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Today’s Vinyl Vibrations podcast features the great trumpeter, arranger and producer, Herb Alpert.
M1 The Lonely Bull, (Sol Lake), Herb Alpert & the Tijuana Brass, The Lonely Bull, A&M Records, 1962 (2:29).
M2 South of the Border (Jimmy Kennedy and Michael Carr), Herb Alpert’s Tijuana Brass, South of the Border, A&M Records, 1964 (2:06)
M3 I’ve Grown Accustomed to Her Face (Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe), Herb Alpert’s Tijuana Brass, South of the Border, A&M Records, 1964 (2:25)
M4 A Taste of Honey, (Bobby Scott), Herb Alpert & The Tijuana Brass, Whipped Cream & Other Delights, 1965, (2:43).
M5 More and More Amor (Sol Lake), Herb Alpert & The Tijuana Brass, Going Places, A&M Records, 1965 (2:44).
M6 Mae (Riz Ortolani), Herb Alpert & The Tijuana Brass, Going Places, A&M Records, 1965 (2:27).
M7 Shades of Blue (Julias Wechter), Herb Alpert & The Tijuana Brass, Sounds Like, A&M Records, 1967 (2:44 ).
M8 Wade in the Water” (Traditional) – Herb Alpert & The Tijuana Brass, Sounds Like, A&M Records, 1967 (3:03).
M9 “Treasure of San Miguel” (Roger Nichols), Herb Alpert & The Tijuana Brass, Sounds Like, A&M Records, 1967 (2:14)
Herb Alpert was born in 1935, and is an American trumpeter who led the band “Herb Alpert & the Tijuana Brass” in the 1960s. He was born and raised in the Eastside Los Angeles. His parents were Tillie and Louis Alpert —they were Jewish immigrants to the U.S., coming here from the Ukraine and from Romania.
Alpert was born into a family of musicians. His father was a mandolin player and his mother taught violin. Herb’s older brother was a drummer. Herb began to play trumpet at the age of eight. While attending the University of Southern California in the 1950s, he was a member of the USC Trojan Marching Band for two years.
In the 1960s Alpert co-founded A&M Records with Jerry Moss, A for Alpert and M for Moss.
There are many, many measures of success in the area of popular music by which to measure the success of Herb Alpert – – ….here are just a few:
- He sold some 72 million records worldwide.
- And 28 of his albums landed on the Billboard 200 chart
- 5 of his albums became No. 1 albums
- He achieved #1 on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 as instrumentalist
- He has had 14 platinum albums (sold 1 million) and 15 gold albums (sold 500,000).
- He has received a Tony Award, eight Grammy Awards, and the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award
- He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2006….
- and was awarded the National Medal of Arts by Barack Obama in 2013.
One of the recording techniques Herb Alpert used in these early records was the overdubbing of the trumpet part, Starting with his first album, THE LONELY BULL, and the title track 1 on side 1. According to Herb Alpert, he said that he had been trying to find the right trumpet voice. He tried emulating the trumpet styles of Harry James, Louis Armstrong, Miles Davis and Clifford Brown. Oddly enough, he got inspiration NOT from these famous trumpeters, but from a guitarist named …Les Paul. Les Paul had been using multitracking his guitar recordings. So Alpert tried multitracking his trumpet … and that multitracking became one of the signature sounds we will hear. Here is an example of the overdubbed trumpet from the song A QUIET TEAR…….
(Play an example of Herb’s overdubbed trumpet on the song A QUIET TEAR song side 2 track 6)
In this overdub Herb Alpert is recording each part with the same phrasing and time … but playing the second part in harmony.
Additionally Alpert does a fair amount of overdubbing and playing both parts in unison. This double-recording of one part gives Herb’s trumpet an even more rich and full sound, added resonance of the instrument and added reverb or echo of the room. So overdubbing while playing the trumpet part in unison or in harmony was a signature sound of Herb Alpert & the Tijuana Brass. Here is an example from THE LONELY BULL intro….
(Play an example of Herb’s overdubbed trumpet on the song THE LONELY BULL song side 1 track 1)
That’s overdubbing and playing the dub in unison with the first part. It creates a richer and deeper sound of the trumpet.