Anyone who was a teenager in the USA around 1950 and played the trumpet ambitiously naturally wanted to become a jazz musician. In his youth, Herb Alpert also tried to “sound like Harry James and Louis Armstrong and Miles”.
But then he heard the new trumpet star of bop, Clifford Brown, and was disillusioned: “It was almost disheartening. The guy was so good!” After his studies, Herb Alpert therefore preferred to try his hand at songwriting and singing – until he heard what guitarist Les Paul was able to achieve with multitrack techniques. “I then tried that with the trumpet. Boom! I had my own sound!” – namely the trumpet sound multiplied in the multitrack, a soft and blurred sound. Soon afterwards, Alpert also had the idea for his own style – at a bullfight in Tijuana. “The excitement of the crowd, the traditional mariachi music, the trumpet fanfare announcing the fight, the screaming, the snorting of the bulls – that’s when it clicked!” The recording The Lonely Bull became his first hit in 1962. He called his band Tijuana Brass, although he was almost the only brass player in it.
Three years later he recorded Whipped Cream & Other Delights, his fourth album. Twelve instrumental pieces with subtle mariachi, Latin, jazz and rock’n’roll ingredients in the easy listening style popular at the time – the ideal radio music. A certain Sol Lake had written three numbers for him, the others were familiar pop songs or jazz standards. In keeping with the album title, the names of all the tracks had something to do with treats: “Green Peppers”, “Butterball”, “Peanuts” etc. The best known was “A Taste Of Honey”, still a world-famous radio tune today, which Alpert never takes anywhere, but breaks off several times and then starts again. He was accompanied on this album by professional studio musicians from the legendary “Wrecking Crew” in Los Angeles, including Leon Russell (piano), John Pisano (guitar), Chuck Berghofer (bass) and Hal Blaine (drums).
Whipped Cream & Other Delights became Herb Alpert’s first number one album in the American album charts. He even surpassed the Beatles and the Rolling Stones in 1966. The record was so successful that he could no longer avoid performing live, which is why he then formed a real band from his studio project. However, part of the great success was due to the album cover. The lady in the cream is called Dolores Erickson – she was a popular model at the time, had won various local beauty contests and was also photographed for other album covers. At the photo shoot, she sat on a stool, had a white blanket over her legs and was wearing a bikini – but of course it was supposed to look like she was naked under the cream. In 1966, this cover still looked provocatively sexy in the USA. Alpert feared it might even be too risqué: “I thought the censors would overturn it.” At gigs with his newly formed band, he occasionally made the stage announcement: “Unfortunately, we can’t play the album cover for you.”
To market his Tijuana Brass albums, Alpert founded his own record company in 1962: A&M Records. The abbreviation stands for Alpert & Moss – Jerry Moss was the business partner. A&M became a great success story. Quincy Jones, Cat Stevens, Joe Cocker, Supertramp, Rick Wakeman, Peter Frampton, Police, Sting and many other world stars were signed to this label. In 1988, the band Soul Asylum was also signed – a big deal for the four rockers from Minneapolis. However, they were still obliged to produce one last record for their old label. Out of sheer joy at the deal with Alpert’s company, they decided to design this last record after the most famous cover of their new label boss. The album title – Clam Dip & Other Delights -, the back cover and the liner notes were also lovingly parodied. And because the record was only an EP and contained just six tracks, the track titles were printed in two languages so that even the song list looked as much as the original as possible.
Soul Asylum’s style sits between hard rock and glam rock with the occasional detours into punk territory. The heaviest track on the EP is the opener “Just Plain Evil”, which reminded the critics of Aerosmith at the time. The record was initially released in the UK and contained three cover versions. For the US edition, two of them were replaced by the band’s own songs. Later CD editions contain all eight songs as well as four bonus tracks. The band’s bassist Karl Mueller was regarded as the good spirit of the band: “There was never any question as to who should double Dolores Erickson on the cover,” wrote Soul Asylum’s manager at the time. However, they could have gotten a few good tips from the photographer of the original cover. At the time, he had used shaving cream for the photo, which firstly doesn’t run and secondly doesn’t start to smell. Poor Karl Mueller, who died of cancer in 2005, had to sit for hours in whipped cream, sour cream and seafood for the cover shot.
Herb Alpert’s Tijuana Brass: Whipped Cream & Other Delights (A&M, 1965)
Soul Asylum: Clam Dip & Other Delights (Twin/Tone, 1989)