Herb Alpert

For more than fifty years, Herb Alpert has come to mean many things to many people. To generations of music fans, Alpert is the dark-haired, trumpet-playing songmaker whose name instantly brings to mind memorable songs like “The Lonely Bull,” “A Taste of Honey,” “This Guy’s in Love with You” and “Rise.” These are but a few of the tunes Alpert recorded either as leader of the legendary Tijuana Brass or as an artist in his own right, yielding 5 #1 popular hits, 8 Grammy awards, 14 Platinum and 15 gold albums – plus a staggering 72 million albums sold worldwide. To a global circle of musicians, Alpert’s name implies an immediately recognizable group sound as well as a distinctly relaxed, economically-spoken instrumental style. Trumpeters especially are hip to his musical signature: “You hear three notes and you know it’s Herb Alpert” said Miles Davis in 1989; “He gets right to the point of what he’s playing,” remarked Wynton Marsalis more recently, “very melodic and nothing extraneous.”

To the entire music business, Alpert remains the “A” in A&M Records, one of the most visionary record labels of the last half century. In 1990 as a tide of corporate takeovers swept the industry, he became the last of a generation of record men – along with his partner Jerry Moss – to sell the company he founded.

“I have never to this day met two finer gentlemen,” said A&M artist Sting in 2006, inducting them into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. “They began distributing records from a garage in Hollywood and wound up with the largest and most successful independent record company in the world.” (“I haven't seen this many people since I played bar mitzvahs years ago,” Alpert responded a few minutes later.)

Yet all these high profile achievements only begin to define the generous extent of Herb Alpert’s creative spirit. Today, the litany of Alpert’s public and lesser-known accomplishments also include:

-Abstract expressionist of respect and critical renown: his canvases and sculptures are praised for defining a flowing, visual vocabulary of their own.
-Broadway producer with a talent for sniffing out prize-winning theater: he has helped bring to Broadway Tony Kushner’s “Angels in America,” Arthur Miller’s “Broken Glass,” August Wilson’s “Seven Guitars,” and Gregory Hines’s “Jelly’s Last Jam.”
-Philanthropist with a hands-on approach: the Herb Alpert
Foundation funds deserving arts and education programs selected by Alpert and his wife Lani for their effectiveness in reaching groups and communities that would benefit most from such cultural assistance.

No real-life timeline is neat and sequential. But in tracing Alpert’s career, a consistent creative imperative serves as the logic and link between a diverse range of struggles and triumphs. Alpert himself admits as such: “Yeah, it’s been run on instinct. I’m listening to a higher power. I’m not religious, but I am listening to something.”

He was born Herbert Alpert on March 31, 1935 in Los Angeles, the youngest of three children born to a tailor who had emigrated from Russia, and his California-born wife. The future trumpeter came of age in a house filled with music: his father played mandolin, his mother violin, his sister piano and a brother who sometimes played drums in Alpert’s earliest groups. He attended Melrose Elementary School where, at the age of eight, he was drawn to the trumpet in a music appreciation class.

“They had a room with a bunch of different instruments on a table and I picked up the trumpet,” recalls Alpert. “It took a long time before I made any sense out of it. I was very fortunate that I stuck with it. It’s unfortunate that kids don’t have that same opportunity now that most of the arts programs have been cut out of the public school system.”

Alpert’s aptitude on his chosen instrument soon blossomed. He formed a band in high school – the Colonial Trio – and began to perform on a regular basis. By 1951, despite local notoriety and steady work – weddings, parties and clubs – he was yet to be sold on the idea of music as a career. “I was playing weekends and making a moderate sum of money but I still wasn’t sure where it was going to lead,” he says. “I liked playing the horn but I wasn’t looking for music as a career when I was growing up.”

After high school, Alpert enrolled at USC, spending two years as a gymnast, and then was drafted into the Army in 1955. He married during his service, and after starting a family found the need for a steady income. Alpert focused on music as a profession, and by 1957, he was playing gigs in the evening, and during the day working with a new songwriting/production partner named Lou Adler. The two were hired by Keen Records, an L.A.-based label that was enjoying success with Sam Cooke.

Alpert was hustling, trying out and accruing a range of experiences that would soon reward him well. Within three years, he had made a mark as a songwriter (co-writing “Wonderful World” with Cooke), a producer (Jan and Dean’s “Baby Talk”), and as an actor: blowing a ram’s horn in The Ten Commandments, but deciding that acting was not for him. In 1960, he became a recording artist in his own right: signed to RCA Records by trumpet legend Shorty Rogers and recording as “Dore Alpert.”

In 1962, Alpert found his sound and struck paydirt. Experimenting in his garage studio on a reel-to-reel tape deck, he played a tune written by a friend, layering in a mariachi horn arrangement and the excited cheers of a crowd watching a Tijuana bullfight. With a new partner, Jerry Moss, a music promotion man from New York City, Alpert released the single on a fledgling record label they established together. “The Lonely Bull” by “The Tijuana Brass featuring Herb Alpert” – single #703 on A&M Records – shot into the Top Ten before the year ended.

The ensuing chapter from the Herb Alpert story is now inextricably woven into the tapestry of popular ’60s culture. The sound of the Tijuana Brass proved as ubiquitous – and profitable – as that of the best-known music-makers of the era, on a par with the Beatles, Elvis Presley and Frank Sinatra. Hit singles and albums seemed to pour out effortlessly on the A&M label, as Alpert continued to craft the TJB sound. Frequent use of his tunes on television and Hollywood soundtracks only amplified the overall impact.

As Alpert’s renown exploded worldwide, so did the fortune of his record company. With Moss at the helm of the label’s business dealings and Alpert steering its musical direction, the label expanded its musical horizons. In an amazingly short period, the label signed and delivered hit-producing music by a plethora of popular acts working in a wide range of styles: Sergio Mendes & Brasil ’66 and Waylon Jennings. The Sandpipers and Burt Bacharach. Wes Montgomery and Quincy Jones. Procol Harum, Joe Cocker and Cat Stevens… and many others.

By the end of the decade, facing a schedule crammed with studio productions, recording deadlines and performances around the country and overseas, Alpert was understandably tired.

“I had an ‘Ah Ha!’ experience in Germany in 1969, onstage, playing with the TJB. All of a sudden I saw myself in the third row, and I got into this idea of, I just want to be comfortable. So I took a trip to Brazil and I remember sitting at the end of Ipanema Beach, alone on a rock, looking at these seagulls that were catching the thermals, not moving their wings, just having a ball. And I said, ‘I want to be free like that.’”

Accordingly, Alpert dismantled the Tijuana Brass and refocused his attention on matters closer to home. He divorced and married the new love in his life – singer Lani Hall. He helped guide A&M through a hard-rocking decade; as the ’70s progressed, the label yielded one successful act after another: the Carpenters and Carole King. Billy Preston and Peter Frampton. Cheech and Chong. Supertramp and Styx and Joe Jackson and...

In 1979 – with A&M facing its most serious financial crisis to date in the middle of an industry-wide slump – Alpert recorded a tune that helped maintain the label’s independence. “Rise” topped the Pop charts, was picked as the theme for the 1980 Olympics, and A&M rolled boldly into the ’80s: The Police and Bryan Adams. R.E.M. and Squeeze. Janet Jackson and Jeffrey Osborne. Iggy Pop and OMD. Sting and John Hiatt and Suzanne Vega and Gerry Mulligan and Paul Desmond...

Along the way, Alpert kept his trumpet close at hand, ever ready to try on new musical styles and rhythms. In 1987, he collaborated with the hot R&B production team of Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis, and with vocal help from Janet Jackson, hit big with the single “Diamonds.” In 1990, he began recording North on South Street – a pioneering (and sadly overlooked) gem that fused hip-hop and techno dance beats with solid jazz improvisation, predicting the advent of acid-jazz a few years later.

That same year, A&M remained the sole independent record company among the few that had grown to full maturity – like Atlantic, Motown and Sire – but had yet to sell out to a major conglomerate. That year, Polygram came calling, with a generous offer. Alpert and Moss – acutely aware of the ever-increasing stakes of staying in business – decided to accept.

“We were in competition with the big corporations like Warner Bros. and EMI, who had lots of gelt to buy artists and to throw around for promotion. It was getting harder and harder to compete with that, so Jerry and I felt that the timing was right.”

Alpert parted with A&M, retaining only his own masters, and remaining on board to steer a few projects still in the pipeline. When good friend Stan Getz passed away in 1991, Alpert returned to his jazz roots and recorded an album’s worth of heartfelt ballads in memory of the saxophone legend, with one cut recorded with Getz before he passed called “Friends.” Midnight Sun carried poignancy deeper than just the music. Released in 1992, it was Alpert’s final recording for the label he founded thirty years before.

That Alpert spent most of his career meeting the demands of being a pop star while running a record company that was exploding in size, says as much of his musical focus as it does of his work ethic. That he and Moss sold A&M and soon began another recording enterprise – Almo Sounds – reveals an tireless commitment to music over matters of business.

“I loved being the ‘A’ of A&M. I think we did great things, I know we treated artists right, we were honest and put out great product. But with where the business was going, I don’t look back at our decision to sell at all.”

Having earned a life of repose, Herb Alpert still chooses to remain as busy as he ever was. But these days it’s a personal muse rather than a personal secretary whom he allows to plan his schedule.

“I’m a creative guy – 80 to 85% on the right side of my brain. I spend most of my day like that. Today for example I woke up at 6:30, read for a while, then went into the studio and painted for about a half hour. Then I played trumpet for a while. I think about music all the time. I think about painting and about sculpting. That’s what I do.”

Well, that’s not all: there’s good food, and good works. In addition to his creative outlets, Alpert oversees the Vibrato Grill, a restaurant/jazz club in Bel Air that opened in 2004, as well as all activities of the Herb Alpert Foundation in Santa Monica, which he founded in 1982.

Add in a desire to continue performing on trumpet with his Grammy-award wife, singer Lani Hall. ”I’m trying to reduce my life to just things that I like to do, like doing some concerts with Lani. Making money is not my goal; having fun at this age in my life is.”

To repeat: Herb Alpert has come to mean many things to many people. Perhaps the true measure of his impact is to simply picture how incomplete the world would be without his accomplishments.

Can the ’60s be imagined without the songs of the Tijuana Brass? Or today’s music scene without the countless contributions of A&M? And what of the many lives that have been enriched – in some cases saved – by the efforts of Alpert’s Foundation?

Alpert himself is far too unassuming, his attention almost always locked onto the next project or problem, to consider such questions of self-focus. His priorities derive from the same sense of generosity and humility that has guided him through a long, illustrious career, helping him find direction at many a turn.

“It’s that never-ending quest of discovering and trying to be the person that you’re intended to be. Not what those strong influences that were around us while growing up wanted us to be like. If we didn’t have any of those pulls on us, how different would we be? I’m still working on that. That’s my end game.” ~ herbalpert.com/music_biography.shtml