What was it like singing such a famous, beautiful Burt Bacharach song as This Guy’s in Love With You? eamonmcc
Burt and I were dear friends. When I was doing this TV special with the Tijuana Brass in 1968, the director, Jack Haley Jr, said: “I’m tired of filming you with a trumpet in your mouth, why don’t you try singing a song?” I called Burt and asked: “Is there a song you maybe didn’t get the right recording of, or that you think I can handle as a non-singer?” Burt sent me This Girl’s in Love With You, which he’d recorded with Dionne Warwick [that version was released as a single in 1969]. I loved the feeling of the song and changed the gender. Burt played piano and I did a rough vocal to see if my voice would fit. Burt and the musicians walked into the control room and said: “That’s it! Don’t touch what you just did.” So it was one take.
Did anyone in the Tijuana Brass come from Tijuana? Flashbleu
No, and I never listened to mariachi music. I heard a brass band playing at a bullfight in Tijuana – the music would soundtrack the different stages of the fight – and I got caught up in the sound. I started thinking about how I could express that afternoon with a song, and that’s how we started.
Your new album, Wish Upon a Star, features your interpretations of songs including East Bound and Down from Smokey and the Bandit and When You Wish Upon a Star from Pinocchio. Do any of them hold a special meaning for you? VerulamiumParkRanger
All of them, because I am a collector of songs. If I hear a really good melody, I get excited. Twenty-five years ago, I heard Jerry Reed singing that song in Smokey and the Bandit and couldn’t get that melody out of my head. I started fooling around with the idea of playing it and little by little it’s turned into something that I really like. They happened to hear it in Nashville and asked me to play at the Grand Ole Opry, which I just did a couple of weeks ago. I didn’t know what to expect or how I’d be received, but I brought my group and it was fabulous, the experience of my life.
Your 1967 theme to Casino Royale is one of my favourite Bond songs. Do you have a favourite? JudeScorpio
I like Casino Royale a lot. Never Say Never Again, the song I did with Lani [Hall, his wife] and produced with Sérgio Mendes [for the 1983 film], is interesting, but John Barry put an identity on the whole thing with the James Bond Theme [composed by Monty Norman and arranged for 1962’s Dr No by Barry] and doesn’t get the credit he deserved. It’s always unfortunate when musicians don’t get the credit they deserve.
Did you get much criticism for the Whipped Cream and Other Delights album cover in the 60s? I’ve read about kids whose parents forbid them to see it. DrKPhoenix
I criticised it! They brought it to me while I was recording and, to me, the cover had nothing to do with the music I was making. I told them I didn’t want to use it, but they wanted something a little flash and I acquiesced. I thought it was a little too risque, frankly, but, in retrospect, it seems kinda tame when you look at what’s going on now.
I like the Miles Davis quote: “You hear three notes and you know it’s Herb Alpert.” Which musicians do you most admire because you instantly know their style? blitzed
I tried to play like Miles. I tried to play like Louis Armstrong and Harry James and came to the conclusion: who wants to hear that when they’ve already done it? I was looking for my own identity. When I hit on this idea of the Tijuana Brass in 1962, it opened my thoughts, opened the door, and the record took off like a rocket ship. It was the start of A&M Records [named after Alpert and his business partner, Jerry Moss]. I got a letter from a lady in Germany who said: “Dear Mr Alpert, thank you for sending me on this vicarious trip to Tijuana.” That music was so visual that it took her 6,000 miles. Since then, my pursuit has always been to make music that takes you someplace, and is uplifting.
You scored a UK Top 20 hit in 1987 playing trumpet on UB40’s Rat in Mi Kitchen. How did that come about? VerulamiumParkRanger
I remember being asked to play on it and I had a good feeling about how it came out. I have people who take care of the incidentals, but I don’t keep much track of what happens to stuff. People have said: “Man, I love that solo,” but I’m always on to the next thing. I wanna make music, I wanna paint, I wanna sculpt. I’m doing this great, big 14ft (4.3-metre) trumpet player that’s gonna be in front of the jazz museum in New Orleans. So that’s where my energy goes.
What was your first impression of Janet Jackson when she signed to A&M and what did you think when you heard her breakout album, Control? Johnnox1
When I heard she was being signed, I thought: “Oh, well, here’s another Jackson in Michael’s shadow,” but then I heard Control and thought it was one of the most brilliant new albums I had heard in a long time. Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis are absolutely brilliant producers and she delivered. I did a couple of records with her and she knows what she’s doing. She can sing. She can dance. She knows a groove. It wasn’t luck. She’s good.
How do you feel about your song Rise being sampled by other artists [31 to date, including the Notorious BIG and Nas]? FuriousOrange
I’m not crazy about artists who take someone else’s idea, but I’m certainly not going to destroy the cheques that come in! Rise happened by accident. My nephew Randy “Badazz” Alpert wrote it with Andy Armer and they wanted me to do a Tijuana Brass club record. We started playing [the Broadway standard] A Taste of Honey in a disco style and I got nauseous. But they had this song Rise, which they wanted to be disco. I loved the melody. We slowed it down to 100bpm and when we recorded it – also in one take – the bass player, Abe Laboriel, was dancing around the studio while he was playing. When I heard the playback, I got goosebumps.
Did you actually declare: “The trumpet is my enemy,” during your creative crisis in the late 60s? Ijogtoherbalpert
I don’t know if I put it that strongly, but it was a terrible time for me. I was going through a divorce. I was stuttering through the horn. I heard about this brass teacher in New York who helped musicians who were having problems playing their instrument. He said: “Let me tell you something, kid. The trumpet is just a piece of plumbing.” And when you look at it, it is. It’s pipes! He goes: “You’re the instrument, son. The trumpet is just a megaphone. The sound comes out of you.” That was the big “aha” for me. Mozart, Thelonious Monk, Beethoven … all of us have the same 12 notes. The key is moving them around in different ways.
You played a big part in the success of the Carpenters. Any regrets or thoughts about how Karen was treated? pconl
She was an amazing human being. She was very innocent, like an adult girl. She didn’t realise how great she was. Tijuana Brass sold 72m records, but the Carpenters sold more. The girl was making millions of people extremely happy with her incredible voice, but the thing she really loved was playing drums. The light wasn’t on the problems she had [anorexia] at that particular time in history. I saw her two weeks before she passed away. She’d spent a couple of months in hospital in New York, came out and jumped into my office and said she was so excited about recording again. She felt she was reborn. She had all this energy and felt that she had this problem behind her. Two weeks later, she was gone. It’s hard for me to talk about her.
You once said that the week the Sex Pistols spent on A&M was longer than they deserved. Have your feelings changed? McScootikins
Not at all. I like to surround myself with honest, interesting, nice people. When they came into the A&M offices in 1977, they behaved appallingly. I remember saying to the president of the company: “I don’t care how much money we could make from these guys, I don’t like that energy. They have to go.”
How did you do so much in so many years and keep going at 88? eamonmcc
I’ve got great people around me and I’ve been married to an angel for nearly 50 years. I met Lani when I auditioned Sérgio Mendes and Brasil ’66 with my partner, Jerry Moss, in 1966. She’s a world-class singer and a world-class person who honestly changed my life. She was the first person to hear This Guy’s in Love With You. I went straight from the recording studio to her house just to see what she thought. Soon afterwards, it was No 1. You know, Taylor Swift just equalled my record of having four albums in the US Top 10. But I’m the only artist that’s had a No 1 as a vocalist with This Guy’s In Love With You and as an instrumentalist with Rise. That’s gonna be hard to beat.
• Wish Upon a Star is released on 15 September
• This article was amended on 7 September 2023. Herb Alpert began releasing with the Tijuana Brass in 1962, not 1966, as an earlier version stated.
