delights Album Cover
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| Herb Alpert | Whipped Creme and Other delights Album Cover | Les Paul and Friend | Album cover of Herb Alpert's first LP |
G10 Kicker: Track 30: A Taste Of Honey: Herb Alpert and The Tijuana Brass
Experimentation with new software, especially the Nero suite, gave the disk coordinator a new appreciation for electronic music especially echo. In researching this effect he fell upon two groups, one of which was the Carpenters. You remember them, don't you, the sister and brother team. Karen, who died in the 80's from an eating disorder, had a marvelously haunting voice. It seemed almost non human in the tone and apparently her voice was. It was the result of echo - in some cases 8 sets of feedback - in a technique created by the guitarist, Les Paul, before World War II. Further study and analysis led to a second group using this technique to the extreme and this became the basis of the kicker for G10.
Herb Alpert, who interestingly enough was an extra in the movie "The Ten Commandments," was a full time trumpet player and part/time actor with an ambition to be a musical star. In 1960, he and a friend, Jerry Moss, created A&M records. Using echo and some tempos and beats from Mariachi music, he holed himself away in a sound studio and almost by himself (and the use of echo) created his own group, Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass. The first hit was a track called "The Lonely Bull" which was inspired by a visit to a Mexican bull fight.
The sound made use of repeated echo - then called overdubbing - and was a hit. The group, if one could call it that since it consisted only of Alpert and his recording equipment, became a hit of the 60;s and 70's. From one of the albums, "Whipped Creme And Other Delights", the kicker for G10 was selected. It is Alpert's interpretation of "A Taste Of Honey" made famous by the latin singer, Trini Lopez. You should be hearing this music assuming your operating system contains Windows Media Player.
There are several interesting aspects to the album. First, every play has a title representing food or drink so you wind up listening to tracks such as Tangerine and Love potion #9. Further, for its time, the album cover was a source of controversy as it featured a naked woman wearing only a whipped creme gown. This was shocking for the time to many people although today it would be considered quite tame.