Herb Alpert at 89: The Legend Talks Making 50 Albums, the Death of His Friend Sergio Mendes & Upcoming Tijuana Brass Band Tour
Herb Alpert laughs when he says that his sister Mimi — who at 98 is nine years his senior — often asks him, “Why are you doing these concerts? Why are you traveling? Why do you want to do that?” But the 89-year-old trumpet-playing music legend has a ready answer.
“I have to explain to her that it gives me energy to do it,” Alpert — who just released his 50th studio album, appropriately titled 50 — tells Billboard via Zoom. “I’m not on a victory tour here. It’s not about that. It’s that I love doing it. I love to play the horn. I love to play the horn. I love playing with great musicians. I love doing it. I’m a right-brain guy; I play, I’m painting for over 50 years, sculpting for over 40. It just gives me reason to be.”
More from Billboard
He’s quick to add however, that “this is landmark year for me. I can’t believe I’ve recorded 50 albums out there. I’ve been married (to singer Lani Hall) 50 years this year. A lot of things have happened in my life that are so startling. I never dreamed of having a career like I’ve had. I’m certainly grateful for it.”
It’s hard to come up with a superlative that definitively captures Alpert’s career. Born in Los Angeles into a family where everybody played an instrument, Alpert started on trumpet when he was eight, studied at the University of Southern California and played in the Trojan Marching Band and the U.S. 6th Army Band.
He began writing songs during the late ‘50s and putting out records of his own, first billed as Dore (his given name) Alpert, in 1960. Since then, he’s sold more than 74 million records worldwide with his Tijuana Brass band and on his own; placed 39 songs on the Billboard Hot 100 (including two No. 1s); won eight Grammy Awards; received a Trustees Award from the Recording Academy; won a Tony; got inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2006; and received the National Medal of the Arts in 2013.
Alpert was also the “A” in the famed A&M Records label, which he started in 1962 with Jerry Moss. Moss passed away 13 months ago, and another of A&M’s stalwarts, Brazilian keyboardist and Brasil ’66 bandleader Sergio Mendes, died earlier this month — another death that hit close to home for Alpert, who signed the group to A&M and produced its 1966 debut album, which remained on the Billboard 200 for more than two years and was voted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 2012. It was Mendes who introduced Alpert to Hall, too, when she was part of Brasil ’66.
“He was an extraordinarily gifted musician. We just hit it off,” Alpert says of Mendes, adding that he and Hall spoke with him almost daily during the last year of his life. “He was a real person. He was excited about so many things. He loved great food. He loved great wine. He loved great restaurants. He spoke several languages. He was into life. He was a very unusual guy. He’s missed by everyone who came into contact with him.”
Alpert’s record of having four albums simultaneously in the Billboard top 10 back in 1966, meanwhile, was matched last year by none other than Taylor Swift.
“I sent her a nice little FaceTime, and I was very happy for her,” Alpert says. “I think she’s a really good artist. I don’t actually follow her music. I hear a couple of things, but I like her. She has a lot of integrity. She understands her audience. She’s very sensitive. She’s smart. I don’t think that record is carved in stone; I like to see other artists jump in there, too. I have other records, so it’s alright.”
What’s most impressive and inspiring is that Alpert is still doing it, and also planning for the future. He’s released a dozen albums since 2010 — eight of which debuted in the top 10 of the Billboard Jazz Albums chart. He approached the 10-track 50 much like he did his other releases.
“I don’t even think about it as being an album,” he explains. “I have a studio at home here, and I just record at my whim, individual songs and melodies that just touch me…. I don’t have a master plan for recording an album. I don’t have a concept. I just take songs that I like, and when I feel it’s worthy of putting out there for other people to listen to, I put out an album. But really I’m just trying to entertain myself more than anything.”
50 features Alpert’s usual mix of original compositions and covers. One of those covers — The Chords’ 1954 hit “Sh-Boom (Life Could Be a Dream)” — is particularly special for him.
“I was kind of a snob with classical music until I heard ‘Sh-Boom,'” Alpert recalls. “I was in high school, and it was the first time I heard a song like that. There was something about it…. I remember sitting down at a friend’s house who had the radio on, listening to this song, thinking, ‘I like that. I like the feeling of that song.’ I really didn’t understand what the lyric was about ’til much later, but I liked the harmonies and the feeling. That song got me on to pop music and got me thinking about some of the songs that were out there in that period. Then I started listening to jazz and never looked back.”
Alpert maintains that his litmus for music has remained the same throughout the decades. “Melody reigns supreme,” he says. “Any artist who’s had success over the years has to have good taste when it comes to melody. You can have a fabulous lyric and terrible melody and I don’t think that song’s gonna go very far. But you can have a fabulous melody with a pretty good lyric and that’ll go far. And if you have a fabulous lyric with a fabulous melody, i.e. Burt Bacharach and Hal David and all those sophisticated songs they did, it hits. Even with jazz, after expressing a melody all of a sudden they’ll improvise on the chord changes of the particular song and invent a whole new melody. That’s exciting.”
As he reaches this year’s milestones, Alpert is already eyeballing the future. He plans to release a recording of “The Christmas Song” for this holiday season (“It touches me, and I feel like a lot of people might feel the same”) and reports that “I have another Christmas album in my head.” And while he and Hall have concert dates books into mid-December, next February Alpert plans to hit the road with a revived version of the Tijuana Brass, the band he led from the early ‘60s into the mid-70s and released hits such as the Billboard Hot 100 top 10 “The Lonely Bull” and the Billboard 200-topping 1965 album Whipped Cream & Other Delights.
“A lot of people have asked; they want to hear that Tijuana Brass sound again, so I’m gonna do it and I’m excited about it,” he says. “I always like the music. It always gave me a good feeling when I hear it, and I know a lot of people feel the same. It’s gonna be fun for me to revisit that whole sound again and play some of the old standards — ‘The Lonely Bull,’ ‘Spanish Flea,’ ‘This Guy’s In Love With You.’” He also plans to include his 1979 hit “Rise” in the repertoire, one of his two Hot 100 toppers (the other being “This Guy’s In Love With You”).
And beyond all that? “I hope to keep living,” Alpert says with a laugh. “Honestly, I don’t know if there’s anything I’m missing. I play the horn every day. I’d like to be able to play a little better bebop, but that’s an inch at a time. There’s not much, though. It’s been a great life.”
Best of Billboard
Sign up for Billboard's Newsletter. For the latest news, follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.