Herb Alpert (Photo: Dewey Nicks; used with permission)
Herb Alpert has a busy 2024 ahead with tour dates to support a new album, Wish Upon a Star. The title arrived September 15, 2023, just as the star resumed his fall tour with his wife, Lani Hall. He’s since added well over a dozen concerts in 2024. The first track, “East Bound And Down,” finds the legendary musician, artist, record label executive and philanthropist finds revisiting the buoyant, upbeat sound of the Tijuana Brass Band. It was written by Jerry Reed and is known as the theme song for the classic action-comedy movie, Smokey and the Bandit. Listen to it and many of the other songs below.
Of his new album, Alpert says, “I don’t like to crowd things with too much studio sweetening – on so many contemporary records I hear, there’s just too much going on.” And, he didn’t want epic solos. “Sometimes I think players are too hung up on technique and wowing the musicians they’re playing with. You could have the greatest group playing, and everybody’s just tearing it up, but it gets into that look-what-I-can-do thing. It doesn’t necessarily captivate if there’s no melody going on.”
“I couldn’t get this song out of my mind after seeing [the move] many moons ago……thought it would make a great instrumental,” says Alpert.
On Wish Upon a Star, Alpert’s 49th studio album, he explores songs written in different eras of pop music history, from venerable Great American Songbook standards (“On the Street Where You Live,” rendered as a bossa nova) to torch songs (a sultry “We’ve Only Just Begun”) to Beatles classics (“And I Love Her”).
Alpert and his partner, Jerry Moss, started A&M Records in 1962 as a home for Alpert’s Tijuana Brass projects, but within a few years grew into an unusually creative independent imprint, releasing landmark records by Wes Montgomery, Antonio Carlos Jobim, The Police, Joan Armatrading and dozens of others.
“I signed the Carpenters to A&M,” Alpert says, recalling that some at the label expressed doubts about the wholesome duo. “I found them, and I remember the first time I heard them I loved them. They knew how to put songs across.”
Related: Moss died on August 16, 2023, at age 88
Recording a new version of Cat Stevens’ “Father and Son” brought Alpert into a nostalgic reverie. “I saw him when he was starting out. Just him and guitar – total knockout. The songs all had a calm depth to them, and the way he expressed himself was overwhelming. Of all the artists we had on A&M, Cat was unusually special.”
Listen to “(Marie’s the Name) His Latest Flame,” a 1961 hit for Elvis Presley and written by Doc Pomus andMort Shuman
Related: Our interview with Herb Alpert
Alpert celebrated his 88th birthday on March 31. He was reminded of another personal milestone in September, when Taylor Swift made headlines for having four albums in the top 10 on the Billboard 200 charts at the same time, a feat that hasn’t been accomplished by a living artist since 1966 when Alpert did so with Going Places, Whipped Cream & Other Delights, South of the Border, and The Lonely Bull.
Related: Our Album Rewind of Whipped Cream & Other Delights
Herb Alpert & Lani Hall 2024 Tour Dates (Tickets are available here and here)
Mar 24 – San Antonio, TX – Tobin Center
Mar 25 – Austin, TX – Paramount Theatre
Mar 26 – Dallas, TX – Majestic Theatre
Mar 28 – Amarillo, TX – Globe News Center for the Perf. Arts
Mar 29 – Albuquerque, NM – KiMo Theatre
May 16 – Richmond, VA – The National
May 17 – North Bethesda, MD – Strathmore Music Center
May 18 – Philadelphia, PA – Kimmel Cultural Campus
May 20 – Nashua, NH – Nashua Center for the Arts
May 21 – New London, CT – Palmer Auditorium
Jul 16 – Albany, NY – The Egg
Jul 17 – Rochester, NY – Theater at Innovation Square
Jul 19 – Pittsburgh, PA – Point Park University’s Pittsburgh Playhouse
Jul 20 – Columbus, OH – Southern Theatre
Jul 21 – Louisville, KY – Bomhard Theater
Albert’s recordings are available here.
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