In the history of modern music most roads lead to living legend Herb Alpert. He is one of the most identifiable instrumentalists and music producers in the world with his trumpet playing made famous by his hit “The Lonely Bull” in which he and his Tijuana Brass Band took the entire world by storm placing listeners directly into the arena of a bullfight.
Alpert not only created music that reached billions of fans all over the world but along with A&M founding partner Jerry Moss helped to encourage and nurture many of the most important artists for over the past 60 years from Quincy Jones and The Carpenters to Janet Jackson and The Police.
At 89 years young, Alpert has recently released his fiftieth album 50 and is currently on tour with his longtime band and partner in life and on stage, vocalist Lani Hall. Alpert and Hall will perform as part of their A Christmas Wish tour in Houston on Sunday, December 15 at The Cullen Performance Hall on the campus of the University of Houston.
“I enjoy just playing with the musicians I like to play with. Of course, my wife is a world class singer and we have a good time doing it and we are making a lot of people happy doing it along the way so it’s a win win for me and hopefully for other people that are listening to us,” says Alpert adding that he still gets “energy” from performing live,” he says in a phone interview.
Alpert has always had a staggering ability to create and identify talent that can also touch wide audiences in a unpredictable ways. He is the only artist to ever have simultaneous charting songs as an instrumentalist and vocalist with “The Lonely Bull” and Burt Bacharach’s “This Guys In Love With You.”
When advised to take the money and run after the success of “The Lonely Bull,” Alpert decided instead to see what else he could do. “I took that sound and tried to see how many different ways I could present it with a different type of song and that’s what opened the door for me.”
Alpert admits he has always created first and foremost for himself and without thinking consciously of whether anything he did or produced would be a “hit record.” He laughs remembering a bandmates honesty about hating Rise when Alpert asked for his opinion. In true Alpert form, he wasn’t phased one bit and felt good about the future of the album which did go on to be a commercial success and a forever reference to truly funky grooves.
“When it feels good for me then I expose it to others. That’s my pursuit, to make music that makes me feel good. I feel like if it makes me feel good, maybe it’ll make somebody else feel good because basically I like positive energy and I go for that as much as I can.”
Even to this day he pulls people in with his upbeat energy. Alpert describes a recent resurgence in his hit record Whipped Cream & Other Delights due to its use in a TikTok video leading to 2.5 billion streams. People were getting into the album even without seeing its iconic cover which is easily one of the best of all time.
“It’s been amazing. I’m always impressed with how many people reach out and bite. They didn’t know me from Adam. It wasn’t like they were buying a Herb Alpert record, they were just buying a song because they liked it.”
His new album 50, released in September of this year, came at a time where Alpert was not only celebrating his fiftieth anniversary with his wife, who was the lead vocalist for the late Sergio Mendes and Brasil 66, a band he signed to his A&M Records label in 1965, but it also marks his fiftieth album.
“I had no idea it was number 50,” says Alpert. “I just go along and I pick up songs that for some reason touch me. I try to take songs that people are familiar with. I find a song like that and do it in a way that it hasn’t been played quite that way before so that’s what I’ve always tried to do.”
Though not premeditated, the song selection on 50 has a wonderful way of encompassing Alpert’s long career and ability to sing a song through his trumpet, twisting and turning the notes to make them his own.
Alpert included the song that helped shift his musical intention in his early days, “Sh-Boom” the 1954 doo-wop hit from the Chords. Originally a classically trained player, hearing the boppy track as a young man Alpert was intrigued by what the song stirred in him and began to open his mind to a different kind of music.
“I wasn’t thinking that I could do it, I was just thinking popular music isn’t all that bad,” he explains, carrying that change with him for his entire career as a songwriter and producer for countless acts on A&M Records.
“There was something about the feeling because I think all art it’s all about a feeling. It’s hard to describe what that feeling is but when you get the feeling, you get it. I think that’s what stops us when you hear a record on the radio and you want to get a piece of paper so you can write down the name of the song and the artist, it’s a feeling you get. That’s the way I hear it now in my advanced age.”
Alpert credits his early work with Sam Cooke with helping him frame his approach to music.
“I watched him and he was out of the gospel field and he was all about feel. He was all about putting out a feeling for people.” Alpert says. In his documentary Herb Alpert Is, Alpert tells how Cooke handed him a little notebook with the lyrics for “What A Wonderful World” and asked for his opinion.
As Alpert read the words, his mind told him the song was cheesy but he didn’t say that to Cooke, instead asking him what the words would sound like. “He picked up his guitar and started playing and I was thinking wow, isn’t that interesting. He turned that corny song that I was looking at lyrically into something special. That’s when it hit me over the head, it ain’t what you do, it’s how you do it.”
Alpert shows how he does it on the first single off the new album “Dancing Down 50th Street” where he seems to tap into his Tijuana Brass Bands original style that whipped the world into a frenzy while blending some later elements from his 1979 release “Rise.”
Throughout 50, what is clear is that Alpert is still himself. “You know Miles Davis gave me a great compliment. He said, ‘You hear three notes, you know it’s Herb Alpert.’ When I play a song that’s familiar to others, I try to play the song knowing the lyrics. I try to play the lyrics through the trumpet and express that feeling so maybe it connects from that point of view,” he says.
“I think you have to be authentic. People resonate to people that are real. You can’t fake it, you can’t try to be something that you’re not,” he advises. “There was a time when I tried to play like other musicians that I liked and I came to that realization of, who wants to hear that?”
Beside his long music career, Alpert is known for his visual art in painting and sculpture and his philanthropy through The Herb Alpert Foundation.
“I try to do my part,” says Alpert. “I think we all have a responsibility to try to do that. We all have the same ticket to this game called life and there’s a lot of people who are struggling and I think we should be sensitive to that.”
Herb Alpert & Lani Hall will perform on Sunday, December 15 at at 7:30 p.m. at the Cullen Performance Hall on The University of Houston Campus, 4300 University, 7:30 p.m.
This article appears in Jan 1 – Dec 31, 2024.
