Day 281: Herb Alpert & the Tijuana Brass – Whipped Cream & Other Delights
I’ve been lazy with updating my front page, and I’ve sort of given up on the masterlist – not fully, I’ll get back to it at some stage – and I’ve been doing the front page today and noticed I have at some stage completely bungled the days. I mistyped 265 as 256, so then I went back to counting up from there. So in case any of you noticed, that’s what happened there.
Album cover courtesy of A&M Records
I was in the market for something jolly to listen to while I was cooking, so I googled happy albums and found something I hadn’t heard of before, Whipped Cream & Other Delights by Herb Alpert & the Tijuana Brass.
Herb Alpert was born into a musical family and had been playing the trumpet since he was a child. He ended up being a songwriting partner of Lou Adler, writing songs for artists like Sam Cooke, until his frequent trips to Tijuana got him interested in Mariachi music. He funded and recorded a song as Herb Alpert & the Tijuana Brass by himself, but later recruited the Wrecking Crew to play on his records.
Firstly, I was surprised by how much I’d heard from this album before, as I thought this was new to me. It turns out I massively underrated how popular it actually was: on the year it came out, it spent eight weeks on the Billboard album chart and outsold artists like Frank Sinatra, the Beatles and the Stones. One of the albums was also the theme tune of the Dating Game, and some of the songs have been featured in such cinematic masterpieces as Shrek and Charlie’s Angels – the film with Lucy Liu, not the original series.
It’s mostly an album of simple instrumental songs with Latin influences, although with less of a Mexican sound than what they’d had on previous albums. It’s got the vibe of an album that’s aiming to do something else than just entertain. Herb Alpert explained philosophy of how he wants his music to transport people somewhere else:
I got a letter from a lady in Germany who said: “Dear Mr Alpert, thank you for sending me on this vicarious trip to Tijuana.” That music was so visual that it took her 6,000 miles. Since then, my pursuit has always been to make music that takes you someplace, and is uplifting.
It really does transport you to someplace sunny, not really a place where you’d experience any authentic culture but maybe a resort somewhere tropical, by the poolside cocktail in hand. But the album is a little bit more elegant than that description gives it credit for. It’s probably not really meant to be listened to on its own or analysed by music fans, it’s something you can put on to build a bit of atmosphere and travel somewhere else for a half hour.
Whipped Cream & Other Delights is not the sort of thing that I saw myself enjoying too much, but I actually did. I can easily see myself buying this on vinyl and having it on while I potter around again. It’s nice and uncomplicated background album, something that you can put on to slightly elevate whatever you’re doing. I’ll give it an 8.5/10, I liked it.
Also, fun fact, the A in A&M Records stands for Alpert, as he co-founded the label with recording executive Jerry Moss. Alpert also founded a short-lived luxury perfume company, with scents called Listen and Listen for Men, which are rated quite high on Fragrantica.