By Paul Freeman [August 2011 Interview]

When Herb Alpert pours his heart into his trumpet, the feelings wash over the listener like a warm wave. His sound is so distinctive, Miles Davis once said of Alpert’s playing, “You hear three notes and you know it’s Herb Alpert.’”

Genuine emotions are expressed elegantly on the new album, “I Feel You,” by Alpert and his wife, the vibrant vocalist Lani Hall.

Even within familiar tunes like “Here Comes The Sun” and “What Now My Love,” they discover tantalizing new elements. There’s a purity about Alpert’s playing. He always serves the music, never showing off.

Alpert grew up appreciating music. His father was an amateur mandolinist, his mother a violinist and his older brother a drummer. Raised in Los Angeles, Alpert began taking trumpet lessons at age eight.

At 14, he studied with a Russian trumpet teacher who had been a member of the San Francisco Symphony. In the army, stationed at the Presidio, he played with the Sixth Army Band.

Teaming with Lou Adler, Alpert co-wrote and produced hits for Sam Cooke and Jan & Dean.

Inspired by the fanfares he heard at Tijuana bullfights, Alpert discovered his distinct sound and formed The Tijuana Brass. They dominated the Grammys and the airwaves for years. In 1966, they held five spots in the Top 20 of the pop album charts.

In addition to revitalizing the instrumental record scene, Alpert enjoyed a huge vocal hit, “This Guy’s In Love With You.” On the new album, he sings again, including a perfectly cool rendition of “Something Cool.”

As co-owners of A&M records, Alpert and Jerry Moss nurtured talent, giving artists the time and space needed to find their audiences. The diverse roster included The Carpenters, Carole King, The Police, Janet Jackson, Stan Getz, Sergio Mendes & Brasil ‘66, Chet Baker, Cat Stevens, Peter Frampton, Sergio Mendes, Gerry Mulligan, Joe Cocker and Sheryl Crow.

Post-Tijuana Brass, Alpert continued to explore new musical territory and enjoyed a number one hit with “Rise” in 1979. In addition to his trumpet artistry, Alpert has earned renown for his remarkable sculptures and paintings. Through The Herb Alpert Foundation, he supports arts education.

Alpert is an extraordinary human being, as well as a remarkable creative talent. It was an honor for Pop Culture Classics to talk with him.

POP CULTURE CLASSICS:
The arrangements on the new album sound so fresh and there’s such as sense of spontaneity, so many little surprises. Is that something that happens organically? Or are those things you’re trying consciously to achieve?

HERB ALPERT:
Oh, definitely going for spontaneity. And also, I try to take songs that are familiar to people and do them in a different way.

PCC:
The ones that are very familiar, do you set any parameters, as far as, still honoring the melody, but putting your own imprint on them?

ALPERT:
Oh, definitely, yeah. One of the rules, I told our drummer, Michael Shapiro, I said, when we started this project, I said, ‘Look, I don’t want to hear any backbeats.’ [Laughs] He looked at me like a deer in the headlights.

PCC:
Do you find that even songs you’ve played over the years and are standards, like ‘What Now My Love’ on the new album, that there are always new elements to be found?

ALPERT:
Oh, yeah. That’s the fun part of jazz or improvisational music. It’s always a surprise. And when you play it night after night, this is what’s been fun for me to do, these concerts, because I get to be in the moment of my life, as I’m playing.

PCC:
And so the live performances, that’s just capturing it at that particular moment? The songs continue to grow and evolve.

ALPERT:
Well, yeah. They change every night. Yeah. They change. But not to the point where you don’t remember the song anymore, because we try to stay very conscious of the original melody. Basically, what happens is, Lani establishes the song and then everything that’s happening behind her, even when we’re recording, is pretty much improv. I mean, we have the chord structure and the harmonic structure and the general form of the song, but everything that happens within that is up for grabs.

PCC:
So it must be really exciting for both the musicians and the listeners to find something unexpected that really clicks?

ALPERT:
I think so. It works when you’re honest. If you’re trying to affect it, trying to be hip or corny or whatever those words are, it’s lost. But if you’re just trying to be authentic, it works.

PCC:
So do you go into the studio with a pretty clear vision of where you want to take the song? Or is it the result of a lot of experimentation?

ALPERT:
Well, we’ve rehearsed the material until it’s time to record and then, when we record, we don’t beat it to death. If it doesn’t happen after the third take or so, then we just move on to something else.

PCC:
The songs actually seem to reveal more with each listening. Is that something you’re also conscious of, to have that kind of texturing?

ALPERT:
I think that’s the beauty of jazz. I think that’s why we revere Miles Davis, Coltrane, Charlie Parker, Louis Armstrong, those guys, because it’s honest stuff and you feel like you retrieve something from it each time you hear it.

PCC:
Is there any greater sense of liberation with the newer songs, the less familiar ones? Or do you approach them all the same way?

ALPERT:
Well, some songs, depending on how they’re structured, it’s a little bit easier to take off on. Songs with a limited chord structure are a little more challenging.

PCC:
Your own playing, it’s so rich. It’s always enhancing the song, serving the music, not that kind of oh-look-at-me posturing that you sometimes hear. Is that just a reflection of your own personality?

ALPERT:
That’s really a great observation that you just made. I find a lot of players that are really great. They can play high and low and fast. They know the chords. And they have a pretty good sense of melody, etc., but with the oh-look-at-me factor that they seem to put into their music a lot of times, where they’re so intent on trying to show you all their wares, they forget about the simplicity of it all.

Miles Davis led the way. I think he was the ultimate jazz musician, in the respect that he appreciated the silence in between the notes.

PCC:
Have you, in some ways, patterned your career after his, in terms of always seeking new challenges and exploring?

ALPERT:
Well, I never thought about that. I just tried to be true to myself. I think that’s why I’ve been fortunate. When ‘The Lonely Bull’ happened, in 1962, that was the start of A&M Records, I thought I didn’t want to make ‘The Lonely Bull’ sideways, as a follow-up. I wanted to see how far I could keep going with this sound that I established. And little by little, it started to catch on.

And so, with each album, I was not trying to recreate what already happened, but to see if I could keep it going. You know, I’m basically a closet jazz musician. In the ‘60s, I was, at least. [Chuckles]

PCC:
It was amazing that you were able to keep all that alive, at a time when jazz and instrumental music had kind of fallen out of favor.

ALPERT:
Here again, I hate to pat myself on the back on this one, but I think it’s the honesty I brought to it. I wasn’t trying to make a hit record. I was just trying to make good records.

PCC:
On this new record, it’s very accessible, in the best sense of the word, and yet, it’s clearly unafraid of taking risks. Is that a line that you are conscious of walking.

ALPERT:
It’s always fun to push it a little bit. I never thought of it in terms of taking risks. I think, if you do something that has integrity... I start with the melody. I think it’s all about melodies. You have to pick the right melodies to play. And a good melody lives on.

I used to have this conversation with my wife, who used to think it’s the lyric, it was all about the lyric. I think a great lyric with a so-so melody doesn’t get as far as a great melody with a darn good lyric or even a so-so lyric.

PCC:
It just reaches you on more levels, if they both work profoundly.

ALPERT:
Oh, yeah, that’s the ideal. That’s when you get those great songs, a great lyric, those Johnny Mercer lyrics, on a great melody.

PCC:
In putting together the album, were you wanting to weave a lot of different moods and add a lot of different textures, taking people on a journey that goes to a lot of places?

ALPERT:
I think that’s always been my instinctive goal. Back to ‘The Lonely Bull,’ in ‘62, I received a lot of letters from people, one in particular was from Germany, and they were thanking me for taking them on a vicarious trip to Tijuana. It kind of opened my eyes to the idea, I’ve got to make visual music. And that’s what I’ve tried to do.

PCC:
Is it apocryphal or is it true that it was hearing a mariachi band at a bullfight in Mexico that sparked that whole concept for the Tijuana Brass?

ALPERT:
It wasn’t a mariachi band. I never listened to mariachi music. But when I used to go to bullfights, there were five or six or seven or eight musicians in the stands, playing, introducing each little event of the fight. And it wasn’t a band, per se, it was just like fanfares. They used to play fanfares.

And I think that, combined with the experience, the crowd, the Ole’s, and drinking some wine out of a botha bag [Laughs], all that sparked me.

PCC:
It ended up being such a distinctive sound, did that just emerge, or was it quite a process?

ALPERT:
I think it was a combination of both. I was taken with the guitar player, Les Paul, the way he used to layer his guitar on top of his guitar and came up with this unique sound. And so I started doing that at home. I had two tape recorders and I’d go from one to another and layer this trumpet sound on it. And all of a sudden, that Tijuana Brass sound appeared.

PCC:
The background, your family, being musical, did they just make available any activities that interested you? Or did they actively encourage you to have an involvement in the arts?

ALPERT:
I don’t think my Dad was too crazy about me being a musician, although he did support the instructions I was able to get from an early age. My mother was right there with me. She kind of recognized that I had a talent for playing the horn. And then I had an experience with a Russian trumpet teacher, the first trumpet player with the San Francisco Symphony. And I was playing this tune, I think I was about 14 at the time, and I finished and I looked over and he was in tears. He said, ‘You play so beautifully.’ So, from that point on, I thought, ‘Maybe I do have something.’

But then I had other experiences that made me think, unless I came up with my own identity, my own sound, my own way of doing it, then I wasn’t going to get very far. I was able to emulate like Harry James or Louis Armstrong. I was able to play in a similar fashion, not that I was able to play like them or as well as them, but in that general area.

And then I was, in the army, sent to band school, in Fort Knox, Kentucky. I met several trumpet players that were just a lot better than me, I thought. And when I returned, I was eventually placed at the Presidio in San Francisco and I played with the Sixth Army Band there. Little by little, I became the solo trumpet player with the band. And when I returned to Los Angeles, after being discharged, I started working on my sound, to see if I could come up with my own distinct thing. So that’s how that evolved. But prior to that, I was working with Sam Cooke and wrote ‘Wonderful World’ with him.

PCC:
Yes, what was that process like, co-writing ‘Wonderful World.’?

ALPERT:
Well, it was just a fortuitous time. Lou Adler and I were partnered. We became friends with Sam and Sam recorded the first song we did, called ‘All of My Life,’ which was a so-so hit. And then we collaborated on the ‘Wonderful World,’ which was a great opportunity for me, to watch this guy, because Sam was a real genius. He had something really special. And he was able to teach it, even though he didn’t know he was doing that. He came from the gospel world and everything that he did was from the heart, from the soul.

And we were recording the follow-up to ‘You Send Me,’ which was his great, breakthrough record. And in the studio, he was doing ‘I Love You For Sentimental Reasons.’ And the owner of the company was not a musician, but he dabbled with the piano and could read music. And we were playing back one of the takes and the owner went up to Sam and said, ‘You know, you could put in a few whoa-whoa’s here and a few whoa-who’s there.’ And Sam looked at him and goes, ‘Man, you can’t just put in a whoa-whoa wherever you want. You’ve got to feel it.’ And he called the guy ‘Jack.’ And his name was something else. [Laughs]

So that was like something that stuck in my mind. Sam wasn’t willing to cheat himself. He wanted to be real. And that was the reason he was so successful. Even though some of the lyrics that he had seemed so simple, but when he picked up his guitar and started playing, and the rhythm that he used, his passion and his intent, where he put the notes, it just rang really special. Had a unique quality.

But he taught me about listening. He’d say, ‘People are listening to a cold piece of wax. It either makes it or it don’t.’ So I started listening to music that way, listening with my eyes closed, to see whether I’d be willing to buy this product myself, if I heard it on the radio.

PCC:
So were you and Lou kind of growing up in the business together at that point?

ALPERT:
Oh, yeah, definitely. We started in 1957 together.

PCC:
So you were both involved in ‘Alley Oop’ together, too [The Hollywood Argyles’ hit]?

ALPERT:
Oh, yeah. We produced that. And the Jan & Dean records.

PCC:
Yeah, what was it like, working with Jan Berry?

ALPERT:
Well, Jan was an interesting guy. He was not a musician’s musician. But he had good instincts. I found ‘Baby Talk, didn’t write it, but found the song. And that song was right for the time. And timing plays an important part in things.

PCC:
You were interested in acting at one point?

ALPERT:
I studied with Jeff Corey. Leonard Nimoy was another of my teachers. I learned a lot. I learned I didn’t have the goods.

PCC:
Did you find that it was the horn that was your best form of expression? An extension of you?

ALPERT:
Oh, yeah especially when I was younger, because I was very shy. And I was able to communicate my feelings when I found the horn. I found it or it found me.

PCC:
At A&M, you and Jerry had an amazing and diverse roster of artists.

ALPERT:
For me, it didn’t matter what genre you were singing in or playing in, as long as it’s honest and it’s real. I was the first one to record Waylon Jennings. We had a long-term contract with him. Chet Atkins heard this recording I did with Waylon, called ‘Four Strong Winds,’ and made some overtures to him, which he probably shouldn’t have done, but he was talking when he gets out of the contract, that he’d like to talk to him at RCA And Waylon told us about that.

At the time, I wanted to take Waylon into a little more of a pop area. And Waylon wanted to be a country artist. So we thought that him being with Chet Atkins would be his dream come true. Chet was the guy, at the time, for country music. So we let him out of the contract, which was when I realized that, if we could do that, it would come back to us tenfold. We remained friends with Waylon. So we let him out of the contract, Jerry and I both signed the release. I looked at Jerry and said, ‘Man, this guy’s going to be a big artist.’ Jerry said, ‘I know it.’ And that was it. But I knew at that point, A&M was going to be a successful company.

PCC:
You built good karma.

ALPERT:
Yeah, exactly right.

PCC:
‘Close To You,’ that came out of the whole ‘This Guy’s In Love With You’ experience?

ALPERT:
Well, it did, because I spent some time with Hal David and asked him if he had a song that he had feeling for, that didn’t get a good recording or whatever and he mentioned ‘Close To You,’ sent it to me, actually. And I was going to do that as a follow-up to ‘This Guy,’ until the engineer I was working with, Larry Levine, after I recorded it, said to me, ‘You sound terrible singing this.’ [Laughs]

I lost interest. Put it in my drawer. Then when The Carpenters came along a year later, I had the song. And it was the door-opener for them.

PCC:
You sound perfect on ‘This Guy’s In Love With You.’ Did you feel comfortable with that one right away and realize it was something special?

ALPERT:
Uh, no. I was doing it for a TV special. I wasn’t doing it for a record. We did the track at Gold Star Recording and I wanted to just see if my voice would fit on the track, after we had recorded it. It was just a little demo. I just walked into the studio and started singing it. I walked into the control room after I’d finished and there were about 10 people that were in there from the session, including Burt and some of the singers, the musicians. And as I walked in, they said, ‘Don’t touch it.’ ‘Don’t touch what?’ ‘Don’t touch what you just did.’ I said, ‘I just wanted to see if it would work.’ They said, ‘It worked.’

My point is, I’m not a singer. But I communicated the feeling that the song needed. And, here again, it was a good song, good melody. Burt Bacharach did the arrangement. And it worked. And having it on a TV show didn’t hurt it either.

PCC:
‘Something Cool’ on the new album is also a great track. Do you feel more comfortable about singing now?

ALPERT:
Nah, that was my wife’s idea for me to sing on this CD. ‘Something Cool,’ I happen to like that track. I think it’s pretty good. I only remember one version of it, it was June Christie, singing with Stan Kenton, in the fifties. So we took that song and kind of changed some of the ideas of the lyric.

And what’s interesting about it, when I was married to my ex-wife, living in an apartment in West Hollywood, Billy Barnes, who wrote the song, was living upstairs from us. So I was really aware of ‘Something Cool.’

PCC:
Your personal relationship with Lani, does that enhance the musical relationship?

ALPERT:
I don't know. We’re just really good friends. She’s an amazing artist. She’s a truth-seeker. She doesn’t know how to lie. If she does lie, it’s all over her face and the way she sounds [Chuckles]. She’s just a great part of my life.

PCC:
When you first heard her as a vocalist with Brasil ‘66, what impressed you the most?

ALPERT:
Well, I was just knocked out by the Brazilian music, the compositions. It was a different way of writing music. It just struck me as totally fresh. And her ability to interpret the music and sing phonetically in Portuguese was brilliant.

PCC:
You hitting the top of the charts with ‘Rise,’ was that especially validating, just because of the point in your career, when that came?

ALPERT:
It didn’t hurt. A&M, we were like sinking a little bit. We had some money problems. We had some problems with independent distribution. And we had to borrow some money from the bank at that time. And ‘Rise’ came at a really important moment for us.

PCC:
The way the music business has been going, do you see hopeful signs? Is it discouraging? Too much gimmickry?

ALPERT:
I think it’s hopeful. You have to know how to skate around the internet, if you’re an artist these days. And, boy, you can reach a lot of people. It’s amazing how many people are connected. So, if you have the right stuff at the right time and you’re clever, I think you’ve got a good chance. Although, I’m not a big fan of these artists that are all dressed up in their get-up and sing and do their stuff. I think, if you’ve got something to say, stand in front of a mic and play and sing and let’s hear it. Some of it looks to me a little like professional wrestling.

PCC:
Your own music has always been adventurous, but do you see that maybe you paved the way for Smooth Jazz, for that phenomenon to be born?

ALPERT:
I don’t know. They claim that I did with The Brass. I didn’t have any idea what I was doing at the time. But I’m not a tremendous fan of fusion music. I think there are a lot of great musicians playing that type of music. But it’s hard to distinguish one from the other, even though a lot of them are really great.

PCC:
Your playing has always been so distinctive. Does that go back to the honesty factor?

ALPERT:
Honesty... and also, everybody has their own distinct sound, if they’d just let it come out. Miles Davis gave me a great compliment, when he said, ‘You hear three notes and you know it’s Herb Alpert.’ That’s a huge compliment, obviously.

PCC:
I saw your sculptures on the CBS Sunday morning show and they’re remarkable. The sculpting and painting, do you find that one art form feeds the other for you?

ALPERT:
Oh, yeah. I love to do it. I do it every day. And it’s been a real blessing in my life, to be able to have those three elements. You know, I’m basically a right-brain guy. I mean, I’m 85 percent on the right side of my brain all day.

PCC:
That creative force, do you think that’s something you really had to be born with? Or is a lot to do with application and discipline?

ALPERT:
I think it has a lot to do with confidence. If you can let yourself go and not think about whether it’s good or bad and just do it for the love of doing it, you can get a lot further than if you start analyzing whether it’s as good as what Michelangelo did or Rodin or Henry Moore or any of the great painters. It’s like, you just be yourself.

There’s a great story. There’s a book written by a friend of mine, Sir Ken Robinson, where he’s talking about creative education. And he’s talking about this little six-year-old girl in a class. And the girl’s not very interested in class, until it comes time for the art section, when she’s always kind of like into it. So they had this assignment and she was in the back of the class, drawing away, and the teacher goes over to her and says, ‘That’s very interesting. What have you got there?’ The little six-year-old girls says, ‘Well, I’m drawing a picture of God.’ The teacher says, ‘Well, we don’t know what God looks like.’ And the little girl looks up at the teacher and says, ‘You will in a minute.’ And that’s just about what creativity’s all about.

Kids, if you go into a first, second, third-grade class and ask, ‘How many of you kids think you’re creative?,’ everybody will raise their hand, because their imagination is going strong. If you ask the same question to a college group, you might get 10 out of 300. A lot of times, creativity gets beaten out of people, beaten out of the kids. And that’s what we need more of, if we’re going to survive in this world.

PCC:
It’s great that you’ve been doing so much to promote the arts for youth.

ALPERT:
Well, I believe in it. There was an interesting article in the New York Times a couple days ago. The guy was talking about education... and the cost of education. And he ends up with, ‘If you think education is expensive, try ignorance.’ That’s about it.

To discover more about this great artist’s music, art and life, visit www.herbalpert.com.