Gary James' Interview With
Herb Alpert



Herb Alpert's career in the music business has been simply spectacular! As the leader and co-founder of Herb Alpert And The Tijuana Brass, he took his group all the way to the top of the charts and made them one of the most popular groups in the 1960s. And he followed that up with a solo career that is just as impressive. Herb Alpert placed 29 albums on the Billboard charts as either a solo artist or with the group. Herb Alpert's accomplishments are just staggering. He racked up five number 1 albums, eight Grammy Awards, fourteen Platinum albums and fifteen Gold albums, selling over 72 million albums. Some of his fourteen Top 40 singles include "The Lonely Bull", "Mexican Shuffle", "Spanish Flea", "A Taste Of Honey", "What Now My Love", "This Guy's In Love With You" and "Rise". In 1966, at the height of Beatlemania, Herb Albert And The Tijuana Brass sold over 13 million records, out selling The Beatles 2 to 1. That same year, he set a new record by placing five albums at the same time in the Top 20 of the Billboard Pop charts, an accomplishment that has never been repeated. In April of 1966, four of those albums were in the Top 10 at the same time.

Herb Alpert is the only recording artist in history to hit number one on the Billboard Hot 100 chart as both a vocalist, with "This Guy's In Love With You" in 1968, and as an instrumentalist with "Rise" in 1979. Along with business partner Jerry Moss (the M in A&M Records) he was inducted into the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame on March 13th, 2006 as non-performers lifetime achievers for their contributions to the music through A&M Records. Just some of the artists signed to A&M Records include The Carpenters, Peter Frampton, The Police, Supertramp, Cat Stevens, Sheryl Crow, Carole King, Quincy Jones, Stan Getz, Janet Jackson and Sergio Mendes And Brazil '66.

Herb Alpert has a star on the Hollywood Walk Of Fame. In all, he's recorded over 30 albums. He was awarded the National Medal Of Arts by President Obama on July 16th, 2013 at the White House's East Room. On September 20th, 2019 Herb Alpert released "Over The Rainbow", which debuted at number one on the Billboard Contemporary Jazz Albums chart and Top Jazz Albums chart. In October, 2018 he released "Music Volume 3 - Herb Alpert Reimagines The Tijuana Brass", which reached number 2 on the Contemporary Jazz charts. His 2017 albums, "The Christmas Wish" and "Music Volume 1", both went to number 1 on the Contemporary Jazz chart. And he was nominated for his 10th Grammy for his album, "Human Nature". On October 1st, 2020, Herb Alpert Is the official documentary was released. On October 2nd, 2020, "Herb Alpert Is", the box set featuring sixty-three classic tunes as well as a comprehensive catalog of his career, was released, selling out the first run within hours.

Through his personal foundation, The Herb Alpert Foundation, he's helped establish music programs at U.C.L.A. and the California Institute Of Arts. To keep Jazz alive, The Herb Alpert Foundation, which he oversees with his wife, Lami Hall, he's worked with the Thelonius Monk Institute at the U.C.L.A. Herb Alpert School Of Music. On May 20th, 2021, the Herb Alpert Foundation doubled the number of awardees for the 27th annual Herb Alpert Award in the Arts. The Foundation has also significantly increased financial support to struggling artists through grants to organizations such as the Jazz Foundation and Artists Relief Fund.

It is an honor to present an interview with someone who has really made a difference in music, and that someone is Mr. Herb Alpert.

Q - Mr. Alpert, I've only been waiting my whole life to talk to you!

A - (laughs) I'm sorry for the delay.

Q - That's alright. Now I'm more prepared than ever to talk to you.

A - Okay.

Q - I saw you and The Tijuana Brass in concert at the Onondaga County War Memorial in Syracuse, New York on August 16th, 1966. Now, how many of the people who interview you can say that?

A - Well, that's pretty good. I was a little older then, but everything is okay now.

Q - You are often referred to as a Jazz trumpeter. But, Al Hirt didn't play the trumpet the way you do and Louie Armstrong, he didn't play the trumpet the way you do. So, what is this style of trumpet playing you have? One musician I interviewed said the way you play the trumpet is like you're using the trumpet as a voice. That's right, isn't it?

A - That's a pretty good description there. When I play standard tunes I'm often very aware of the lyric and play the lyrics through the horn. So I try to sing through the horn. Miles Davis said it, thank God. (laughs) "If you hear three notes, you know it's Herb Alpert." So, I think that's the whole key for any musician or artist. You have to come up with your own voice. If you have your own voice then you don't have to categorize it. It's not about Jazz. It's not about Classical. It's just about music. And that's all I try to do. I try to play music. I'm not a Be-Bop artist. I do try to be as honest as possible as a musician.

Q - Have you ever heard someone try to imitate your style of trumpet playing?

A - For one thing, people that were listening to my music and tried to copy it, they put it down on paper and they played it verbatim. They tried to just play exactly the notes I was playing, but I didn't do that. I never looked at the music I was recording. I always tried to make it as spontaneous as possible.

Q - There's a saying: "Simple is hard, and the trick is to make it look easy." That could almost describe the way you play music, couldn't it?

A - Well, that's one ingredient, but you have to be sincere. I think that just comes across. Sincerity is the goal. You never get to the end product. You never get to be a great musician, period. It never gets there. You never get to that place. I just try to be me. I'll tell you the truth, I never tried to make a hit record. One record I did, "The Lonely Bull", I was concentrating on what was on the radio and what could be played. But after that, it was all up for grabs for me 'cause I realized our distributors... "The Lonely Bull" started A&M Records in 1962 and our distributors from around the country said, "Why don't you guys just take the money and run?" That intrigued Jerry (Moss, the M in A&M Records) and I. So, I just kept recording. I didn't want to do "The Lonely Bull" sideways and try to capitalize on what had been. I just tried to see how far I could take my sound. And that's what happened. I was just making music that made me feel good and I thought there might be some other people who thought the same way and that's always the way I've approached it. I've never been desperate to try and make a hit record.

Q - I watched the documentary on your life, Herb Alpert Is, and you're walking along the beach and you say you wanted to throw your trumpet in the ocean and find out who Herb Alpert was.

A - Yeah.

Q - Now see, if I was walking alongside you on the beach, I would've turned to you and said, "Herb Alpert is a famous trumpet player."

A - Yeah, but that didn't mean anything. I had the brass ring. I won what I thought I was going for. I was selling records. I was famous and I had a record company that was really going strong and I didn't feel all that great. I decided that's not what life is all about. I wanted to find out who I was and what I wanted to do with the rest of my life. I was willing to give everything up to find it.

Q - Is that why you started painting and sculpting, not to mention your Foundation?

A - Well, I don't know. I wasn't trying to deceive myself. I was doing that out of love. I started painting 'cause I got inspired when I used to go to museums in different parts of the world and gravitated towards the Modern Art section. I'd see paintings, a black painting with a white dot. In another museum I might see a similar artist with a purple painting and a green dot or whatever it was. It inspired me to see if I could make a painting with a couple of dots that would hang in a museum. Anyways, I started having fun painting. I was just doing it for my own pleasure. A gallery owner happened to see it a couple of years after I started painting. He said, "Why don't we show your work?" We did and it was successful. I just kept doing it and I've been painting for over fifty years now. So, I had some really interesting success doing that and sculpting for about forty years. I've got sculptures in museums and it's been amazing. I'm an artist. I live on the right side of my brain. I'm an introvert, so creating is the thing I do every day.

Q - When I saw John and Yoko's This Is Not Here show at the Everson Museum in Syracuse, New York in 1971, there was a pair of shoes put on a pedestal. I assume they were John's shoes. Is that really Art?

A - Art is in the eye of the beholder. There's no absolutely perfect way to do anything that has to do with Art. Okay, here's the deal. You take Picasso, he said you take a so-so painting and you put it in a room with a bunch of great paintings, people will think it's great. You take a wonderful painting, something that's just beautiful to look at, put it into a room with a bunch of dogs, a bunch of works that don't really look good, you know what will happen. There's a lot of smoke and mirrors involved in the Art world.

Q - Do you have a special trumpet that you have used over the years? I ask because, can a person walk into a music store, buy a trumpet and expect to get the same sound out of that trumpet that you get out of your trumpet?

A - No, you can't do that. I ran into a snag playing the trumpet in 1969. I was going through a divorce and I couldn't really play properly. I was stuttering through the instrument. I found this teacher in New York, Carmine Caruso, who called himself "The Troubleshooter". Musicians all over the world used to go to him. Brass musicians mainly. He would kind of straighten 'em out. He would treat everyone as an individual, but he didn't have a cookie cutter way of approaching his method. But when I met him and I was having this trouble playing, I said, "You think it's my mouthpiece? Should I change horns? What should I do?" He looked at me and said, "Let me tell you something, man. You see your trumpet there? It's just a piece of plumbing. You're the instrument. The instrument comes from inside." That was a big A-ha for me. That was the moment I realized that I'm making that sound. I can pick up any trumpet and have the Herb Alpert sound.

Q - Did you personally approve of all the acts that were signed to A&M Records? Or when someone said we signed Peter Frampton or Joe Cocker, you knew who they were talking about?

A - Well, in the early days, yes. There was just the two of us. Then there were three people and five, ten. When we arrived at five hundred people and had a whole series of wonderful people that were working for us, they were filling in the gaps. A lot of times I didn't know the artists were being signed. It was impossible to keep up with the roster. We had a huge roster.

Q - I know you're very involved in music programs and art in schools through your foundation. But is it enough to be a good musician or a good painter, or is there something else that has to happen in order to reach the level of success you've achieved?

A - I think that's all relative to the person. You don't have to be rich and famous to achieve success. If you're satisfied and passionate about what you're doing and you love what you're doing and you wake up ever morning thinking about that and you're a happy soul, then you've reached success. That's it.

Q - Sonny Bono told you to get out of the business. I'm glad you didn't listen to him.

A - (laughs) Yeah. I was with my then partner Lou Adler. Lou was super successful when we broke up as well. I'm glad we didn't take his advice. We laughed his advice off. It didn't hold any weight at all. Right after we met him we signed to Keen Records. That's where we met Sam Cooke and we wrote a couple of songs for Sam and with Sam, and he taught me a lot about how to listen to music actually.

Q - Did you know Bobby Fuller?

A - Well, I think I met him. I didn't know him.

Q - How long did it take you to write "Wonderful World"?

A - Oh, it was a series of things. Lou and I wrote a song that was similar to "Wonderful World". Then Sam loved that. The whole story on "Wonderful World" is pretty amazing because after we wrote it, Sam wasn't sure it was going to be a good record for him. So he did a demonstration record of it in the studio. Just a quick, little, "Let's see if this thing works." He had a couple of pick-up musicians, a couple of professional musicians, and the company didn't release it. It wasn't intended to be a release. It was just a look, see. The company put it in their archives and when Sam Cooke left Keen Records and started recording for RCA and became very successful, Keen Records pulled that record, "Wonderful World" out of the archives and released it and it was the biggest single record Sam ever had. The point is, nobody knows what a hit record sounds like. (laughs) It's not luck that I've been successful for so many years. I work at it. That's the one thing I have to pass on to others.

Official Websites: HerbAlpert.com and HerbAlpertFoundation.com


(photo from Gary James' press kit collection)

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