A Touch of Brass

"My kids say a new generation will discover this, but I don't know," says Herb Alpert, 70. "I will say it's upbeat and positive music. There's so much dark music out there now." (Maryanne Bilham Blacksun)

She refers to it as "the world's most famous album cover."

"Whipped Cream" stayed at No. 1 on the album charts for eight weeks. Alpert's biggest-selling single of the era came three years later, in 1968, when Alpert asked the celebrated composer (and A&M artist) Burt Bacharach if he would contribute a song for an upcoming TV special featuring the group. Bacharach offered an old composition he'd written with Hal David. It was a song that Dionne Warwick had made a demo tape of, called "This Girl's in Love With You." With a few quick lyrical alterations, Alpert sang the song "This Guy's in Love With You" on TV and later recorded it.

"You didn't ask me this," Alpert says, somewhat amused by his own braggadocio, "but I'm the only guy who had a No. 1 instrumental record and a No. 1 vocal record."

Not long after, Alpert went through the same drill. Hal David handed him "(They Long to Be) Close to You." But after recording it, Alpert felt the song wasn't right for his understated tenor. He passed it off to Karen and Richard Carpenter, who put it on their second A&M album. It was the Carpenters' breakthrough song.

As it happened, the Carpenters ushered in Alpert's later career as a record-industry mogul. By 1969, he felt burned out from the Brass's worldwide touring and constant recording. His first marriage was crumbling. For the first time in many years, he briefly stopped playing the trumpet. Alpert disbanded the group (though it would have periodic revivals) and began investing more of his energy in A&M's artists.

After several years in which Alpert's Tijuana Brass records carried A&M (its logo featured Alpert's horn, after all), the label began signing more rock and folk-rock acts. It added Cat Stevens, Joan Baez, Joe Cocker, Peter Frampton and the Police to its roster. It also released the work of Quincy Jones, Hugh Masekela, Antonio Carlos Jobim and, later, Janet Jackson.

"When we started," says Moss, "small labels lived and died on a hit single. Herbie and I wanted to develop artists who could make albums that would sell for years and years to come. We were trying to build something real."

Real indeed: By the time Moss and Alpert cashed out in 1990, A&M was the largest independent record label in the world.

Alpert would release 14 more original albums of his own, but with inconsistent commercial reaction ("Rise" in 1979 and "Keep Your Eye on Me" in 1987 were comeback records). In the meantime, he branched out to Broadway and philanthropy. He was one of the producers of "Angels in America," Tony Kushner's Pulitzer Prize-winning play, and the musical "Jelly's Last Jam." After selling A&M in 1990, he and Moss joined forces again and in 1994 started Almo Sounds, which signed the rock group Garbage.

These days, Alpert's name usually rises in connection with his foundation. It gives money to environmental and arts-education causes benefiting children; Alpert's name is affixed to a private school campus in Santa Monica, Calif., an annual state arts award, and a visiting professor's chair at the Berklee College of Music in Boston.

If anything, Alpert's career as a recording artist says much about the value of simple, nonthreatening, happy music. It may be just a coincidence that his greatest musical success coincided with a period of turbulence and upheaval, socially and musically. "Lonely Bull" became a smash in the months preceding Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech and John F. Kennedy's assassination. It postdated Elvis and predated the Beatles. As rock grew increasingly rebellious, as the civil rights movement and the Vietnam War flared, the Tijuana Brass offered something dreamy and transporting and distinctly non-edgy.

Listening to it now, you can almost feel the shag carpet beneath your feet.