1. Herb Alpert is the only musician to have reached No 1 on the US Billboard Hot 100 as both a vocalist and as an instrumentalist.
32 Facts About Herb Alpert
1. 2.
Herb Alpert has received many accolades, including a Tony Award and eight Grammy Awards, as well as the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award.
3.
Herb Alpert was awarded the National Medal of Arts by Barack Obama in 2012.
4.
Herb Alpert was born on March 31,1935 and raised in the Boyle Heights section of Eastside Los Angeles, California.
5.
Herb Alpert was the youngest of three children born to Tillie and Louis Leib Alpert.
6.
Herb Alpert's parents were Jewish immigrants to the US from Radomyshl and Romania.
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Herb Alpert's father, although a tailor by trade, was a mandolin player.
8.
Herb Alpert's mother taught violin at a young age, and his older brother, David, was a drummer.
9.
Herb Alpert started attending Fairfax High School beginning in 10th grade.
10.
Herb Alpert served in the US Army during the Korean War, and played in the 6th Army Band.
11.
In 1957, Herb Alpert teamed up with Rob Weerts, another burgeoning lyricist, as a songwriter for Keen Records.
12.
The song that jump-started Herb Alpert's performing career was originally titled "Twinkle Star", written by Sol Lake.
13.
Herb Alpert was dissatisfied with his first efforts to record the song, then took a break to visit a bullfight in Tijuana, Mexico.
14.
Herb Alpert personally funded the production of the record as a single, and it spread through radio DJs until it caught on and became a Top 10 hit in the fall of 1962.
15.
Herb Alpert sang it to his first wife in a 1968 CBS Television special titled Beat of the Brass.
16.
In 1979, five years after his last chart hit with the Tijuana Brass, Herb Alpert tried to record a disco album of rearranged Brass hits.
17.
In 2013, Herb Alpert released Steppin' Out, which won a Grammy for Best Pop Instrumental Album.
18.
In late 2024, Herb Alpert announced that he was forming a new Tijuana Brass group and would do a tour in 2025, to celebrate the landmark Whipped Cream and Other Delights album.
19.
Herb Alpert has a second career as an abstract expressionist painter and sculptor with group and solo exhibitions around the United States and Europe.
20.
In May 2000, Herb Alpert was awarded an honorary doctorate from Berklee College of Music.
21.
In 1977, for his contribution to the recording industry, Herb Alpert was awarded a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6929 Hollywood Boulevard.
22.
At the 1997 Billboard Latin Music Awards Herb Alpert received the El Premio Billboard award for his contributions to Latin music.
23.
Herb Alpert was awarded the Society of Singers Lifetime Achievement Award by Society of Singers in 2009.
24.
Herb Alpert was awarded a 2012 National Medal of Arts award by Barack and Michelle Obama on Wednesday, July 10,2013, in the White House's East Room.
25.
In 2020, Herb Alpert bestowed an additional $9.7 million on the Harlem School of the Arts to upgrade its facility.
26.
Herb Alpert founded the Louis and Tillie Herb Alpert Music Center in Jerusalem, which brings together both Arab and Jewish students.
27.
Herb Alpert launched with two scents, Listen and Listen for Men.
28.
Herb Alpert compared perfume to music, with high and low notes.
29.
In partnership with his daughter Eden, in 2004 Herb Alpert opened Vibrato, a jazz club and restaurant located in the Bel Air neighborhood of Los Angeles.
30.
Herb Alpert married Sharon Mae Lubin at Presidio of San Francisco in 1956.
31.
Herb Alpert and Hall have a daughter, actress Aria Herb Alpert, born in 1976.
32.
Hall and Herb Alpert recorded a live album, Anything Goes, in 2009; a studio album, I Feel You, in 2011; and another studio album, Steppin' Out, in 2013.