Photo courtesy of Herb Alpert
In a third-grade music class, the introverted Herb Alpert found his voice when he discovered the trumpet. More than a decade later, on a Tijuana vacation, he discovered his sound. “The Lonely Bull” (1962) launched Alpert’s platinum career at the head of his own band, The Tijuana Brass, which supported his ascent in the music industry as the “A” in A&M Records.
The documentary Herb Alpert Is… weaves the creativity of his present life into a chronicle of his impressive past. In recent years Alpert has devoted more time to painting and sculpture than recording music; the film shows him at work with clay and canvas in his sprawling home and follows him on memory lane, walking past his Melrose Avenue grade school, into the LA Spanish colonial house of his childhood and inside the A&M compound, the historic site of Charlie Chaplin’s studio. Contemporary interviews are adeptly interspersed with archival footage and photos.
The latest effort by Milwaukee native John Scheinfeld, whose previous films include documentaries on John Lennon and John Coltrane, Herb Alpert Is… serves as a reminder of how pervasive its subject was in the ‘60s and how important he was in the ‘70s. Alpert and The Tijuana Brass were welcome in places where The Beatles were seldom heard—their music was used on TV commercials and shows and they regularly enjoyed guest shots on variety shows and their own television specials. Alpert and band starred in what we recognize today as music videos, performing their hits in dramatic outdoor settings or tooling around in old-time cars.
By some reckonings, Alpert outsold The Beatles with a series of largely instrumental singles and albums. His characteristic recordings transposed the sound of a roving Mexican street band into a polished, pop context—albeit his penchant for “Zorba’s Dance” (Greek) and “If I Were a Rich Man” (Jewish-American) positions him as a forerunner of that ‘90s marketing category, “world music.” His string of hits, including “Tijuana Taxi” and “South of the Border,” took listeners out of the tumult of the ‘60s and into a sunny, carefree sonic vacation. Although he kept things simple, he was an emotionally connected musician. Miles Davis is quoted in the film: “You hear three notes and you know it’s Herb Alpert.”
As a recording executive with Jerry Moss at A&M, Alpert signed Joe Cocker, The Carpenters, Quincy Jones, Cat Stevens, Peter Frampton, The Police and many other top-selling ‘70s acts. Sting offers fond memories of A&M as “a human enterprise, not a faceless corporation.” As Alpert puts it, with no board of directors peering over his shoulder, he signed any artist that moved him. A&M was a tribute to privately held enterprise, as opposed to the short-sighted destruction often caused by publicly traded corporations.
Herb Alpert Is… premieres on Facebook Live on Thursday, Oct. 1.
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