The Peculiar Truth about Herb Alpert
Published in
2 min readJul 5, 2022
- One of the most popular musical recording artists of the 1960s was Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass.
- Their pop/Latin/jazz sound, almost exclusively instrumental, could be heard on radio and television all across America.
- The band featured Alpert on lead trumpet with a rotating group of studio musicians on trombone, trumpet, guitar, bass, piano, and drums.
- The band released 13 albums between 1962–1970. Five reached Number 1 in the US, and 12 went gold.
- In 1966, they outsold the Beatles.
- In 1970, the band released a greatest hits album which featured the following tunes: South of the Border, Spanish Flea, Lonely Bull, Mexican Shuffle, and Tijuana Taxi.
- Given those titles, the band’s sound, their appearance, and their name, a listener might assume (like I did) that the Tijuana Brass featured Mexican musicians.
- None of them were Latinos.
- Alpert grew up in Los Angeles, and his parents emigrated from Eastern Europe; his mother from Hungary, his father from Kiev. Four band members were Italian Americans.
- Alpert and the band did not overtly try to pass as Latinos, but with their dark hair and complexions — and because they occasionally wore sombreros onstage — it was easy to assume they…
