A taste of the Swingin' '60s
Herb Alpert and his 'Whipped Cream' get special edition
By Todd Leopold
CNN
(CNN) -- In 1966, perhaps the greatest year rock 'n' roll has ever known, the biggest-selling album artist of the year wasn't the Beatles or Beach Boys or the Rolling Stones.
Indeed, it wasn't a rock 'n' roll artist at all, but a 31-year-old trumpeter and label co-owner whose records were full of finger-snapping instrumentals with a vaguely Latin sound called "Ameriachi."
Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass were on top of the world. Three of the group's albums made Billboard's year-end Top Five; several singles hit the Top 40. At one point during the year, the group had five albums in the Top 20 at the same time, still a record.
Alpert's hot streak began with "Whipped Cream & Other Delights." The album, with its legendarily naughty cover (later parodied to terrific effect by Soul Asylum) and hits "A Taste of Honey" and "Whipped Cream," came out in 1965 and stayed at No. 1 for eight weeks. It was on the charts for almost three years.
Alpert and the TJB followed with "Going Places," which topped the chart for six weeks at the end of '65, and continued their success with 1966's "What Now My Love" (nine weeks at No. 1) and, at the end of '66, "S.R.O." (which peaked at No. 2).
Alpert and the TJB continued their hit making well into the psychedelic era, with the band leader even topping the charts on his own with the Burt Bacharach/Hal David song "This Guy's in Love With You" in 1968.
Who was buying these records? Adults, mainly. Even today, something about Alpert and the TJB says "bachelor pad" or "nightcap in the suburbs," and in an era when the teens bought the Top 40 material and the hipsters were into Miles Davis or Ornette Coleman, Alpert's tuneful trumpeting and sharp arrangements filled a gap in the market.
"Whipped Cream & Other Delights" is getting a 40th-anniversary release, courtesy of Shout! Factory Records.
Eye on Entertainment blows a kiss.
Eye-opener
As the indispensable Web site Allmusic.com notes, Alpert got his start as a songwriter. He and Lou Adler -- later the producer of the Mamas and the Papas and Carole King -- wrote Sam Cooke's "What a Wonderful World" and "Only Sixteen," and Alpert also dabbled in production.
He founded A&M Records with Jerry Moss in 1962 and immediately had a hit of his own, "The Lonely Bull," a song that later inspired Jack Nitzsche's "The Lonely Surfer." A&M became the biggest independent label in the industry; its artists eventually included Phil Ochs, Joe Cocker, the Carpenters and TJB colleagues Sergio Mendes and Brasil '66.
Despite the success of "The Lonely Bull," Alpert and the Tijuana Brass -- originally a collection of Los Angeles session musicians -- didn't have much chart success until "Whipped Cream," which was released in April 1965. The album -- or album cover, featuring a nude Dolores Erickson covered in ersatz whipped cream -- caught the public's fancy, and the rest is history.
"We'll never know exactly what made this album Herb Alpert's big commercial breakthrough -- the music or the LP jacket," writes Richard S. Ginell on Allmusic.com, praising the album for its "eclectic" selections (all of which involved food) and "unique sense of timing."
"[But] no wonder Alpert drew such a large, diverse audience at his peak; his choices of tunes spanned eras and generations, his arrangements were energetic enough for the young and melodic enough for older listeners."
When his albums started to fade from the charts in the early '70s, Alpert retreated to the business side, later re-emerging with the No. 1 song "Rise." He remains one of the most honored -- and most successful -- people in the music industry.
And what of Erickson? Three months pregnant (!) at the time of the "Whipped Cream" shoot, according to the Web site www.swinginchicks.com, she appeared on other covers (the Sandpipers' "Guantanamera" and a Rodgers and Hart compilation) and later divorced and remarried. She's now a painter and has her own Web site, http://www.whippedcreamlady.com.
The 40th-anniversary edition of "Whipped Cream" comes out Tuesday.
On screen
As if the 1979 movie wasn't awful enough, producers have remade "The Amityville Horror." The new version stars Ryan Reynolds and Melissa George, and Philip Baker Hall (picking up a paycheck, I assume) plays Father Callaway. There's a fascinating Web page (http://www.prairieghosts.com/amityville.html) that reveals that much of the "horror" was a hoax. Opens Friday.David Duchovny wrote and directed -- and stars in -- "House of D," about an artist living in Paris who returns to the United States to come to terms with his family. Robin Williams shows up with another form of his wise fool persona. Opens in limited release Friday.On the tube
Detective Green (Jesse L. Martin) got shot on Wednesday's "Law & Order"; now justice is served on Friday's "Law & Order: Trial by Jury" (NBC, 10 p.m. ET).Turner Classic Movies -- like CNN, a division of Time Warner -- pays tribute Saturday to the wonderful French director Jean Renoir by showing five of his movies: "Grand Illusion," "This Land Is Mine," "The Woman on the Beach," "The River" and "The Rules of the Game." The first and last of that list are routinely ranked among the greatest pictures of all time. "Grand Illusion" is the "Essential" at 8 p.m. ET Saturday; check listings for the others' showtimes.Sound waves
Rob Thomas of matchbox twenty puts out his first solo album, "Something to Be" (Atlantic), on Tuesday.Paging readers
The latest chapter in Alexander McCall Smith's No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency series, "In the Company of Cheerful Ladies" (Pantheon), comes out Tuesday.Michka Assayas' biography -- more of a dialogue -- with U2's lead singer, "Bono" (Riverhead), comes out April 21.Video center
It seems to take less and less time to get movies to DVD. The big holiday hit, "Meet the Fockers," comes out Tuesday.
