Alpert’s popularity can be seen as a last hurray for the jazz-flavored easy listening that dominated the airwaves in the pre-Elvis era. But there was clearly something about these breezy instrumentals that captured the mid-’60s zeitgeist. “I played ‘A Taste of Honey’ in Seattle, Washington, and people went crazy for it,” Alpert recalls. “Sometimes we played it twice. Sometimes we played it back to back.”
Jerry Moss considered this track to be a B-side, but his partner urged him to reverse the playing order. “I said, ‘Here’s a focus group.’ [in Seattle]And every time you play that song, you connect. ‘He flipped it around and it took about two months to really get off the ground, and when it did, I was able to appear on all the major shows and get all the exposure that I wanted. ”
This wasn’t music for teenage rebels or young hippie archetypes. It was a grown-up sound for sophisticated people, made for the razzle-dazzle of cocktail parties and conversational spaces. Sleek, classy, and a little sexy. The album cover featured a handsome and distinctly Latin Alpert with a suitably groovy female co-star.
The fourth record was loosely themed around the concept of taste (at Moss’s suggestion), but Alpert didn’t appear at all. Instead, the cover was given to model Dolores Erickson, who appeared to be wearing only a cream-colored dress. It’s infamous and iconic album art, stranger than just cheesecake, and has inspired countless parodies and tributes over the years. In the short term, this ensured that Whipped Cream & Other Delights found its way onto Bachelor Pad record shelves across the country.
Television was another cross-cultural factor in Alpert’s rise. Several Tijuana Brass tracks were used on the soundtrack for a new game show, The Dating Game, which debuted in late 1965. A version of the Mexican Shuffle became a long-running advertising jingle for chewing gum brand Clarks Tea Berry. Tijuana Brass’ tenth album, The Beat of the Brass, was promoted by a CBS television special.
Source: BBC Culture – www.bbc.com
