The sound was soft, elegant and warm as a gentle summer breeze.
Yet for all its delicacy, the music’s impact was felt everywhere — on the radio, on the pop charts, even on TV, as the coy theme music for the “The Dating Game.”
To this day, trumpeter Herb Alpert cannot explain why, in the midst of the social upheaval of the ’60s, the world went wild for his sweetly understated work with the Tijuana Brass.
“I’d just be guessing, but maybe it’s because there was an upbeat quality to the music that was appealing,” says Alpert, 62, reflecting on his great heyday as a pop star. “It was friendly, touchable; it was hummable, danceable.
“It was done with love, I’ll tell you that,” Alpert adds. “I didn’t do it to try to make hit records as much as I was trying to satisfy my own needs.”
Lately, Alpert has been trying to fill his artistic needs once again.
Though his top-of-the-chart days may be past, though he has made a fortune selling an estimated 73 million records over the last 35 years, Alpert is hitting the road once again. He has taken a few brief tours in recent years, but his current schedule of international touring is ferocious. It includes shows in Grant Park on Thursday evening and the Montreal International Jazz Festival next month, where he’ll share the stage with the revered Cuban bands Irakere and Los Van Van.
Considering that Alpert and longtime partner Jerry Moss made millions selling their A&M record label to Polygram in 1990, and considering that Alpert’s mantel overflows with seven Grammy Awards, 15 gold albums and 14 platinum albums, he doesn’t exactly need the work.
But perhaps it’s not so surprising that Alpert would want to return to the fray. There’s only so much joy a musician can attain running an office instead of a band, and Alpert had had his fill.
“It was a great experience, running A&M, but toward the end it was getting a little unruly. It was too many people; it was a little bit more than I needed,” says Alpert, who like Moss stayed with Polygram as an executive until 1993.
“I just want to make music, basically. That’s all I ever wanted to do. I told Jerry, `I just want to be an artist — I don’t want to send interoffice memos anymore.’ “
Dismissed by some jazz aficionados as a peddler of lightweight pop tunes (you won’t find him listed in major jazz reference works) and considered by some in the record industry as a marketing phenomenon, Alpert actually played trumpet with control and understatement.
On the surface, Alpert hits such as “A Taste of Honey,” “Casino Royale,” “Wade in the Water” and “Rise” might seem like harmless ditties, but the poetry with which Alpert phrased the tunes distinguished his music from anyone else’s. That Alpert and his Tijuana Brass could outsell the Beatles two-to-one in 1966, with the trumpeter logging a remarkable five No. 1 albums that year (including “Whipped Cream and Other Delights” and “Going Places”) suggested that Alpert certainly knew how to communicate to his audience.
“The saga of Herb Alpert demonstrates that no matter what form of music dominates the charts at any given time,” writes Irwin Stambler in “The Encyclopedia of Pop, Rock and Soul,” “there is always room for something new and different. . . . Many artists and groups tried to emulate the musical approach of the Tijuana Brass, but no one but Alpert succeeded in making this particular sound a competitor to the ever-present rock beat.”
At the heart of Alpert’s success was his way with a horn, at once demure yet distinctive, understated yet alluring.
The jazz critics may have ignored him, but the musicians knew better.
“I always thought he played quite well,” says Bobby Lewis, one of Chicago’s most versatile and respected trumpeters. “He surrounded himself with good musicians, he had a strong concept of his instrument and, most important, he had something to say.”
A taste of Mexico
Like most major artists, Alpert came to music early in life, playing trumpet at age 8 in his native Los Angeles and eventually studying with the first trumpeter of the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra. After two years at Fairfax High School in L.A., Alpert served in the Army as a bugler in San Francisco’s Presidio garrison, eventually trying to launch a career as a singer under the name Dore Alpert.
The turning point came in the early ’60s, when Alpert attended his first bullfight in Mexico and witnessed famed matador Carlos Aruza.
“It was in Tijuana, and Aruza came out on a white horse and fought the bull without touching the reins of the horse,” remembers Alpert. “I’d never witnessed anything like that: the people screaming, a brass section up in the stands playing fanfares, and it all made this deep impression on me.”
Alpert subsequently went into his garage to record a tune in a Mexican-tinged style, then had the ingenious idea to return to Tijuana to record the roar of the crowd. By overdubbing the ambient sounds onto the homemade recording, Alpert hit on a sound not yet heard in American pop music: a mariachi-influenced music that also captured the flavor of the Mexican bullring.
Almost instantly, “The Lonely Bull” (1962) became the first hit for A&M Records, named for Alpert and Moss, and by the mid-’60s an empire was rising on the strength of such Alpert singles as “Mexican Shuffle,” “The Teaberry Shuffle” and “Tijuana Taxi.”
For any pop artist who attains massive success, though, the question eventually is the same: What do you do for an encore?
In Alpert’s case, there was the pleasure of launching such artists as Sergio Mendes and Gato Barbieri on his A&M label, the joy of watching a fledgling record label evolve into an industry giant.
But by the early ’90s, Alpert seemed to be getting restless. His 1992 CD “Midnight Sun” marked his first bona fide jazz album, and since then he has picked up the pace, recording “Second Wind” (1996) and “Passion Dance” (1997), his newest CD.
Influenced by Davis, Coltrane
If “Passion Dance,” with its mariachi rhythms and transparent arrangements, suggests a gentle nod to his Tijuana Brass days, it also has a sleek, funk-tinged attitude.
Listen closely to this, or almost any other, Alpert recording and you’ll hear echoes of Miles Davis, Chet Baker, Bill Evans, Stan Getz — all jazz artists who have loomed large in Alpert’s life and music.
“I remember attending a concert where Miles Davis was playing with his dream team — (tenor saxophonist John) Coltrane and (drummer) Philly Jo Jones, the real heavy people,” says Alpert. “Coltrane would play this burning, 3 million-note solo, and then Miles would come in with two notes: bli-blip, and the audience would go nuts.
“Miles understood space, how to use it, and that’s what I learned from him. It’s not what you do, it’s how you do it, and where you do it.”
Alpert’s playing always has been about articulating a few notes at precisely the right moment, leaving technical ostentation to others. If that means he hasn’t been lionized by music writers, he has the satisfaction of knowing that he has touched millions.
“I hear the most incredible stories as I tour around the country,” he says. “People tell me they’ve been married to `This Guy’s In Love With You’ or had these pivotal experiences with some of my records.
“I remember a conversation I had with Gerry Mulligan, may he rest in peace,” says Alpert, referring to the brilliant baritone saxophonist, who died in 1996. “He was telling me that he played for the (first) inauguration of Bill Clinton with 10 other saxophone palyers.
“And he said, `Man, these guys know all the changes, all the chords, all the riffs, they can play high, low, fast and slow. The only thing they don’t know is how to leave the bone alone.’
“Now isn’t that the truth.”
