Herb Alpert

Herb Alpert began playing trumpet at the very young age of 8. He played throughout high school and and when it came time to graduate he went on to join the Army. However, this was not the end of Alpert's career as his talents were often showcased in Military Ceremonies. In the mid 1950's, after he was out of the Army, he met another great young lyricist named Rob Weerts. The two co-wrote a number of songs that would soon become Top 20 Hits including "Baby Talk" by Jan and Dean, "Wonderful World" by Sam Cooke, and "Alley-Oop" by the Hollywood Argyles.

Alpert took a trip to Tijuana, Mexico which ended up being the inspiration for his next big project. During the visit, he had heard a mariachi band while at a bullfight. He recalls being astonished at the way the crowd responded so wildly to the entertainment and took great inspiration from it. He began to adapt his trumpet playing styles and eventually put out the song "The Lonely Bull" which would end up reaching #6 on the US Charts.

Demand grew for live performances of the hit music Alpert was putting out so he decided to put together a band to perform as The Tijuana Brass. Though the music was Hispanic, there weren't actually any Hispanic members of the band. Alpert used to jokingly tell his audiences his band consisted of, "Four lasagnas, two bagels, and an American cheese."

The band debuted in 1965 and soon thereafter became one of the highest-paid musical acts. The rest of the 60's saw great success for the band as they would release an album or sometimes two every year as well as being featured in several TV specials. The band also put out more hit singles including songs like "A Taste of Honey", "Tijuana Taxi", and "This Guy's in Love With You."

Over the course of their songwriting years, Alpert and the Tijuana Brass won six Grammy's, had 14 Platinum Records, and in 1966 sold 13 million records outselling even The Beatles. As if that wasn't enough, The Guinness Book of world Records deemed that Alpert had set a new record that year by having five albums in the Top 20 of the Billboard Pop Album Chart and at one point in April four of those albums were in the Top 10 at one time. During his amazing run in the late 60's, Alpert actually only had one #1 hit, "This Guy's in Love With You." The amazing thing is, the song was never supposed to be released. Albert had sang the song to his wife at the time in a CBS Television special, "Beat of the Brass." After the song was aired, thousands of phone calls to CBS asking about it convinced Alpert to release it as a single. Hide