Think for a minute.
How many 90-year-old musicians are on the road and touring these days?
Few, I’d imagine. One I can think of has been in the music business since the late 1950s. Along the way he switched over from a handful of unsuccessful vocal singles and took up his trumpet, formed a record label (which would become the largest independent label in the industry) and recorded music that became an iconic part of the 1960s.
I mean, how many of our dads had that album cover above in their collection?
If you haven’t guessed, we’re talking about Herb Alpert. Musician, record label founder, sculptor and painter, philanthropist, and all-around nice guy who is still sharing his music with loyal fans to this day. Alpert provided a substantial part of the sound of the 1960s (setting a Billboard record for the most albums in the Top 10 – four – when popularity was at its peak), revamped his style in 1979 to approach the funk and pop charts, and constantly changed his musical direction throughout the decades that followed to keep his music fresh and interesting. Alpert turned 90 in March of 2025, and is in the middle of a year and a half long tour featuring a new lineup of his popular group, the Tijuana Brass.
The Tijuana Brass was more of a concept, not a band, when it was first formed of studio musicians in the early 1960s. Alpert had attended a bullfight in Tijuana, and the experience brought to mind a style of music that would embrace that spirit. That resulted in his first single as the Tijuana Brass: “The Lonely Bull.” It peaked at Number 6 on the Billboard Hot 100, providing enough income to properly launch his new label (with his trusted lifetime business partner Jerry Moss).
As time went on and popularity grew, Alpert had to hit the road, and assembled a group of musicians (primarily jazz musicians) who would tour the world and spread the musical goodness. His music not only found its way onto the album and singles charts, it crept into popular culture. As one example, his music found its way into music for the television game show The Dating Game.
While he had initial success with “The Lonely Bull,” and the music for a Teaberry Gum commercial (known as “The Mexican Shuffle,”) his career took off into the stratosphere when his stop/start shuffle arrangement of the ballad “A Taste of Honey,” complete with Hal Blaine’s four famous kick drum beats, became a hit. From there, the hits kept on coming – “Tijuana Taxi,” “Spanish Flea,” “What Now My Love,” and numerous others. As a vocalist, he hit Number 1 on the Hot 100 with “This Guy’s in Love with You.” (On a technicality, the Tijuana Brass never had a Billboard Number 1 single, despite the single appearing on a Tijuana Brass album.)
Once the Brass wound down and Alpert became disillusioned with his career, he took some time off to work through an issue with playing his trumpet, and returned in 1974 with a revamped group called the T.J.B., releasing two records that leaned more towards jazz. Following those with a reflective, overlooked solo album (Just You and Me), he teamed up with African legend Hugh Masekela and recorded two contemporary jazz/funk/African-themed records, the second a live recording with African trombonist Jonas Gwangwa.
On an upswing, he attempted to record disco versions of some of the Tijuana Brass hits but didn’t like the direction the sessions were taking. His nephew Randy Badazz and his musical partner Andy Armer offered up a song called “Rise.” A slower-paced dance record, it was not only a club hit, but its inclusion as part of the musical backdrop for the “Luke and Laura” storyline in the television soap opera General Hospital returned him to the top of the Billboard Hot 100 chart once again for two weeks. (The song would also resurface at the top of the charts as a sample from the Notorious B.I.G. hit “Hypnotize.”)
“Rise” 12-inch single on clear vinyl.
After a couple of similar albums, he returned to Mexico City (literally) and recorded a contemporary Latin-infused album, Fandango, which remains a fan favorite. His musical path became more varied as well. He teamed up with Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis for four songs on his Keep Your Eye On Me album, with the song “Diamonds” (featuring labelmate Janet Jackson) reaching Number 5 on the Billboard Hot 100. He explored street/hip hop music with North on South St., performed a Spanish-flavored suite with an orchestra on Under a Spanish Moon, flirted with big band (a la Shorty Rogers) on My Abstract Heart, and released a late-night jazz album, Midnight Sun, which featured a cameo by Stan Getz.
Once A&M was sold to Polygram, Alpert and Moss soon started up another label, Almo Sounds, where Herb released three more albums, one of them returning to Latin America but this time focusing on salsa (Passion Dance). After Almo Sounds, he recorded a couple of albums for Concord (including a pair with his wife, Lani Hall) before establishing his own label, Herb Alpert Presents, where he would release new music and reissue recordings from earlier in his career. (When Alpert left Polygram, then the owner of A&M Records, he negotiated to have full ownership of all of his masters and recordings.)
Since 2013, he has been busier than ever, releasing about one album per year. As of 2024, he released his 50th album, 50. His 51st album, Christmas Time is Here, was released this past November, the newest of three holiday-themed albums in his catalog.
Brass Grooves
At the present time, only a very few of his past albums have not been reissued digitally. For a while, most were available in high-resolution digital files at 24-bit/88.2 kHz, but for whatever reason those are now only available at 24-bit/44.1kHz. (Thankfully I bought all of them at the higher resolution.)
Here is the list of albums not reissued digitally, with the first in the list never having had a digital release or reissue of any kind:
· Just You and Me
· Wild Romance
· Under a Spanish Moon
· My Abstract Heart
· Second Wind
· Passion Dance
· Colors
· Whipped Cream & Other Delights Rewhipped
The idea behind restoring and reissuing Herb Alpert’s dozens of albums was driven by his nephew Randy Badazz. When Alpert left A&M, part of the deal was that he gain full ownership of all of his album master tapes and multitracks, as well as those of his wife Lani Hall (lead singer of the original Brasil ’66). With so much music, it was obviously a major task to catalog all of the tapes, then restore and remaster all of the titles. Badazz’s main focus was on authenticity; he wanted anyone buying one of the remasters to experience the music in exactly the same way that people were first listening to it from the 1960s onward, and to appeal to younger generations of music buyers. Badazz writes:
A huge amount of the really young music listeners are very, very anti-hype. These are the kids embracing vinyl. These kids want truth and transparency. Like the Beatles re-releases, I just wanted these albums to be released as Herb and Jerry released them. Liner notes, song titles, cover art, etc. The only major thing I really wanted was for the sound to be as best as possible. And I think that we achieved that. Many years [were] spent preserving these tapes and doing digital transfers and remastering by Bernie [Grundman] who is part of the TJB and A&M family.
Shout! Factory first had a crack at reissuing some of the albums, but selections were minimal. They did, however, offer us one surprise: Lost Treasures, a collection of unfinished tracks found among the tapes from A&M which featured finished trumpet parts and new mixes, along with a few 1970s album tracks and B-sides with new mixes and newly-recorded trumpet parts. In addition, two of those lost treasures ended up as bonus tracks on Shout! Factory’s CD reissue of Whipped Cream & Other Delights.
Once the Herb Alpert Presents label began releasing the albums, fans got nearly the entire back catalog of Tijuana Brass and solo Herb Alpert recordings restored and reissued digitally. As part of the reissue program, a small handful of the earlier albums were reissued on vinyl.
While Whipped Cream & Other Delights was the first to be reissued, its earliest pressings left a little to be desired – my first copy had an abundance of ripples and small warps, due to the vinyl being overheated during pressing. But once the rest came along, the pressing issues were sorted and the records came out nearly flawless.
How is the mastering? Not only are they very faithful to the digital versions and the original pressings (losing only a small amount of detail due to the age of the tapes…and these were far from audiophile recordings to begin with), they were mastered by Bernie Grundman, who mastered thousands of records for A&M back in the day. The end product indeed reflects Randy Badazz’s goal of giving the fans an authentic and reliable reissue of the original releases.
The titles on Herb Alpert Presents vinyl are still available from stock, and include the following titles:
· South of the Border
· Whipped Cream & Other Delights
· Going Places
· What Now My Love
· The Christmas Album
· Rise
The pressing runs were limited, but I haven’t had any issues finding some of these currently available for sale.
As for later Herb Alpert albums released from 2013 onward, these were released on vinyl, and are still available:
· Come Fly with Me
· The Christmas Wish
· Music Volume 3 – Herb Alpert Reimagines the Tijuana Brass
· Herb Alpert Is… (5-LP box set)
In the next installment, we’ll look at audiophile reissues, rarities, and some buying tips and recommendations for Herb Alpert’s recordings.
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