From Top Trumpeter To Top Brass in Disks

HOLLYWOOD, California -- For more than 30 years trumpeter Herb Alpert has been at the forefront of Latin music, selling more than 72 million salsa-soaked albums. But his rise to fame might never have been, had he not gone to a bullfight and noticed a lonely bull.


In the early 1960s, before his Tijuana Brass band became popular, Alpert worked for $33 a week as a songwriter for a small record label, scoring a number of hits. His biggest success was the pop standard "Wonderful World" written with Lou Adler and Sam Cooke.


Not happy staying in the background, Alpert experimented musically and even attempted to kick-start his career as a singer under the pseudonym Dore Alpert, but it was the strange setting of a bullfight that was the catalyst for stardom.


"A bullfight I saw in Tijuana turned me on to trying to explore the feeling that I saw -- not the sound of what I was hearing, but I was trying to somehow connect the spirit [of the music] with that afternoon," he recalled in an interview.


The result was "The Lonely Bull," which launched Alpert's Tijuana Brass in 1962 as one of the most successful bands of the 1960s. While Alpert, 62, is an icon for fans of Latin music, he is of Russian Jewish descent. In April he was honored with a lifetime achievement award at Billboard's Latin Music Awards.


"I don't want people to think I'm an imposter," Alpert said, adding that he never planned to be known as a Latin musician but was just playing what felt right to him.


Alpert has just released an album called "Passion Dance" that has him once again doing what he does best -- playing music that makes you want to dance.


As well as being a world-renowned musician, he built a music empire with business partner Jerry Moss. Alpert's "The Lonely Bull" launched the A&M record label that eventually became the world's biggest independent record company.


"We didn't have aspirations to make it into the giant it eventually became," Alpert said. "It was just a record we put out that did real well and we reinvested that money into another record ... and one thing led to another."


In 1966, at the height of his fame, he sold 13.7 million albums with hits like "Spanish Flea" and "A Taste of Honey." Those sales carried A&M for the first few years, but by the late 60s the company started to branch out with other acts such as Sergio Mendes & Brazil '66. "A&M's concept was not to look for the music that was on the air at the time. We were trying to find things that didn't quite fit, but had a chance," Alpert said.


That concept attracted the likes of The Carpenters, Peter Frampton, Supertramp, Sting, Bryan Adams, Amy Grant and Janet Jackson, to name just a few. In 1990 Alpert and Moss sold the A&M label to Polygram, but kept their Rondor Music publishing company. While terms of the sale were never publicly disclosed, Polygram was said to have paid about $500 million for A&M.


"The timing was right and we felt we had accomplished everything we wanted to, and it was so large that it lost its personal touch for us," Alpert said. "It started out in my garage with just the two of us and all of a sudden we had four or five hundred people and I didn't know three quarters of them. We were not having as much fun at the end that we had in the beginning and the middle."


By 1995 Alpert and Moss started up a new label, Almo Sounds. Already that label has signed its first internationally famous act, a group called Garbage.


When he is not recording music, Alpert puts much of his energy into the charity work of The Herb Alpert Foundation, which makes contributions to education, the arts and the environment. Alpert spoke passionately about the need to have music appreciation classes in public schools. "Unfortunately they don't have those programs in the public school system anymore. ... It's unfortunate ... because music needs to be a part of education," he said, adding that he was first turned on to the trumpet as an 8-year-old.


He said many of society's problems stem from people being insensitive to other cultures, and the best way to fix these problems is by educating the young with the help of the arts and letting the ripple effect educate the rest of society.


"We've got to get them young," he said. "I don't know why some people feel they have more of a right to be here. ... Maybe it's greed, or fear."


But while Alpert's passion for social programs seems almost to rival his love of music, he says he does not plan to run for public office. "I smoked one or two joints in the 1960s, so I'd never get past that question," he said with a laugh.