Producers: Herb Alpert & Jerry Moss
Track listing: A Taste of Honey / Green Peppers / Tangerine / Bittersweet Samba / Lemon Tree / Whipped Cream / Love Potion No. 9 / El Gorbanzo / Ladyfingers / Butterball / Peanuts / Lollipops and Roses
November 27, 1965
8 weeks, nonconsecutive
Herb Alpert and Jerry Moss were the “A” & “M,” respectively, in A&M Records. The duo scored their first success with “The Lonely Bull,” which Alpert, a trumpet player, recorded for a mere $65 in October 1962 under the name of the Tijuana Brass. When the single reached number six and went on to sell more than 700,000, it established both Alpert and A&M as substantial forces in the music industry.
The success of the single inspired Alpert to record a full album, also titled The Lonely Bull. It reached number 24. The follow-up, 1963’s Herb Alpert’s Tijuana Brass, Volume 2, eventually reached number 17, while his third long-player, 1965’s South of the Border, climbed to number six.
With his fourth album, Whipped Cream & Other Delights, Alpert and A&M hit the big time. Ironically, it wasn’t only the music that gave the album its notoriety. The cover featured model Dolores Erickson, who was three months pregnant at the time, seductively posed wearing a blanket of shaving cream. At first A&M art director Peter Whorf attempted the shot with real whipped cream, but it attracted flies and melted with the heat of the lighting.
“More people come up to me and say, ‘That Whipped Cream album is really something,'” says Alpert. “‘The music is okay, but that cover.’ I don’t think people bought it for the cover, but it was certainly memorable.”
Whipped Cream & Other Delights, much like The Lonely Bull, was inspired by a single. Alpert’s “Whipped Cream,” a catchy instrumental featuring his trademark combination of mariachi music, pop, and jazz, only reached number 68 on the Hot 100, but its success was big enough to give Moss an idea. “My partner got the idea to incorporate a bunch of food titles and sandwich it, if you will, into an album,” says Alpert.
At the time, Alpert admits, his career was in “little more than a holding pattern,” since he had been unable to duplicate the success of his first single. “Things started to pick up again with South of the Border when the Clark Teabury gum company used ‘The Mexican Shuffle’ in an ad. “‘Whipped Cream’ came along and made a little noise, but nothing too exciting happened until the Whipped Cream album came out and ‘A Taste of Honey’ exploded,” says Alpert. “That was probably the pivotal song in my career.”
Alpert would often spontaneously arrange his material in the studio. “But for ‘A Taste of Honey’ I had the idea for the arrangement before I went into studio, except for that bass drum that stops and starts in the middle. That was a device we used to let the musicians know where the bridge ended and the third verse started. We were going to take it out, but the more I heard it on the reference tapes, the more I began to feel it belonged in the arrangement. That bass drum became synonymous with that sound.”
By November 1965, “A Taste of Honey” became Alpert’s first top 10 single in three years, eventually peaking at number seven. The single went on to take Grammy Awards for record of the year, best instrumental performance (non-jazz), best instruments arrangement, and best-engineered record of 1965. “A Taste of Honey” and Whipped Cream & Other Delights’ provocative cover were enough to give Herb Alpert and A&M Records their first Number One album.
THE TOP FIVE
Week of November 27, 1965
1. Whipped Cream & Other Delights, Herb Alpert’s Tijuana Brass
2. My Name Is Barbra, Two… Barbra Streisand
3. The Sound of Music, Soundtrack
4. Help!, Soundtrack
5. The In Crowd, Ramsey Lewis