This morning, Patti and I watched one of my favorite shows: Sunday Morning. It’s a CBS show that focuses on a myriad of topics. Sometimes, when an event is in the news, or of interest to most viewers, there will be a theme for the show. Today’s telecast, host Charles Osgood focused on Valentine’s Day. There were a few vignettes to illustrate Valentine’s Day and they were enjoyable.

One of the features that viewers see just about every week is an insightful focus into the current activities of actors, musicians, singers, authors and, in general, accomplished people of the arts. Thank goodness, the emphasis is on “accomplished” people of the arts — not celebrities who are celebrities for no reason, like the Kardashians.

 

Lust in 1965

Today, the arts piece focused on Herb Alpert. In the piece on the recording artist, the interviewer focused a lot on his past recordings, as well as bringing viewers up to date on what Alpert is doing now. Shortly after he tired of recording and touring, he and a partner founded A&M Music and he became a producer — a very wealthy producer who fostered talent like Cat Stevens and the Carpenters. Today, he lives in a beautiful home on Malibu beach with his wife, singer Lani Hall. This particular story talked a bit about his philanthropy and how he has founded many scholarships for talented musicians to extend their talent and begin their careers.

 

That’s great and the feature was very well done, as all Sunday Morning pieces tend to be. But …

When Herb Alpert comes to my mind, there is only one image — the cover of his first album, Whipped Cream. This album was released in April 1965. At the time of the release I was 14, soon to be 15 that summer. Even though my friends and I would share our Playboys with each other, at the time there was nothing like this album cover.  This album cover was the definition of lust in 1965. All my friends and I had this album … and, by the way, I guess we did listen to the music. Some of Alpert and the Tijuana Brass‘ hits from this album include “A Taste of Honey,” “Lemon Tree”, “Love Potion #9” and “Whipped Cream.” Ironically, people think of Alpert as Latin or Hispanic. His father was a Russian immigrant and his mother was a native New Yorker.

Here is some additional info about this album you may not know. The model covered in cream is Dolores Erickson and she was three months’ pregnant at the time of the photo shoot for the album. Also, Dolores was covered in shaving cream, not whipped cream, because the whipped cream kept melting under the studio lights. And, the musicians who backed Alpert for the album were not The Tijuana Brass, but the best West Coast studio musicians at the time, including Hal Blaine and Leon Russell. Yes, Leon Russell.

Over the years, due to the popularity of this album,various other artists made their own parodies of the album, including Weird Al Jankovic. The album spent eight weeks at #1 on Billboard and 141 weeks in the Top 40.

I hope you each have a wonderful Valentine’s Day tomorrow.