Herb Alpert is scheduled to perform with the new Tijuana Brass to a sold-out audience at the Lyric Baltimore on March 27. Four days later, he’ll turn 91. In a telephone interview last week, I asked Alpert if he recalled playing the trumpet in Baltimore back in the 1960s, when the Tijuana Brass, h aving produced several hits, went on tour. “Oh, definitely,” he said. “But I don’t remember anything about it.” “Was it at Painter’s Mill Music Fair or the Civic Center?” I asked. “Those names aren’t familiar, but I know I’ve been to Baltimore a few times.” If he didn’t recall the venue, Alpert is easily forgiven. He’s had a huge life in professional music, sprawled across seven decades. Born to East European immigrants in Los Angeles, he took trumpet lessons at age 8 and ended up, 10 years later, in the marching band at the University of Southern California.  He wrote songs for others in the 1950s and early 1960s.  His first big trumpet hit was “The Lonely Bull” (El Solo Toro) in 1962. He developed a unique sound — “Ameriachi!” — and started producing hits all over Top 40 radio. Alpert was the extravagantly handsome leader of a band that became known as the Tijuana Brass and sold millions of albums in just a few years. They enjoyed peak popularity in 1966 and went on tour. “I’m betting you played the downtown Civic Center,” I told him. I looked it up and I was right: Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass first played the Civic Center (now the CFG Bank Arena) in April 1966. Ticket prices ranged from $2 to $5. (The latter would be $50 today, according to a Federal Reserve calculator.) Alpert and his band came back to the Civic Center in April 1968, with the top ticket price set at $7. Herb Alpert in concert “You’re playing the Lyric this time,” I told him. “It’s a beautiful old opera house.” “That’s what I heard, that’s great,” he said. “How’s the sound in there?” “It was built for opera and symphonies back in the day,” I said. “Sound is good. . . . Hey, I gotta say — breaking a rule about people I interview — I’m a fan. I’ve always loved your music, and when I was a kid, I learned to practice drums with your albums. The late Nick Ceroli was your drummer. I think it was the 12 drum beats to start “Taste of Honey” that got me into the Brass.” “We had a fabulous band,” Alpert said.  Here’s more from my conversation with the great Herb Alpert, edited for brevity and clarity. DR: So you’re coming to the Lyric Baltimore March 27. How often are you doing concerts? HA: About every other month. DR: Is that a good pace? HA: You know, I have so much fun doing concerts, I wish they would be a little closer together. The reception has been wonderful. DR: The Baltimore show is sold out. HA: I guess that is happening everywhere, every place I play. It’s almost embarrassing, because I didn’t expect this. You know, I’m 90 years old. DR: I know, almost 91. HA: My nephew put a lot of [Tijuana Brass] music on social media, and it just started escalating. Somebody on TikTok picked up a song I did [“Lady Fingers”] 60 years ago in the “Whipped Cream” album, and I’ve had over 4 billion streams. I never expected this to happen, you know, in this period of my life. But I’m having a great time. People are loving it. So it’s a win-win for me. DR: I have a son and daughter in their 30s and I have to explain to them that, back in the day, we had Top 40 radio. You would hear a Beatles song, followed by the Rolling Stones, followed by maybe a Peggy Lee song, and then, you know, Herb Albert songs.  HA: The extreme of that is happening sometimes in England, where they’ll play songs like that, then throw in some classical music, which is kind of beautiful. DR: So, in light of the Top 40 thing, I always wanted to ask you if, given the way British and American rock burst out in the Sixties, after the arrival of the Beatles, were you surprised at your own success and popularity? In 1966, your albums outsold the Beatles. HA: I didn’t know I was gonna have a hit record. I had the first hit, “The Lonely Bull,” in 1962 and I thought, well, that might be the end of my career as a recording artist. But I kind of got spurred on by our distributors . . . . So I said, “Let me see if I could do that again.” But I didn’t want to do it sideways. I wanted to take that sound that I thought was really good and, you know, scramble it up, do it different ways. And it caught on. DR: The album you’re celebrating on tour is probably your most famous, “Whipped Cream Other Delights,” from 1965. Is that what established the Tijuana Brass? HA: I didn’t have a group [at first]. I did the “Whipped Cream” album and then I got a group together.  DR: So “Whipped Cream” was studio musicians? HA: I had some really interesting musicians, including some known musicians [on that album]. It started when our distributor in New Orleans called me and said he heard a song that [popular trumpeter and band leader] Al Hirt had turned down. He thought I might like it. So I said, “Will you play it for me over the phone?” He did. I liked it. That was “Whipped Cream.” And my beautiful partner, Jerry Moss, came up with the idea to do an album with a lot of food titles [“Tangerine,” “Lemon Tree,” “A Taste of Honey,” etc.] A corny idea, but maybe he had something there.  DR: Of course, a lot of boys, including me, spent a lot of time staring at the album cover [of a naked woman pretty much covered in whipped cream.] HA: This one guy was so enamored of the album cover, he couldn’t stop talking about it, and he thought I should win an award for it and all that. And I said, “Man, come on, it’s just an album.” He said, “It’s just so beautiful.” I said, “Have you heard the music?” He said no, he hadn’t listened to it. So people were buying that album just for the cover.  DR: The concert you do now, the set list is mainly “Whipped Cream”? HA: People love it. My nephew Randy is one of my managers. He wanted me to do this Tijuana Brass retrospective for my 90th birthday. I said, “Man, I don’t want to do it. I don’t want to live in the past. I just want to do the music that I’m doing now and call it a day.” He says so many people want to hear that music again. I said, “Well, give me a list of those songs that people want to hear.” So he went around the world to get a list of songs.  DR: This is your nephew Randy Alpert? HA: Yeah, my brother’s son. He really calls himself Randy Badazz. DR: He actually did a survey to see what songs people like the most? HA: Yeah, it was an international survey. I mean, he was going into Africa and Israel and China, Japan, wherever. So he put that all together, and it kind of swayed me into wanting to do this. He sent me about 18 songs, and I put them on and, I’m telling you, Dan, I had such a good and amazing feeling just listening to them. It made me feel good, listening to those songs that I did so many years ago. So that’s what’s happened.  DR: What a great feeling that must be, to accept that, hey, this music made people feel good once, and it still does. That’s a great legacy.  HA: It doesn’t matter if the audience is filled with Republicans or Democrats, Libertarians. They’re all kind of joined together in one happy community when we’re playing. DR: This is probably a tough question: When you raise the trumpet to your lips, what is your favorite tune?  HA: I don’t know that I have a favorite. You know, basically, I’m a jazz musician. So I like creating, right? If I have a favorite, it’s probably the tune that I’m working on at the moment. DR: Are you working on something right now? HA: This particular one is not a new song. It’s an old song that I think I’m going to do in a way that people don’t expect to hear. I guess that’s what I like to do. I like to take songs that are familiar to people and see if I can do them in a way they haven’t been heard before. That’s one of my pursuits. Pardon my wow. Herb Alpert, approaching 91, is not only on tour but trying to give old songs a new take. That’s inspired. He’s inspiring. ¡Salud! Dan Rodricks writes weekly for Baltimore Fishbowl. He can be reached at [email protected] ...read more read less