliest years. I LOVED listening to Herb Alpert & the Tijuana Brass (TJB), even when I was just four years old. Their songs were short, catchy, and fun. Especially Tijuana Taxi:
And Spanish Flea:
The silly trumpet parts would make me giggle as a little guy, and I’ll admit they sometimes still do today.
A song I haven’t heard much since back then is A Taste of Honey . So when I listen to it now I can easily picture the house we lived in at the time, around 1970. I remember exactly where our giant stereo console sat in our living room and I recall, with perfect clarity, my experiences listening to Herb’s music.
(Listen to Taste of Honey and continue reading for full effect)
I remember most often listening to the TJB’s greatest hits while Mom was making dinner, and we were waiting for Dad to get home. My older sisters would be in their bedroom, busy with their homework, playing with their dolls…or whatever. If I got too hungry to wait, Mom would give me a slice of Velveeta cheese to hold me over. Sometimes she’d let me use a special plastic mold we had, that when pressed down on a slice would make five distinct shapes, along with the leftover scraps. I would sit in one of our big 60’s gold lounge chairs (or sometimes on the floor behind the one in the corner, for some reason), nibbling on my little bowl of scraps and shapes while listening to the TJB. Sometimes I’d look at the cover of the album and imagine those mysterious-looking musicians performing at a bull fight or at some sort of Mexican party.
My knowledge of the world was small, but my imagination was boundless.
These are some of the only memories I have from that young age. They were seared in my memory over the years from being constantly exposed to Herb’s music, which always made me think of those initial experiences. Strangely, the smell of Velveeta also brings me right back.
In the History Books
I’m sure many people don’t realize how big of a deal Herb and the Tijuana Brass were in the 60’s. They actually outsold the Beatles in 1966, having at one time five different albums in the top 20 of the Billboard charts. To this day, no one else has ever accomplished that. Aside from the TJB, Herb was creating his own music as well. He scored a #1 hit in 1968 with This Guy’s in Love with You, a classic 60’s love song with a rare twist – Herb, himself, singing the vocals.
Herb continued to stay relevant for decades, releasing a new album almost every single year from 1962 to 1992. He had a another #1 hit in 1979 with his song Rise (which would later be sampled by The Notorious B.I.G. for his #1 hit Hipnotize, co-written by Puff Daddy in 1997). With the success of Rise, Herb became the only performer in history to record both a #1 vocal and a #1 instrumental performance.
He has a total of nine Grammy Awards, and continues to write new music to this day. He’s also a very talented painter and sculptor. Oh, and did I mention that he’s the “A” in A&M records? Is there anything this guy can’t do? The amazing thing is he is also extremely humble, and has donated many tens of millions of dollars towards causes he believes in, such as music education.
His music production slowed down a bit in the 90’s, but the work he created during that era is my favorite of his entire career. The albums during that decade were more smooth and mellow compared to his earlier work, which made them the perfect accompanying music for my quiet evenings at home with Michelle. The way he plays the trumpet on these albums is amazing – simply beautiful. Chris Botti is the only other trumpet player I’ve heard who can match the beauty of Herb’s smooth and distinctive style.
One additional note about Herb: Until I was nearly 40 years old I always assumed that he was Mexican. Because of his band’s name, I figured he was from Tijuana. He had dark hair and a dark complexion. And he played the most amazing Spanish-style music. Only it turns out that he’s Jewish and his family came from Romania. His only connection to Mexico was growing up in Southern California. What a shock! Well, I’m probably not the only one who had been fooled.
A Big Surprise
One of my greatest musical experiences occurred in 2009. I had absolutely no idea that Herb was still touring. Michelle gave me the biggest birthday surprise ever, when she secretly bought tickets to see him play at a local Minneapolis jazz club. I wasn’t let in on the secret until we arrived at the venue. And if finally seeing my musical idol in concert wasn’t enough, I also got to meet him and chat after the show. He actually apologized to me for forgetting to mention my birthday while he was on stage that night (Michelle had arranged that, too). Having the chance to tell him, personally, how much his music meant to me over the years – basically my whole life – was a complete thrill for me.
A Personal Story
We’ve been lucky enough to see Herb in concert a few more times since then. The most memorable occasion was when he and his wife of 37 years, Lani Hall (a very accomplished singer on her own), came into town in 2011. We managed to score front row center seats, where we basically sat at Herb’s feet, with the stage only a couple feet off the ground. We were so close it actually felt a little awkward. Not that I’m complaining.
One of the unique features of a Herb Alpert performance is that he loves to interact with the crowd. He takes time between songs to tell stories and answer questions the audience might have. On this particular night someone asked him about Karen Carpenter. Herb personally signed Karen and her brother Richard to A&M records in 1969, as The Carpenters, after hearing a demo tape of the two.
He stared at the floor and took a few deep breaths before speaking, but then went on to tell us a long but engaging story of how he met the Carpenters, and helped them get their career started. The story started with a dilemma he faced. At the time he had a follow-up song for his 1968 hit This Guy’s in Love, all ready to go, but just couldn’t get the song to sound right. He carried it around in his “back pocket” for a couple of years, not sure what to do with it.
Then in 1970, after the Carpenters’ initial album was received much more poorly than expected, some of the executives at A&M recommended they drop the act. But Herb still had faith that the Carpenters could make it and decided to let them try out his new song.
They recorded it immediately. And the rest is history…as they say. The song Close to You hit the #1 spot in the charts in July 1970, and earned the Carpenters a Grammy award the following year.
Coincidentally, Close to You was the biggest hit for A&M records since Herb’s This Guy’s in Love with You in 1968.The Carpenters would go on to huge success over the next 13 years, until Karen’s untimely death in 1983 from the effects of anorexia. Herb got a bit emotional talking about Karen, which made sense, knowing they had such a close relationship. He threw in a few more fun personal facts about Karen, such as the fact that she was the original drummer for the Carpenters, and a good one at that. Who knew?
The story Herb told that night will always stick with me. I’m utterly fascinated hearing about how a musician or a band started out, and then how they got that one lucky break – the one that finally sent them over the brink, from obscurity to stardom. While at the same time so many other amazingly talented musicians just never make it. Is it luck, hard work and persistence, or destiny? Probably a combination of each. For some reason I can’t get enough of these stories, whether it’s about a musician, an athlete, a movie star, or anyone that makes it ‘big’.
A Beautiful Love Song
It was tempting for me to focus this post on Close to You by the Carpenters, a song that became so much more meaningful to me after hearing Herb’s story. But because this post is really all about Herb Albert, I’ve honored that with his 1968 hit This Guy’s in Love with You.
I have to mention, however, that both of these amazing songs were written by Burt Bacharach and Hal David, one of the most successful songwriting duos of the 50’s and 60’s. You might already know a few of their songs, such as Raindrops Keep Fallin’ on my Head, Do You Know the Way to San Jose, or one of my favorites – What the World Needs Now is Love.
The video footage for This Guy’s in Love provides a fantastic snapshot of life in Southern California in the late 60’s, complete with an ocean sunset, dreamy video effects, and…mega-eyelashes. Who knew they even made music videos back then? I’m grateful they did for this one.
I think I’ll grab myself a slice of Velveeta, sit back, and enjoy.
PS – if you’d like to check out the Carpenter’s Close to You video as well, here’s the link.
Thank you Bill, what a trip down Memory Lane! I was in high school and played trumpet in the school band. Over time, those first thirteen TJB albums were cranked-up and played hundreds of times in our basement. And me, trying to play along with Herb, I wrote his many songs in pencil on sheets of notebook paper with the big help of a reel-to-reel tape player so I could play a few bars at a time, stop the tape, write the notes down, and get the whole song on paper in about a half hour. My friend Gary, a fellow Cooper High trumpet player, and I would rock-out playing “Spanish Flea,” Taste of Honey” and other TJB hits. Mom, while upstairs said years later that she really enjoyed hearing all that music. I still have that loose leaf notebook stuffed with songs. Maybe I’ll get my old trumpet down from the bedroom closet shelf . . .
Bill, I was quite the A&M label junkie back then, buying all the TJB, Baha Marimba Band, Sergio Mendez & Brazil 66 (w/Lani H.) and Carpenters albums that I could get my hands on. There was some GREAT music there.