Herb Alpert

Known for his mariachi-inspired easy listening sound, trumpeter Herb Alpert stands among pop history’s most successful instrumental performers. He ranks equally among the entertainment industry’s shrewdest businessmen, having joined partner Jerry Moss to establish A&M Records, one of the most prosperous artist-owned labels ever created. In the early ’60s, alongside his Tijuana Brass, Alpert swiftly claimed chart success with Top Ten singles such as the title track from 1962’s The Lonely Bull and the Grammy-winning “A Taste of Honey” from 1965’s Whipped Cream & Other Delights. Before securing his own hits, he had already collaborated with future industry giant Lou Adler on several of Sam Cooke’s most enduring songs, among them “Wonderful World” and “Only Sixteen,” and the pair also produced material for surf duo Jan & Dean.

Alpert’s career accelerated sharply once he and Moss launched A&M in 1962. Begun in Alpert’s garage, the label grew into the world’s largest independent company, featuring artists including the Carpenters, Cat Stevens, Joe Cocker, and Sergio Mendes & Brasil ’66. Herb Alpert & the Tijuana Brass served as its flagship act, popularizing his Latin-tinged “Ameriachi” style and notching further successes such as “Spanish Flea” from 1965’s Going Places along with his landmark 1968 vocal reading of Burt Bacharach’s “This Guy’s in Love with You,” Alpert’s first number-one single. Additional Grammy honors arrived, among them two for 1967’s “What Now My Love.” As pop evolved, Alpert adapted, exploring soft rock, disco, and R&B on 1979’s Rise. From the ’80s forward, releases such as 1983’s Blow Your Own Horn, 1992’s Midnight Sun—his final A&M project after the label’s sale—and 1997’s Passion Dance reflected his ongoing affinity for jazz, adult-contemporary pop, and Latin forms. He also pursued abstract painting and established the philanthropic Herb Alpert Foundation to support youth arts and education. Although he has occasionally stepped away from performing, Alpert continues as an active studio and concert artist, frequently collaborating with vocalist and wife Lani Hall on projects including 2011’s I Feel You, 2016’s Grammy-nominated Human Nature, and 2019’s Over the Rainbow, which topped the jazz albums chart. In 2020 he became the subject of the career-spanning documentary Herb Alpert Is…, after which he issued 2021’s Catch the Wind. He rejoined Hall for her 2022 solo album Seasons of Love, delivered his 49th album with 2023’s Wish Upon a Star, and, at age 89, presented 50.

Born March 31, 1935, in Los Angeles’s Boyle Heights neighborhood, Alpert was raised in a Jewish household by parents who had emigrated from Ukraine and Romania. Although his father worked as a tailor, he played mandolin with notable skill; Alpert’s mother gave violin lessons. Both Herb and his brother David, a drummer, encountered music early. Alpert began trumpet lessons at eight and, during his teens, performed in dance bands while experimenting with recording gear. After graduating high school in 1952, he served two years in the Sixth Army Band, then enrolled at the University of Southern California, where he spent two years in the USC Trojan Marching Band. During this time he befriended Lou Adler, and together they produced several Top 20 hits for Keen Records, among them Jan & Dean’s “Baby Talk” and Sam Cooke’s “Wonderful World.” Recording as Dore Alpert, the trumpeter released his debut vocal single, “Tell It to the Birds,” on the Carnival label he shared with Jerry Moss in 1960; after discovering the name was taken, they renamed the imprint A&M.

In 1962 Alpert issued The Lonely Bull, his first album credited to the Tijuana Brass. Cut inexpensively in his garage and at Hollywood’s Conway Recording Studio with members of the Wrecking Crew, the project featured overdubbed trumpet lines creating a full brass-band texture. Its title track, penned by Sol Lake and inspired by a bullfight Alpert witnessed in Mexico, reached number six in the U.S. After 1963’s Volume 2, he earned his first Top Ten album with 1964’s South of the Border, another set of mariachi-inflected arrangements and pop covers of the Beatles, Antonio Carlos Jobim, and others.

Whipped Cream & Other Delights, released in 1965, marked a shift away from Mexican-themed material toward a broader easy-listening approach, yielding singles “A Taste of Honey,” “Whipped Cream,” and “Lollipops and Roses.” Widely regarded as the group’s most popular release, it sold more than six million copies domestically and topped the Billboard Pop Albums chart. What Now My Love, arriving the next year, also performed strongly, holding the number-one position for nine weeks. Additional chart-topping albums followed: 1966’s S.R.O., 1967’s Sounds Like, and 1967’s Herb Alpert’s Ninth.

In 1968 Alpert achieved his first number-one single—and A&M’s first—with a rare vocal performance of Burt Bacharach’s romantically understated “This Guy’s in Love with You,” featured on Beat of the Brass. The track spent four weeks atop the Billboard Hot 100, while the album itself reached number one on the Billboard Top Pop Albums chart, becoming Alpert’s fifth and final chart-topping LP. Warm, issued a year later, adopted an even more relaxed, Brazilian-inflected tone and proved the Tijuana Brass’s last album to enter the Top 40.

As A&M flourished through the early ’70s, Alpert devoted greater attention to label operations while still recording. In 1973 he married former Sergio Mendes & Brasil ’66 singer Lani Hall. He continued releasing projects such as 1974’s Quincy Jones-arranged You Smile, The Song Begins, 1975’s Coney Island, and 1976’s Just You and Me, and he joined South African trumpeter Hugh Masekela for 1978’s Main Event Live. With 1979’s Rise he adopted a refined jazz-, funk-, and disco-infused aesthetic; co-produced with nephew Randy “Badazz” Alpert, the album reached the Top Ten, driven largely by its title track.

Alpert’s 1980 album Beyond also achieved Top 40 status. Subsequent releases 1982’s Fandango and 1985’s Wild Romance further explored smooth crossover territory. Keep Your Eye on Me, issued in 1987, contained the Top Five single “Diamonds,” which featured guest vocals from Janet Jackson, one of A&M’s major artists of the decade. In 1986 Alpert founded the Herb Alpert Foundation to support educational, arts, and environmental initiatives for children.

After selling A&M to PolyGram in 1990 for more than $500 million, Alpert and Moss established Almo Sounds in 1994, signing artists including Garbage, Gillian Welch, and Imogen Heap. Alpert’s final A&M albums were 1991’s North on South Street and 1992’s Midnight Sun; on Almo Sounds he released 1997’s Passion Dance and 1999’s Colors. During this period he also exhibited abstract expressionist paintings and co-produced Broadway productions such as Angels in America and Jelly’s Last Jam.

Beginning in 2007, Alpert and Lani Hall toured and recorded regularly, issuing 2009’s Anything Goes and 2011’s I Feel You, which drew on jazz standards, Brazilian and Latin repertoire, pop songs, and reinterpretations of earlier hits. In 2012 President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama awarded him the National Medal of Arts.

Alpert and Hall released their third collaborative album, 2013’s Steppin’ Out, featuring keyboardist Jeff Lorber; it earned a Grammy for Best Pop Instrumental Album in January 2014. That same year Alpert issued the electronic dance-oriented In the Mood. The following year he returned with Come Fly with Me, another stylistically diverse collection of originals and covers. In 2016 he delivered Human Nature, his third electronic-tinged project, which received another Grammy nomination. He quickly followed with 2017’s Music, Vol. 1, recorded with producer Jochem van der Saag, containing originals alongside reworkings of the Beatles’ “Michelle” and John Lennon’s “Imagine.” The holiday-themed The Christmas Wish appeared in 2017, succeeded a year later by Music, Vol. 3: Herb Alpert Reimagines the Tijuana Brass. He again collaborated with van der Saag on 2019’s Over the Rainbow, which included the original single “Skinny Dip” plus covers of songs by Bill Withers, Earth, Wind & Fire, Barry Manilow, and others; the album topped both the Billboard Jazz Albums and Contemporary Jazz Albums charts.

In 2020 Alpert was the subject of the documentary Herb Alpert Is…, accompanied by a three-disc box set. Following the film he released 2021’s Catch the Wind, featuring renditions of “Smile,” “America the Beautiful,” and the Beatles’ “Eleanor Rigby.” The next year he joined Hall for her first solo album in more than two decades, Seasons of Love. Alpert’s 49th studio album, Wish Upon a Star, arrived in September 2023, presenting his distinctive interpretations of standards and new material, including a cover of Jerry Reed’s “East Bound and Down,” the theme from Smokey and the Bandit. The aptly titled 50 appeared the following year, with the 89-year-old Alpert exploring further originals alongside classics such as Antonio Carlos Jobim’s “Baubles, Bangles and Beads,” the doo-wop staple “Sh-Boom,” and Duke Pearson’s hard-bop standard “Jeanine.”