A jolly, fat, bearded guy who wasn’t a scary hippie? Don’t underestimate what a draw this guy was to the viewers of The Mike Douglas Show!
A side note: The famous cover for Whipped Cream? That was actually shaving cream, which behaves better under studio lights. They tried to hire the girl back for another album cover, but she was massively pregnant at the time, so it didn’t happen.
My parents and their friends used to give parties regularly, and Herb Alpert was their party music.
We had “Going Places” when I was growing up, and yeah, I thought that was a sexy cover. I loved “Zorba the Greek” on that album. And the trumpet is cool.
Plus, as hajario said, Alpert put out fun, peppy music. It was “better” than what the kids were listening to, but not as stodgy as classical. It was just right for the time: something people who weren’t yet into the “champagne music” of Lawrence Welk could enjoy, but more grown-up than say, The Archies.
Herb Alpert wasn’t jolly, fat & bearded when he first got famous. Found some interesting facts about his pre-TJ Brass career:
His music was never a favorite of mine (or Mom’s!). But his stuff was everywhere. Johnny Cash borrowed the mariachi horn sound to make a hit of June’s “Ring of Fire.”
I have five of his first 6 albums. (I never bothered getting the Album Volume 2).
After that he released a lot of filler albums. There’s some good music, but I’m not buying an album that only has a couple great songs.
Are there specific albums from the 70’s,80,90’s that are considered really good?
I may buy Rise based on comments in this thread.
Snippets of them.
Are you sure you’re not confusing him with Al Hirt? Hirt was another trumpeter with a few pop hits, such as Java, but was also a well-known jazzman.
Alpert had no beard in the 60s and 70s, though he has one now. He also wasn’t fat. You’re definitely confusing him with Hirt.
I’ve been listening to Whipped Cream and Other Delights this morning.
Whipped Cream (the song) sounds like the Dating Game theme. 
Or maybe the Newlywed Game. It’s one of them for sure.
Dating game theme
Sure sounds like Chuck Barris ripped off some of Whipped Cream’s melody.
I am almost certain that Barris credited Alpert and paid royalties.
I always thought he *was *Greek, but Wiki has Alpert born into a Jewish family of Russian and Romanian origins.His father Louis was from Radomyshl (present-day Ukraine) and although a tailor by trade, was also a talented mandolin player. His mother, Tillie, had her roots in Romania on her father’s side; she herself taught violin at a young age.
I was not quite a fan of Herb’s music at the time. I liked it okay and thought the genre he helped make popular was easy to listen to. My mother was more of a true fan in that she had several(if not most) of his LP’s.
That said, Herb Alpert Route 101 is on my YouTube Favorites list and there’s just something about it that gets me.
Yep. That is the only song I can associate with him, but it’s still stuck in my head, 30+ years later so…not bad.
One of these days I will get around to listening to something else by him. 
Rise is also sampled in the Notorious B.I.G. song “Hypnotize”, which lead me to listen to that song for the first time ever the other day when I got curious about that bassline, which in turn lead me to read Herb Alpert’s Wiki page, which in turn sent me back to YouTube to hear the other songs, which in turn lead me to realize that Herb is Homer Simpson’s favorite musical artist of all time, since Homer singing or humming them is how I know most of those songs.
Also, one of them is the elevator music in the Blues Brothers when they’re going to the county assessor.
Until right now, I had no idea they were two separate people. Kind of like Kurt Russell and Jeff Bridges. {Blush}
I thought it was “The Girl from Ipanema”, though I might well be mistaken.
You’re correct.
