Whipped Cream and Other Delights

If you spend any time at all flipping through used record crates at thrift shops or used record stores, one of the artists you are sure to see repeatedly is Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass. I suspect that most of you flip right on by Herb without giving his albums too much thought. But it's worth considering just why there are so many used TJB (Tijuana Brass) albums out there.  

Alpert was born in Los Angeles in 1935. Although he is forever linked to the Latino sound, he is not in fact Hispanic. His family were jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe who settled in the Los Angeles area. According to Wikipedia, he took trumpet lessons beginning at age eight and played in local talent competitions. He joined the U.S. Army after high school, where, Wikipedia tells us, he "frequently performed at military ceremonies." Which sounds like he played "Taps" at funerals. At any rate, after leaving the service, he attended USC and was a member of the famous Trojan Marching Band for two years. According to his bio, he next tried his hand at acting, landing a few bit parts in movies (including an uncredited role as a drummer boy in the blockbuster "The Ten Commandments.") Wisely, Alpert soon turned his attention to music.

In the late 50s and early 60s, Los Angeles was ground zero for the burgeoning pop music scene. New groups and record labels were sprouting all over the valley. Anyone who could strum a guitar or write a clever lyric was putting out singles and trying to cash in on the craze for teen and surf records. From 1957-59, Alpert worked as a songwriter and record producer for Keen Records, collaborating on a couple of Top 20 hits for Jan and Dean and Sam Cooke. 

Jerry Moss and Herb Alpert in 1974

Although he had released a couple of obscure 45s under different names, in 1960, Alpert began his own recording career in earnest as a singer, cutting a single for Dot Records under the name Dore Alpert. In 1961, with his friend Jerry Moss (who was working as a record promoter), Alpert set up a recording studio in his garage and started a record company. Initially they called themselves Carnival Records, but had to change it after discovering that there was already another record company with the same name. And so, in 1962, A&M Records was born. (A&M stands for Alpert and Moss if you hadn't already figured that out.)

The inspiration for A&M's first single has become part of pop music lore. Summarizing various online versions, Alpert and Moss enjoyed driving down to Tijuana, Mexico to watch the bullfights. Alpert was reportedly captivated by the sounds of the crowd and the mariachi bands. Back in their garage studio, Alpert wanted to try recording something that captured the feel and excitement of the bullfight.

He had been experimenting with a song by Sol Lake called "Twinkle Star," and decided to mix in crowd noises and adapt his trumpet part to create a more "mariachi" style. The result was the very first A&M release, which they retitled "The Lonely Bull." There is a wonderfully campy 1967 video version of the song here.

Alpert and Moss personally funded the production and distributed copies to radio stations in the area. In the fall of 1962, it caught on and became their first Top 10 hit, reaching No. 6 on the Billboard Pop Singles chart. To capitalize on their success, Alpert went into a real recording studio (at an outfit called Conway Records) and quickly put together an album's worth of songs in the same pseudo-mariachi style. A&M released their first ever LP (A&M 101) in December that year, also called "The Lonely Bull." 

Unbeknowest to those who bought the album, there was no group called the "Tijuana Brass." Alpert had recorded the album using L.A. studio musicians, including members of the famous "Wrecking Crew" (who played the music on literally hundreds of chart-topping songs and albums.) Not having a band didn't become a problem until a few years later when the success of his albums forced Alpert to hire a band so he could go on the road and perform as the Tijuana Brass. Interestingly enough, none of the members of the band was hispanic. Although, as Alpert would later quip, "four of them were Italian."

The followup to "The Lonely Bull" was entitled "Herb Alpert's Tijuana Brass Volume 2." It is generally regarded as one of TJB's weaker albums. But Alpert bounced back with 1964's "South of the Border," an album that recaptured much of the magic of his initial release. Also that year, Alpert got a huge boost when the Clark Gum Company began using his song "Mexican Shuffle" to promote their Teaberry chewing gum. The song was renamed the "Teaberry Shuffle," and anyone alive at the time will surely remember the incredibly catchy tune that accompanied the gum's TV adverts. You can watch one here.

Alpert was already on a roll, but the flood gates opened with the amazing success of his fourth LP, 1965's "Whipped Cream and Other Delights." While the album had a great collection of catchy tunes and Alpert's trademarked "mariachi" style, a large part of the reason for its success was its (for the time) racy cover of a beautiful young woman covered in whipped cream and apparently nothing else.

Some enterprising grad student could write an entire Ph.D thesis about this cover and its effect on pop culture. But the basic facts are that the young woman was a model named Dolores Erickson. She was actually wearing a bikini with the straps pulled down, and was covered not by whipped cream, but six cans of shaving cream. Not that any of that mattered to the more than six million people (including, one suspects, a huge number of adolescent boys) who bought the album. By the end of 1965, "Whipped Cream" was the top selling album in the U.S., beating out The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, and Frank Sinatra. All told, the album spent eight weeks at No. 1, and remained in the top 40 for nearly three years.

All this by way of saying, there is a good reason you find so many TJB albums in the used record bins. Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass were incredibly popular during the 60s. And in contrast to the Beatles or the Stones, Alpert appealed to everyone from teens to grandmas. As a result, Alpert sold more than 75 million albums, and a lot of them are still out there. And while the music is certainly dated, it holds up well in a retro lounge kind of way. Over the years I've picked up all of the TJB releases, including both mono and stereo releases of the early albums. It's not hard to find copies in VG+ and even NM condition. And since they rarely go for more than 50 cents or a dollar, you really can't go wrong. 

Enjoy the music!