HERB ALPERT PRESS REVIEWS

[Mike Blakesley]

This thread will contain the TEXT OF THE REVIEWS ONLY.

Please observe the following rules:

1. If you run across a review (or other article) about Herb, copy and paste the text of the entire article in this thread. Please also post a LINK to the original article.

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Thanks and enjoy reading the articles!

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A YOUNG PERSON'S GUIDE TO THE TIJUANA BRASS

From ookworld (http://ookworld.com/tjb.html)

(This was written in 1999.)

Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass reside in a unique niche of their own. Too energetic for EZ, too polite for rock and not quite jazz either. Recently, I listened my way through the first ten Tijuana Brass albums in chronological order (spanning 1962-68 ) and wound up with this overview of their output. I'm trying to avoid judging them -- just trying to provide quick thumbnails. Perhaps a bit of help when contemplating the albums in the thrift bins... so many to choose from.

The Lonely Bull - Has the usual special interest of first albums. The title track sets a real standard, but Herb wasn't quite sure yet what he was doing with the project, resulting in more diverse tracks than on later albums. Along with the Mexican and jazz influences, one can also hear occasional traces of the 50s rock/R&B instrumental vein (think of The Champs). On the other hand, there are some rather easy tracks -- and just to confuse things, a couple of tunes with prominent whistling parts.

Volume 2 - Probably the most raucous TJB album. Not that it rocks out, but it does lean towards a rowdy south of the border ambience. And again, a bit of the Champs feel. There's a bit of fuzz guitar (or bass) on Surfin' Senorita. And the down-tempo tracks tend towards a nice spaghetti western soundtrack feel. Was Ennio Morricone buying TJB records (to augment his Dick Dale collection)? Herb definitely has a better feel for what he wants to do, and his arrangements are more snazzy and confident -- check out America.

South Of The Border - Pulling back, this is a very polite and somewhat low-key album. All hair neatly combed, like a photo for grandma. Includes the soon-to-hit Mexican Shuffle, which was a good prototype for their bouncy period.

Whipped Cream & Other Delights - Well, of course this one has THE COVER. Nice batch of tunes, too, with the energy level turned back up a notch or two. Includes TJB classics like A Taste Of Honey (bomp, bomp, bomp) and Whipped Cream itself. Herb's arrangements are really on the ball by this point.

!!Going Places!! - Builds on the energy generated by Whipped Cream with more classics like Tijuana Taxi and Spanish Flea. Herb and gang are in top gear now. Interesting to hear their take on The Ventures' version of Walk, Don't Run. And versions of such instrumental staples as The Third Man Theme, A Walk In The Black Forest and Zorba The Greek -- the latter a marathon lung test for the horns. The first album where the electric guitar gets prominent, rather than just some twangy coloring here and there.

What Now My Love - After Going Places, a steady touring band was formed, some members having been in on the recordings from the start, some less so. This influences the sound, as the steady-band phenomenon has its inevitable organic effect. The sound becomes a bit more homogenized -- wait, that sounds sort of negative, maybe say "more cohesive" instead. Fewer dramatic variations between tracks. More consistency of instrumentation from track to track -- perhaps Herb is now thinking in terms of having to reproduce the tracks onstage. Anyway, on following albums, the band's sound gradually shifts from bouncy to liquid, which I wasn't really expecting. But the process is only beginning on this album, which is a rather dark and quiet collection. Sort of a rainy weekend at a cabin by a deep lake.

S.R.O. - Not a live album, even though the cover makes that impression. The energy bounces back up a notch... the band is very comfortable with each other, and contributing to some of the writing. An album that runs very smoothly, like a well-tuned engine, with tunes such as Bean Bag and The Work Song breezing right through.

Sounds Like... - As the band moved into its liquid phase, some tracks actually got into a trance music groove, which certainly surprised me. That side of the TJB peaks on this album with tracks like Wade In The Water. Eat your heart out, 80s mimimalists. Closes with the Casino Royale theme, and it never hurts to have another copy of that around.

Herb Alpert's Ninth - Things take another turn, pulling back into more normal pop covers, but still very smooth. Notable for Carmen, which juxtaposes Bizet with signature tags from past TJB hits.

The Beat Of The Brass - The beginning of the end, as Herb ascends to pop singer stardom with the Bacharach/David-penned closing track, This Guy's In Love With You. Otherwise, continues their latter agenda of pop hits rendered with a liquid sheen.

A few more albums followed, but things were clearly shading into more of a Herb Alpert solo vibe. Now if only I could find that legendary The Tijuana Brass & Nico album. The one with All Tomorrow's Fiestas and Spanish Flea In Furs.

 

[Captain Bacardi]

Here's a new review of the TJB's offerings this year from the Boston Phoenix: http://www.bostonphoenix.com/boston/music/other_stories/documents/05078373.asp

Stardust memories
Herb Alpert & the Tijuana Brass
BY BRETT MILANO

It seems strange that one of most popular acts of the ’60s would only now be releasing most of his catalogue on CD for the first time. But Herb Alpert & the Tijuana Brass haven’t just been out of print for the past 30 years: they’ve been wiped from the collective memory banks, even though statistics say they were the fourth-best-selling act of the decade, behind the Beatles, Sinatra, and Elvis.

Some would say that's no tragedy. Alpert was perhaps the one truly square ’60s artist to have regular hits. He got more airplay on "beautiful music" stations than on Top 40. Even now, he seems an unlikely candidate for the after-the-fact hipness accorded Burt Bacharach. One could go on about everything his music wasn’t. It seldom approached jazz, even though the Tijuana Brass were an instrumental group led by a trumpet player. It never sound much like authentic mariachi — indeed, the credits reveal the group never had a single Hispanic member. And they were absolutely untouched by ’60s counterculture. Among Shout Factory’s current reissue series are the group’s eighth and ninth albums, Sounds Like . . . and Ninth, released in March and November 1967, before and after the Summer of Love. The two sound identical.

So, for that matter, do most of the 11 albums in Shout Factory’s reissue series, which runs from the 1962 debut, The Lonely Bull, to ’68’s Christmas Album, adding a new rarities disc, Lost Treasures, but skipping over ’63’s Tijuana Brass Volume 2. The sound over those six years changed only in that it grew more homogenized: by album #10, The Beat of the Brass (which included the one vocal hit, "This Guy’s in Love with You"), Alpert had stopped even trying to sound Mexican. The early albums are full of campy moments like "Tijuana Taxi" (with its "beep-beep" instrumental hook) and, on 1963’s South of the Border, a politically incorrect take on "Hello, Dolly!" with its "nice to have joo back where joo belong" group vocal. The early albums are the silliest, most dated, and, well, most fun to hear again.

But the whole series is a kick, in its proudly unhip way. In the post-Ramones world, it’s no shame to hear an act sticking with the same formula for a dozen albums. And Alpert’s formula was a sturdy one: the songs were short, the tunes snappy. He was usually too straight-faced to fall into the Esquerita/Three Suns school of percussion madness, but his marimba player, Julius Wechter, always added some exotica to the mix. The arrangements are quirkier than you might remember: Alpert’s MO seemed to involve forgetting about any better-known versions of a song. His take on "The Trolley Song" (popularized by Judy Garland) is a near-ballad, and "The Happening" is arranged as a big-band standard rather than as the Supremes hit it was.

The Tijuana’s one great, unified album is 1965’s Whipped Cream & Other Delights. Common wisdom says it was his best-selling because of its cover photo of a model covered in whipped cream. (The CD reissue has a poster-sized reproduction that, alas, makes it clear she had a dress on underneath.) But behind the cover, Whipped Cream is the one that feels like the swinging ’60s. Credit that to some awareness of rock (their "A Taste of Honey" is livelier than the Beatles version and was a bigger hit) and to the finger-snapping breeziness. And most of all to a slightly decadent romantic mood: when Alpert evokes mariachi here, it’s through a drunken haze. After doing New Orleans straight up on the Allen Toussaint–penned title track, the Brass turn "Love Potion No. 9" into stripper music, lascivious slide trombones and all.

Alpert tried to transcend kitsch on his more subdued later work; Whipped Cream works so well because it doesn’t. Even at their kitschiest, though, the Tijuana Brass were simply selling an idealized vision of a sunny vacation spot. Throw in a parrot and a few margaritas and you’ll still find that formula on the pop charts today.

This article also has a link to our own www.tijuanabrass.com


Capt. Bacardi

 

[Captain Bacardi]

From the St. Petersburg Times (http://www.sptimes.com/2005/11/24/Weekend/Here_we_come_a__carol.shtml):

Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass, Christmas Album (Shout Factory)

This masterpiece of 1968 shag-rug smoothness is not technically "new," but it sure does sound like it. The 10-track classic has been remastered and repackaged to brilliant heights by those throwback hipsters at Shout Factory. I've been a sucker for Herb and the boys' bachelor-pad soundtrack ever since spending most of my youth staring at the cover of Whipped Cream & Other Delights. If you consider yourself to be a hip party-thrower, well, you're really not unless you have trumpeter Alpert blowing out some Latin-grooved Jingle Bells from your Bose iPod Soundock. GRADE: A



Capt. Bacardi

 

[Captain Bacardi]

From The Tucson Weekly (http://www.tucsonweekly.com/gbase/Music/Content?oid=76462):

Herb Alpert and The Tijuana Brass
Christmas Album (Shout! Factory)

Under the banner of the Herb Alpert Signature Series, Shout! Factory has been reissuing the Herb Alpert and The Tijuana Brass catalog in immaculate fashion all year long, fully remastered and with extensive liner notes. The long out-of-print Christmas Album, which hit the No. 1 spot on the Billboard charts three years in a row (1968-1970), is the 11th in the series and is no exception.

True to the group's signature sound, the songs here are mostly given south-of-the-border arrangements, with highlights including the Alpert-sung "The Christmas Song," which became a No. 1 single upon its release (Alpert also takes vocal duties on "The Bell That Couldn't Jingle," in which Jack Frost assists a non-functioning ornament; vocal and string arrangements were provided by Shorty Rogers, best known for his work with Maynard Ferguson); an idiosyncratically paced "Sleigh Ride," whose almost eerie choral arrangement was clearly influenced by The Beach Boys; and a "Let It Snow, Let It Snow, Let It Snow" that takes a cue from the Burt Bacharach playbook. All in all, it's a quaint trip to a bygone era.




Capt. Bacardi

 

[Captain Bacardi]

From the Honolulu Star Bulletin:
http://starbulletin.com/2006/03/10/features/story03.html

Hits ‘Rewhipped’
A delightful 1960s album by Herb Alpert has been updated with new treats

By Gary C.W. Chun

It must be good to be Herb Alpert these days.

His series of pop instrumental records with the Tijuana Brass, indicative of the buoyant mood and spirit of the 1960s when they were first released, was well received a second time around when they were reissued on CD last year. And the trumpeter, along with his business partner, A&M Records co-founder Jerry Moss, will be honored with a lifetime achievement award at induction ceremonies at the Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame next Tuesday.

Alpert's most popular '60s album, "Whipped Cream & Other Delights" from 1965, has been remixed, re-imagined and "rewhipped," and is in stores this week. Also taking a cue from the teasing original cover shot, which featured a shaving cream-covered Dolores Erickson, "Rewhipped" features a couple of yummy photos of Guess? model Bree Condon in all her cream-bikinied splendor.

Once you can pry your gaze away from the comely Ms. Condon, the music contained is basically a dreamy, down-tempo selection of confections that uses the spry and bright original songs for inspiration. Speaking of inspiration, Alpert himself laid down some new trumpet solo tracks on most of "Rewhipped."

Half the album's selections feature the work of veteran studio musician and movie score composer Anthony Marinelli, with two of them collaborations with local favorites, the Los Angeles-based Latin-Mexican collective Ozomatli.

The title track is slowed to a hip-hop, head-bobbin' groove, a nice touch being the Mexican-flavored bridge, complete with "tres" and group vocals. Their contemporary take on "Love Potion No. 9" is the most aggressive rhythmically on the album, with band member Asdru Sierra singing the famous Lieber-and-Stoller lyrics.

Marinelli also arranges an appealingly funky feel to "Lollipops and Roses" that is very much in the spirit of the original, and brings out Alpert's best trumpet-playing on an engaging reworking of "Peanuts."
The rest of the crop is up to par, with only German DJ Foosh's remix of "Tangerine" coming off rather slack. "A Taste of Honey" (John King of the Dust Brothers) and "Ladyfingers" (Camara Kambon, another movie music composer) both have a sonically gauzy feel, the original recordings only distant memories. Eric Hilton and Rob Garza of the Thievery Corporation swathe "Lemon Tree" in an Indian fantasia.

My two favorites are Mocean Worker's Brazilian-beat workout on "Bittersweet Samba" and "El Garbanzo," from the always astute jazz-funk trio Medeski Martin & Wood. Those guys always do imaginative breakdowns in their own compositions, and this take with Alpert goes from choppy to smooth and back without a hiccup.





Capt. Bacardi

 

[Steve Sidoruk]

Whipped up
Fondly remembering the days of provocative and playful album covers... and mourning the loss of the art and soul of vinyl.
Sean Daly
Published March 9, 2006

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Never mind that the whipped cream was actually shaving cream, or that the come-hither model underneath the strategic cloud of foam was three months pregnant: Forty-one years after it first titillated the world, the cover of Herb Alpert's Whipped Cream & Other Delights remains the sexiest album art of all time.

I can hear the groans now. What about the "import'' version of Jimi Hendrix's Electric Ladyland? Too natural. Roxy Music's Country Life Too Euro. REO Speedwagon's Hi Infidelity? (Too Speedwagony.) The Rolling Stones' Sticky Fingers? (Oh, that's just sick.)

Nope, not one of these comes close to the life-affirming visage of young Dolores Erickson, posed in front of that lime-green backdrop, presumably naked save for a wedding gown of white foam. One hand holds a red rose; the other hand is lifted to her tongue. She's wearing a puff of white in her hair, an unlikely pillbox hat. Her big, brown doe eyes have that naughty-nice Natalie Wood thing going on.

"To this day, people come up to me and tell me how much they love the album," Alpert wrote in the liner notes of a reissue last year. "And then there are those who come up and say they really, really love the album cover!"

I believe in Whipped Cream's all-time greatness now more than ever, especially as I stare at the cover for a new album called Rewhipped, a "remixing" of Alpert's classic disc released Tuesday. Rewhipped is perfect for hipster soirees: classic cocktail cool reworked with techno swirls by such avant-gardists as the Thievery Corporation.

Of course, what the album sounds like isn't the issue. It's what it looks like that depresses me. A plasticine perfect young woman, tanned and airbushed to Mattel-toy smoothness, is posing on her tummy, feet in the air, wearing a barely there "bikini" of cream. Her eyes have been injected with that lime-green glow. Whereas Erickson looked stunning but approachable, the new gal, model Bree Condon, looks like she gets her mail at the Playboy Mansion.

Normally, I'm not one to frown at an attractive woman in a perishable two-piece. But Rewhipped bothers me for all sorts of reasons, from the professional to the deeply personal. First of all, the cover of the new disc represents the dire lack of imagination in modern album art. Not only is the new cover boring, it'sBaywatch. When it comes to whipped cream, more is more, and I'm not the only one who thinks so.

"That was my Halloween costume one year," says JoEllen Schilke, owner of St. Petersburg's Globe Coffee Lounge, about the Dolores Erickson cover. "And that was the most popular night of my life."

Schilke has 60-some copies of Whipped Cream collected in the Globe; she figures she needs 98 in order to "tile" an entire wall of her popular shop.Whipped Cream is still such a treat because of its "shock value," she says. When I show her the cover of Rewhipped, she shrugs her shoulders. My thoughts exactly.

Thanks in large part to its cover, Whipped Cream spent 141 weeks in the Top 40 - 61 of those in the Top 10. What's the last album cover that sparked dialogue and helped drive sales? Maybe Jane's Addiction'sNothing's Shocking, a 1988 album that featured buxom mannequins with their hair on fire. Perhaps the Black Crowes' Amorica (1994) or Marilyn Manson's Mechanical Animals (1998).

But why should artists care? On a basic level, the artistic limitations of a 5- by 5-inch CD jewel case are obvious, especially after the relatively spacious 12-by-12 canvas of the vinyl album jacket. Plus, if you want to express yourself "visually" these days, you shoot a music video, an art form that coincided with the technological transfer from vinyl to tape and CD.

In a few years, album art will cease to exist altogether. Poof. Gone. Bye-bye. If you think I'm exaggerating, remember that iTunes, which sells data files for digital players, recently passed Borders Books & Music and Tower Records on the list of top music retailers. That means when you buy Whipped Cream & Other Delights on iTunes, you get the music . . . but not Dolores Erickson. In fact, you won't get any pretty pictures at all.

My father gave me both Whipped Cream and the Ohio Players' Honey album way back when I was still in Garanimals. It was like a rite of passage. Honey, which has the second-sexiest cover of all time, featured a "gatefold" cover that unfolded to reveal a woman wearing nothing but the titular confection. Not only was the cover a landmark moment in the mainstream acceptance of black sexuality, but it inspired dozens of urban legends: The honey was actually glue! The model was murdered in the studio! You can hear her screams onLove Rollercoaster!

The funny thing is, my dad still checks in on those albums. "Still have Ohio Players?" he'll whisper out of female earshot. "Whipped Cream, too?" For him, this is the bonding equivalent of having a baseball catch.

When I was a wee lad sprawled in front of the hulking family turntable, album art was the primary rabbit hole into the music, especially for such albums as Elton John's Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy and Supertramp's Breakfast in America. I wouldn't be a music writer if it weren't for the years spent deciphering the covers of Abbey Road or Highway to Hell or Highway 61 Revisited.

To commiserate about all of this, I called Ben Vaughn, a Hollywood composer who has scored such hit sitcoms as 3rd Rock From the Sun and That '70s Show. Vaughn is a noted vinyl junkie, with about 5,000 albums at home. "I buy a lot of albums just for the covers," the 50-year-old musician admits, laughing. "Sometimes I don't even get around to listening to them."

When I tell him about Rewhipped, he sighs and says, "We're working in miniatures now," referring to the shrinking size of album art, the lack of notable album art and, especially, digital music making the music biz a "singles market" again. That is, more and more people are buying singles, not albums - and definitely not album covers.

Vaughn's Venice Beach recording studio is decorated with dozens of album covers, all of which have a common theme: an exotic woman. As Vaughn makes his music - his new album, Designs in Music, is a swell lesson in Space Age swing - he is surrounded by albums by Ray Conniff, Martin Denny and, of course, the Ohio Players and Herb Alpert.

"I had this idea to do a documentary film on album cover girls," says Vaughn. "In fact, it was going to be called Album Cover Girls." He managed to track down Erickson, now a painter outside Seattle, but the project fizzled. Still, it wasn't a total loss: "She painted a self-portrait" posing for Whipped Cream, he says. "So I bought it from her. It's hanging in my apartment now."

Surprisingly enough, Vaughn isn't that mournful about the impending death of album art. "The first record I bought was the single for Twist and Shout by the Beatles," he says. "There was no art, but I didn't care. It was about the music."

Music, he adds, is returning to its purest state.

I'm not so sure I like that. And I know my dad's going to hate it. As far as the Daly men are concerned, the world is a much better place with a dessert-topped Dolores Erickson in it.

http://www.sptimes.com/2006/03/09/Floridian/Whipped_up.shtml

 

[Captain Bacardi]

Here's the review from the All-Music Guide site:

Rewhipped amounts to a pseudo-addition to the original Herb Alpert & the Tijuana Brass catalog. This album of remixes by late-'90s and 2000-era DJs features new trumpet solos by Herb Alpert on seven tracks. All the cuts here appeared on the original 1965 release, Whipped Cream & Other Delights, though not in the same order.

Before rolling your eyes, consider this: the music on this set was regarded not only as hip, but as progressive jazz by many back in the day. Producer Anthony Marinelli supervised all the remixes on the project and contributes six of his own — including the title track with the aid of the band Ozomatli performing with Alpert. Marinelli is also a composer and keyboard player who has composed soundtracks (Man from Elysian Fields, Time Code) and done session work with everyone from Michael Jackson and James Brown to Giorgio Moroder, Lionel Richie, and Supertramp. Other remixes were done by Thievery Corporation, Mocean Worker, John King, Medeski, Martin & Wood, Camara Kambon, and DJ Foosh.

Whatever trepidations one might have about Alpert participating in the project, some of the best cuts on the set work best because he's on them — the title cut (Marinelli) "El Garbanzo" (M,M&W), and "Peanuts" (Marinelli) — in part because Alpert's gotten a lot funkier in his old age. Other standouts include the ambient dub that is "Lemon Tree" by Thievery Corporation, John King's dub-jazz-exotica redo of "A Taste of Honey" (the original album's smash single), and Mocean Worker's fine rework of "Bittersweet Samba" with killer berimbau samples grafted on. The only cut that really doesn't work is "Butterball," Although Alpert's solo is hip-cool, the song's added beats don't leave enough of the original to appreciate it — this is a drag, since all the other tracks keep the basic cut to achieve historic continuity. It's a small complaint since it's the final selection here.

Certainly the music on Rewhipped has a somewhat limited appeal, and it's hard to think of the folks who bought Whipped Cream when it was released being interested in it now, but who knows? Hardcore dance music fans will find this a curiosity piece at best, but that doesn't mean it's without musical merit. In fact, ReWhipped has as much aesthetic appeal as its predecessor because the music Alpert and his band made in '65 has aged so well. Judging by his contribution here, Alpert certainly has, too — at 71, the cat is still swingin'.




Capt. Bacardi

 

[Captain Bacardi]

From the Rocky Mountain News:
http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/music/article/0,2792,DRMN_54_4536172,00.html

Classic Alpert album gets 'Rewhipped'

The Shout Factory approached Herb Alpert some time ago about a remix version of his classic album, Whipped Cream and Other Delights.

Absolutely not, Alpert declared.

"I thought that was something I wanted to not get involved in. I wanted to leave Whipped Cream and Other Delights alone. It was a classic. People liked it. It sold millions of records. I wanted to let it rest in peace," Alpert says.

"I'm a jazz fan. When Ella Fitzgerald sang Lady Be Good, you don't want to touch it anymore. It was done. The Whipped Cream album, as far as I was concerned, was done."

He did oversee the remastering of a good part of his classic catalog, including the Whipped Cream disc. When music first went to CD, people weren't as skilled at making it sound right.

"Now, as technology has improved, I think we're getting pretty close. I just wanted to make sure it was a much improved sound from the original CDs we'd put out. It was kind of eerie listening to all those tapes again. I really try to live in the present. I don't visit those too often."

Still, Shawn Amos, a VP at Shout Factory, persisted, sending Alpert a couple of remixed tracks. And Alpert finally got it.

"I picked up my horn and started playing over these tracks. I felt we could keep the integrity of the songs alive and let these DJs slice and dice it in a musical way," Alpert says.

Whipped Cream and Other Delights: Rewhipped was born.

Musicians such as Ozomatli and Thievery Corporation stepped up for the project, and Alpert himself was reminded of just how melodic his work was.

"A good song is a good song. We've been (hearing) rap for a while with interesting rhythms and poetry. But we were missing the melodic structure. Good songs live on, and people are anxious to get back to that," he says.




Capt. Bacardi

 

[Captain Bacardi]

From the Seattle Post-Intelligencer site (http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/pop/264496_newcds28.html?source=rss):

Here's the idea: Take "Whipped Cream & Other Delights," the 1965 album that helped make Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass a national music sensation, and remake it, right down to the iconic cover of the whipped cream-covered girl. The 12 songs have been deconstructed, rearranged and added to by such contemporary artists as Ozomatli and Thievery Corporation. The result is a mixed bag. Some tracks get an interesting new interpretation; on others, though, inspiration seems limited to adding a heavy rhythm track and a lot of "hey, let's see what this button does." The real revelation, though, is Alpert's horn playing. (Bill Virgin)

GRADE: B



Capt. Bacardi

 

[Steve Sidoruk]

PINUP DEPT.
WHIPPED AGAIN
by Nick Paumgarten
Issue of 2006-04-10
Posted 2006-04-03

Last spring, during the broadcast of the Preakness Stakes, Bob Costas interviewed Jerry Moss, the owner of Giacomo, the horse that had won the Kentucky Derby. He noted that Moss, along with the trumpeter and producer Herb Alpert, had founded A. & M. Records. Near the end of their conversation, Costas held up his old copy of an A. & M. classic, the 1965 Alpert album “Whipped Cream & Other Delights,” which, as most American males Costas’s age know all too well, featured on its cover a photograph of a young woman clad, rather meagerly, in what appeared to be whipped cream. Costas asked Moss the name of the model. Dolores, he said.

“All hail Dolores!” Costas exclaimed.

Alpert, who happened to be watching on TV, was moved. He decided to send Costas a poster of Dolores, mit Schlag, upon which he wrote, “Dear Bob, can’t stop thinking about you. Love, Dolores.”

It was a variation on a sentiment that decades ago fogged the minds of many young men, as they gazed at the album cover and attempted to ascribe personalized come-hitherhood to the woman staring back. In the picture, she sits holding the stem of a rose in her left hand, above which the inner portion of a bare breast protrudes from the foam. She is licking cream from the index finger of her right hand, and a dollop of the stuff rests atop her forehead, like a tiara. (This is the only real whipped cream in the shot. The rest is shaving cream.) The image still seems a little raunchy, in a home-movie kind of way, but in the virtually pornless atmosphere of the suburban mid-sixties it was—and we’re relying on the testimony of our elders here—the pinnacle of allure. The Whipped Cream Girl, as she came to be known, helped make Alpert and his Tijuana Brass even more famous than his loungy arrangements, smooth trumpet work, and suave song production destined them to be. The album shot to No. 1 and stayed on the charts for more than three years. Alpert would say, when performing live, “Sorry, but I can’t play the cover for you.”

“When that record broke, Tijuana Brass was catapulted onto another planet,” Alpert said the other day. Initially, he had reservations about the cover. “In 1965, to see an image like that I thought was maybe pushing it a little too far,” he said. “I thought the censors would be down on it. But in 2006 it looks pretty darn tame.”

Last month, a new version of the album was released: “Whipped Cream & Other Delights Re-Whipped.” Various artists made remixes of the original songs, over which Alpert laid some new trumpet solos. It’s slick stuff. But, with all due respect to Alpert, who is a serious cat with serious cred and, as of a few weeks ago, a spot in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, the most momentous revision may well be the one made to the cover art. There’s a new Dolores, whose name is Bree Condon. If you adjust for palette size (the CD jewel box having, sadly, a fraction the area of a record sleeve), the Re-Whipped Cream Girl shows much more skin than her predecessor did. Bree is lying on her belly, in a strapless whipped-cream bikini, with not a splotch of cream (or a retouched pixel) out of place. Dolores, by contrast, looked as though she had emerged from a cream-pie fight—stray flecks everywhere. Even the whipped cream on Bree’s index finger has been heavily styled; it resembles an impaled Martini olive. She reveals more, yet suggests less.

Alpert, who had to be talked into doing the remix, is fond of the new cover. “The girl is beautiful,” he said. “I think it’s a little more accessible. There’s so much product in the stores these days that it doesn’t hurt if your eye goes to something that has a little eye appeal.”

Eye appeal, however, is near the top of Alpert’s list of deleterious trends in popular music. “A lot of it is so corny,” he said. “It looks like professional wrestling to me. These people dress up in their getups.” He blames television: “People started listening with their eyes.”

Another thing that bothers him is the tendency toward profligacy; he laments the scarcity of restraint and feeling, in jazz playing, at least, if not in edible-outfit design. (Just as there can be too much flesh, there can be too many notes.) “When Bill Clinton was inaugurated,” Alpert said, “they had ten saxophone players at the party. It was mostly the young guns, but Gerry Mulligan was in there, too. Afterward, he called me and said, ‘Man, you know, these young guys, they know all the modes, they know all the chords, they can play high and low and fast, and they can do amazing things, but the one thing they don’t know how to do is leave the bone alone.’ ”

http://www.newyorker.com/talk/content/articles/060410ta_talk_paumgarten

 

[Captain Bacardi]

From the MSNBC site: http://msnbc.msn.com/id/12358861/:

Alpert rewhips a new version of classic album

After 41 years, ‘Whipped Cream and Other Delights’ updated with remixes

MIAMI BEACH, Fla. - Herb Alpert wasn't too jazzed when he heard about a remix of his classic "Whipped Cream and Other Delights" album — until he tasted some of the new cuts.

He liked what he heard, and the trumpeter and music-industry pacesetter threw his weight behind the new version of the toe-tapping, genre-bending album that featured Grammy-winner "A Taste of Honey" and "Whipped Cream," and other food-oriented treats.

Alpert said he was approached by Shout Factory's Shawn Amos about the project to reinvent the 41-year-old album.

"At first I wasn't crazy about doing this project until I heard what these guys had in mind. I just wanted to leave that classic album alone," Alpert, 71, recently told The Associated Press during a pool-side party at a South Beach hotel.

"As it turns out, I'm very happy with it. They were working through me as well. They were sending me the ... file, then I overdubbed some trumpets on top of the original trumpet I had, sent it back to them, they mixed it up and I was pleasantly surprised at the result."

"Whipped Cream and Other Delights: Rewhipped" is an appropriately cool update to the sexy, stylish album that spent eight weeks at No. 1 and won four Grammys in 1965. Instrumental impresarios such as Madeski, Martin and Wood, and Anthony Marinelli and John King of the Dust Brothers attack the tight rhythms of the original.

Also redone was the old cover — the sultry image of a brunette bathed in a white substance (the cream, the liner notes say, was of the shaving variety, not the whipped), her fingers touching the tip of her tongue.

The original "Whipped Cream" album mixed polka, Dixieland, jazz and Mexican sounds and rhythms, and featured a solid lineup of horn men behind Alpert to make up the Tijuana Brass. Its provocative cover and good-looking frontman helped the popularity of the album.

Alpert had a hunch that the lead song on the original album, "A Taste of Honey," would do fine.

"I was playing at a little club in Seattle, Wash., the Edgewater Inn, and every time I played `A Taste of Honey' prior to its release, people would go crazy — well not crazy, they wanted us to play it again — so I got the feeling that maybe that could be a great single," he said.

The song starts with a mariachi-like introduction that flows into a bass-drum lead-in. A walking bass guitar, drums and piano accompany the horns, with Alpert's trumpet up front. Its catchy tune and buoyant feel is irresistible.

"It was the `Taste of Honey' record that really catapulted the Tijuana Brass to a new level," he said.

The remixed "Taste" cut, by King, stays true to the original but succeeds in isolating the trumpet and bass while adding atmospheric touches throughout.

Later, Marinelli and the Los Angeles-based band Ozomatli takes a more chilled-out approach to "Whipped Cream" — the song chosen to introduce the bachelorettes on "The Dating Game."

Ozomatli trumpeter and co-vocalist Asdru Sierra recognized the influence of the song and impact of the album cover.

"I remember as a kid listening to it, my parents would listen to that record over and over," Sierra said. "The way I remember it first of all, if I could envision anything, it's like `Austin Powers.'"

"My mom didn't want the album in the house because of the girl in the front with the whipped cream. Back in the day, it was so risque, and the music was so risque."

Other songs also have sex appeal. "Lemon Tree" has a seductive, snake-charmer feel to it, with Alpert's forlorn trumpet setting the mood.

And the new "Love Potion No. 9," comes with Latin-influenced percussion and a rousing va-va-voom ending, complete with cymbal crashes and a shaking tambourine. The song's vocals are handled by a mellow-sounding Sierra.

The end result somewhat surprised Alpert, mainly because of the skill of the artists involved in the remix.

"Prior to getting into this genre, if you will, I thought a lot of these remixers were just kind of lucky; they press some buttons and get some grooves going and they were not really musicians," Alpert said.

"But now I have a lot of respect for these DJ remixers, especially the good ones. They're very musical, most of them play instruments and they know what they're doing. It was fun playing with them."

Alpert's still thin and handsome, and he was the coolest cat at the South Beach party, wearing all black and even sporting a scarf to deal with the unseasonable chilly weather.

Easygoing and soft-spoken, Alpert lit up when discussing the similarities between his art (he's a sculptor) and music.

"Aw man, it's the same thing. It's exactly the same thing," he said. "Art starts from a blank canvas. Music starts from that same spot."

"Rewhipped" also came at a time when Alpert received another sign of respect: a spot in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. He was inducted along with Jerry Moss for their work as the co-founders of A&M Records, whose catalog includes the Carpenters, the Police, Barry White and Sheryl Crow.

Alpert says his approach of making the artist — not the business model — the most important aspect of his independent label was a reason for its success. He also wondered if a trumpeter-arranger like himself and an instrumental album like the original "Whipped Cream" would be able to find an outlet today.

"Unfortunately, what they're playing on the radio now is not really fair to a lot of great musicians that are out there struggling to be heard," Alpert says. "They're so compartmentalized with the types of music certain stations are willing to play. If it doesn't fit into that particular groove, you know, you're out of the picture."

Still, the "Rewhipped" CD is earning solid reviews and earned Ozomatli and Alpert an appearance on the "Tonight" show.

"It's powerful," Alpert says of the music's staying power. "'Whipped Cream' happened 40 years ago. It still resonates with people.'"






Capt. Bacardi

 

[Captain Bacardi]

From the Pop Matters website (http://www.popmatters.com/pm/music/...ss_whipped_cream_and_other_delights_rewhippe/):

Elvis, the Beatles, Frank, and Herb?
by Steve Horowitz

The original Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass’s Whipped Cream & Other Delights was the fourth largest selling album of the ‘60s, behind only discs by Elvis Presley, the Beatles, and Frank Sinatra. The record provided the soundtrack to countless suburban backyard barbecues, pool parties, and graduation festivities. However, the very success of the album caused a backlash against it. Even before the decade was over the music was regarded as cheesy commercial fodder, equated with the vapidity of the middle-class, white bread audience that purchased it. No doubt part of this was due to the title song’s use as the theme for television’s "The Dating Game" one of the first and lamest reality-style shows to hit the airwaves. That’s unfortunate, because Alpert and company possessed a horny genius for performing Latin jazz inflected pop.

A word about the Hispanic accents of the music needs to be said. Up until the first half of the ‘60s, musicians often colored their melodies with foreign flourishes to provide a touch of exotica. This could be done in a number of ways, through the use of odd instruments (did someone mention the zither and the theme to "Zorba the Greek"?), language (think of “Sukiyaki”, a hit single sung entirely in Japanese that had nothing to do with the food dish from which the song got its title), or, like Alpert and his band, adding a spicy accompaniment to non-ethnic tunes. This was not considered offensive or condescending. Indeed, the opposite was true. Listeners found this hip and progressive.

It’s been more than 40 years since the original Whipped Cream was released. Alpert has given the tapes to a number of different producers to remix and make ready for contemporary audiences. He’s also provided new solos on a number of the tracks to give them an added kick. The results vary, but this project succeeds overall. The various cuts come off as catchy, electronica-style lounge music. Just like it did four decades ago, this music provides excellent accompaniment for shaking up cocktails and chilling out to.

The best tracks on Whipped Cream & Other Delights Rewhipped are still the same ones that were the most excellent songs on the original album. Generally, the remixers don’t radically cut up the prize material as much as reframe the cuts and add beats and squiggles to them. This is true of Anthony Marinelli’s production of the title track (which also includes the band Ozomatli and Alpert contributing some new riffs), and John King’s remake of the first record’s biggest hit, “A Taste of Honey”. Both versions feature the same engaging instrumental licks that made the originals so damn cool and keep the horny hooks blaring, but in altered contexts.

Other highlights include Medeski, Martin, and Wood’s bluesy subversion of “El Garbanzo”, the Thievery Corporation’s gentle dub mix of “Lemon Tree”, Mocean Worker’s breezy “Bittersweet Samba”, and Marinelli’s funky take on “Lollipops and Roses”. Marinelli remixed six of the dozen songs and supervises the disc’s production. This gives the album a seamlessness that otherwise might be missing when songs are mixed by different deejays.

The same label (Shout!) responsible for this effort also has re-released the original Whipped Cream & Other Delights with two additional bonus cuts. The albums seem to be geared to two separate audiences. The 1965 disc appeals to nostalgia buffs who remember the album from way back when and to fans of that era’s music. This new record would be more of interest to contemporary music enthusiasts. Both albums have their merits, though, and fans of Alpert would benefit by owning both.

Incidentally, the cover art of the older album has become a part of urban folklore. The cover depicted a nubile young woman deliciously covered with whipped cream. The rumor was that if one were very careful, a person could peel off the thin outer layer of the print and be rewarded with a naked picture of the lovely lass. This wasn’t true, of course, but one would be hard pressed to find an album from back in the day that didn’t show signs of someone trying to strip the cardboard of its veneer. The remix CD features a photo of a similar-looking lady (model Bree Condon) in a whipped cream bikini as homage. It ain’t the same, but the fault lies not with Condon. Back in 1965, an image of a naked woman was hard to come by. Now it just takes the flick of a finger on a computer keyboard.

Times have changed. So has the music. The fact that Alpert’s holds up so well proves how talented he was and is.




Capt. Bacardi

 

[Mike Blakesley]

Herb Alpert - RISE (Deluxe edition)
from Allmusic.com

If the 12" single of Herb Alpert's "Rise" hadn't taken over the charts the way it did back in 1979, one wonders if Alpert would have just gone down in the books as the guy who had a number one with a Burt Bacharach tune ("This Guy's in Love with You"). Instead, the cut energized the entire dance club generation with DJs looking for new grooves and even ended up being used by Sean "Puffy" Combs on the Notorious B.I.G.'s Hypnotise, albeit in a drastically re-morphed form.

The single began as a disc track composed by Alpert's nephew Randy and his pal Andy Armer. Alpert suggested they slow the groove way down and turn it into a slow mover. They issued it without an album to go with it, simply as a single on A&M. Club DJs picked up on it and began using duplicate copies either to let the percussion break go on a bit longer before trumpet kicked in, or playing one copy just behind another, creating a call and response melody with the trumpet and the rhythm section.

After the single stormed the charts and stayed there all summer, eventually hitting the number one spot, Alpert, Armer and friends went about assembling an album to capitalize on it.

They did well: Rise hit number six on the Billboard pop chart. The rest of the tracks are a slew of originals and covers. The set opens with a small pomp and circumstance intro called "1980" that Alpert composed for the Olympics that year, assisted by the late Michel Colombier on keyboards. Alpert also composed the ballad-turned-Latin-dancefloor fire walker "Behind the Rain," (originally composed for Gato Barbieri's Caliente! album) that has its own appeal in the 21st century with chorus-like backing vocals.

Other tracks include the Armer and Randy Alpert "Rotation." This cut, introduced by hand percussion, bells and shakers is another soulful groover with a killer, soft-spoken keyboard line that's lite funk and hypnotic. A looped synth line enters in place of a bassline. Effects, washes, reverb, and mild distortion create a futuristic backdrop to this otherwise beautifully melodic tune. Alpert plays his in the pocket soul-drenched melody lines over the top and one of the first "chillout" tunes was born. The 2007 version of the album includes an alternate version with digital delay on the trumpet as a bonus track.

Speaking of bonus cuts, Alpert recorded an updated version of Rodrigo's "Aranjuez" introduced by a steel string playing the flamenco intro and backed by hand percussion and the popping bassline of Jerry Knight to full-on 1/2 disco tempo, creating another melodic classic for the floor complete with marimba played by Julius Wechter from (where else?) the Tijuana Brass. The handclap and vocal whoop-up in the middle adds to the celebratory nature of this version. By its end the tune is unrecognizable and has become a disco anthem with strings, with Harvey Mason beating the hell out his kit and keyboard loops layered on top of one another. It's still an amazing thing to hear nearly 30 years later. There is a brand new mix of the cut contained on the 2007 edition.

Alpert, wanting to charge the disco scene, had re-recorded the Crusaders' "Street Life" with Joe Sample on piano amid the synthetic keyboards. The marimba adds to the vibe and the slowed downtempo, as the melody is ushered in by strings before Alpert starts blowing his tight, sharp little vamps. Sample's piano is a solid accompaniment to James Jamerson, Jr.'s bass playing, and the whole thing rivals the Crusaders' version because of the deep, soulful melody in Alpert's playing. And who would have ever thought the prog rocker Pete Sinfield and Procol Harum's Gary Brooker's tune "Angelina" (recorded for Brooker's first solo album) would end up here as a faux calypso tune with a pedal steel guitar in it? The studio was the lab and everything was possible then, though hearing it now it's amazing they could accomplish all this back then.

What this leaves is "Love Is," penned by Bill Withers, and delivered here rather anemically by Alpert. But it isn't the vocal that sells this, it's the drop dead bassline by Louis Johnson and the woven-in keyboard lines. Alpert plays fills around and through his vocals and turns the song into an anthem of celebration.

What it all adds up to is an extraordinary recording that stands the test of time as a bona fide classic of the late disco/pre hip-hop era. The pop charts would have none of it these days. But eating this up as folks did, pre-MTV, with simply the radio going nuts trying to introduce the next single from it, Alpert, his nephew, and Armer stumbled onto something that would reinvigorate Alpert's career as a recording artist and as a producer. ~ Thom Jurek, All Music Guide

 

[Steve Sidoruk]

'Rise' is a blast from the past, courtesy of trumpeter Alpert
By BILL VIRGIN
P-I REPORTER
Seattle Post-Intelligencer

Odd fact about the 1960s pop-music scene: Herb Alpert, who with his Tijuana Brass instrumental group was one of the decade's most successful recording acts, had his only No. 1 single on a vocal: 1969's "This Guy's in Love With You."

Odd fact about the 1970s pop-music scene: long after the Tijuana Brass had faded from the charts, Herb Alpert had his only No. 1 instrumental single: 1979's "Rise."

The album containing that song is being reissued Tuesday. It is the latest in a series of CDs by Alpert -- both with the TJB and as a solo artist -- from Shout Factory. The series has skipped some of the TJB and solo releases, although fans hope those will eventually make it to CD too.

"Rise" came in the waning days of the disco era. For those who haven't heard the album in years, it may raise fears that it will be the standard, beat-heavy disco record that everyone of that time felt obliged to try (and now wishes he hadn't).

The good news is that "Rise," heard today, is not a period piece, certainly not of the disco era. In most tracks it's blessedly free of the mind-numbing disco-beat thump. It's also not the Tijuana Brass revisited.

If anything, "Rise" helped establish the musical genre known as "smooth jazz." In addition to the title track, the album includes the playful groove of "Rotation"; "1980," a theme Alpert wrote for NBC's broadcast of the Summer Olympics (the liner notes say Mexico City, although the 1980 Summer Games were in Moscow), and a version of the Crusaders' "Street Life."

"It's really a damn good album," Alpert said in a phone interview. "I was surprised. It holds up. It has a good sound and a good feel. I'm proud of it."

Alpert was one of a group of musicians at the time -- others were George Benson, David Sanborn, Larry Carlton and Jeff Lorber -- who combined elements of soul, rock and contemporary jazz to create the forerunner of smooth jazz, said Carol Handley, program director at KWJZ-FM (98.9). "Rise" is a regular at KWJZ, she said. "It's still a favorite song, not only here but at smooth-jazz stations around the country. It's one of those songs that never leaves the library."

"Rise" did have its roots in a combination of disco and Tijuana Brass revisited.

"I kind of backed into this whole thing," Alpert said, recalling that he had been lent a 32-track digital recorder to try out. He tested new technology with full "four-to-the-floor disco beat" versions of "The Lonely Bull -- the TJB's first hit -- and "A Taste of Honey."

"Nauseous" is the adjective Alpert uses to describe his reaction to the results. "I'm not a disco artist."

But he did want to make good use of the studio time he had left, so he tried a song co-written by nephew Randy "Badazz" Alpert, slowed to a more languorous pace. The result was "Rise," a song that gave Herb Alpert the distinction of hitting No. 1 on Billboard's charts as both a vocalist and an instrumentalist.

"Rise" was not just a commercial success, but it was an artistic reinvigoration for Alpert, who says he went through a period in which "I was fighting the horn and it was fighting me." But a series of albums done with Hugh Masekela, followed by "Rise," "got me out of that." Playing the trumpet "started getting fun again."

Next up in the reissue series later this year will be Fandango, which Alpert calls one of his best albums. That will be followed by a re-release of his ballad album Midnight Sun.

Alpert was an early master of the technological capabilities of the studio, and "Rise" grew out of an experiment with what was then the latest in recording equipment. Yet he wonders whether the technology of today, not only in recording but in distribution of music, would have allowed him to build the kind of career he enjoyed as both a performer and a businessman (he was the co-founder of A&M Records).

"It was simpler to record, more honest," Alpert said of the low-tech days. With modern technology, "We have so many channels to play with, we can refine it to death. You can't produce a record by committee."

As for the ability to download individual songs, legally or not, Alpert added, "When I saw Napster, I told my partner, 'We've got to head for the hills. This is dangerous.' The music industry didn't seem to hop on the bandwagon properly. We were fortunate to be in the right period."

There's an artistic concern as well as a business issue, he said of dowloading individual songs. The album as a whole gets lost in the emphasis on the single. "People don't seem to be interested in the entire product," he said.

Had today's technology been available when he was starting, he said, "I probably wouldn't have happened."

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/pop/317323_alpert29.html