Herb Alpert again whipping up musical delights at 91 with revamped Tijuana Brass
Forget about Oasis, BTS and the Jonas Brothers. The most eye-popping musical comeback of this decade has been by 91-year-old trumpeter, songwriter and band leader Herb Alpert, who - after selling more than 70 million albums in the 1960s with his group, The Tijuana Brass - has now become the most unlikely TikTok sensation in memory.
“I have had a rebirth because somebody on TikTok picked up one of my songs, ‘Ladyfingers,’ which I did on my ‘Whipped Cream & Other Delights’ album with the Tijuana Brass in 1965,” said Alpert, whose 2026 tour includes a San Diego concert Wednesday at Jacobs Music Center and a July 5 show at the nearly 18,000-capacity Hollywood Bowl.
“So far, I’ve had over 4 billion streams of this song and it’s reignited my career in a different way than I never expected. I didn’t think I’d be doing this at my age, but I’m having the time of my life playing. I love to play! I have a great band and we’ve been playing for sold-out audiences, so it’s been incredible.”
All but two of the first 20 concerts on the 2026 leg of the “Herb Alpert & The Tijuana Brass & Other Delights” tour have been sellouts, including next week’s San Diego concert. This follows a slew of sold-out concerts last year. The lineup of his longtime regular touring band has been expanded and rebranded as The Tijuana Brass. Its keyboardist, Bill Cantos, is a former San Diegan.
The seemingly tireless Alpert has another 20 North American tour dates between this month and October. He is now considering tour offers from as far afield as Europe, Japan and Australia.
“I have to think hard whether I can handle that, because I don’t recover as easily traveling across the world now as I used to,” Alpert said. “So, that’s exactly what I’m going to be doing after this interview. My manager is coming by, and we’re going to talk about those foreign tour possibilities.
“I want to do it as long as I’m healthy and as long as I’m having fun doing it. I think that - because I have this gift that other people seem to really enjoy - I want to be able to share that. I feel very fortunate that I’m able to do it and that I’m making a lot of people happy in the process. This whole career I’ve had is way beyond my imagination.”
‘Wonderful World’
A Los Angeles native whose father immigrated to the U.S. from what is now Ukraine, Alpert began playing trumpet when he was 8. He was classically trained but quickly gravitated to jazz, which remains his greatest musical passion. He was just 25 when he co-wrote Sam Cooke's 1960 hit, "Wonderful World."
Two years later, Alpert’s debut album, “The Lonely Bull,” launched both his career and A&M Records, the fledgling record label he co-founded with his business partner and lifelong friend, Jerry Moss.
A&M went on to also become the recording home for such diverse artist as The Carpenters, Burt Bacharach, Joan Baez, Supertramp, The Police, Peter Frampton, Janet Jackson, Bryan Adams, UB40, Soundgarden and many more, including - very briefly - the Sex Pistols. Alpert and Moss sold their label in 1989 to PolyGram Records in 1989 for a reported $500 million.
But it was Alpert’s early success that fueled A&M’s rise with his impeccably crafted brand of pop- and jazz-informed easy listening music. He is the only artist in history to score chart-topping hits as a singer (in 1968 with the romantic ballad “This Guy’s in Love With You”) and as an instrumentalist (in 1979 with the proto-smooth-jazz song “Rise.” It was later sampled on recordings by the Notorious B.I.G., Nas, Dua Lipa, Britney Spears and more than two dozen other pop and hip-hop artists).
While credited to Herb Alpert & The Tijuana Brass, no band of that name existed and the moniker was added - at the urging of Moss - to provide an international flavor. Alpert played all the brass parts on the album himself. He only later put together a group called The Tijuana Brass to accompany him on his concert tours.
Five of the 14 Alpert/Tijuana Brass albums released between 1962 and 1970 topped the national Billboard charts. His version of the song “Spanish Flea” was played frequently each week as the theme song for the popular TV show “The Dating Game.”
His first album, “The Lonely Bull,” was released in 1962, the same year as jazz giant Charles Mingus’ classic album, “Tijuana Moods.” Alpert was a frequent visitor to the border city, which inspired the names of several of his songs, including “Tijuana Taxi” and, um, “Tijuana Sauerkraut.”
No bull
"I used to go to bullfights in Tijuana for about three years, during the spring, and I liked the sound of this little band that was used to announce the different fights," Alpert recalled in a 2015 San Diego Union-Tribune interview.
"It wasn't a Mariachi band, it was a brass band, and I was trying to get the feeling of those afternoons that I spent there with ‘The Lonely Bull.' Then, Jerry, my partner, came up with the band name, Tijuana Brass. We later did a TV special, and part of it was filmed in that bullring in Tijuana."
Speaking last week from the Malibu home he shares with singer Lani Hall, his wife of 51 years, Alpert was quick to note his interest with bullfighting did not last too long.
“At first, I kind of fell in love with the idea and the bravado and the power bullfighting had,” he said. “After about three years, I realized that I didn’t like bullfights anymore. I don’t like the matador stabbing the bull with a large sword and killing him. That didn’t register right.”
Alpert, who is now at work on several new albums, spoke with the Union-Tribune recently for nearly an hour. Here are highlights from that interview. They have been edited for length and clarity.
Q: We are speaking at 9 a.m., which is when some musicians are just getting to sleep. It’s the same time my interviews with you began in 2017 and 2015. So, I’m wondering what time do you get up in the morning, and typically, what do you do after you get up?
Alpert: I usually get up around between 6 and 6:30 a.m., and maybe have half a glass of water to start with. Then I take a cold shower, which is kind of interesting. It starts warm and then it ends up freezing cold. I like it! Then, I have breakfast. After that, I probably come into the studio and I play the trumpet for a little while or check the mail. It’s not carved in stone. I don’t do it exactly that way every day, but that’s basically it.
Q: Given how much musical experience you have under your belt, when you pick up the horn each morning, are you playing something you’ve never played before? Are you playing scales? Or?
Alpert: No, I think about how to play the horn, how to get the most out of it. It’s all kind of routine. I’m trying to try to get more for less effort. It’s not about playing songs, it’s about kind of a routine that gets me in shape to be able to express myself as best I can … Everyone has a unique sound, you’ve just got to find it, got to put in the time. I tell kids, young musicians, that when you’re sleeping, someone else is practicing who wants the same thing you do.
Q: Your 1965 song, “Ladyfingers,” became a viral sensation on TikTok a few years ago and was also embraced by Instagram users. Was that totally random, or was there some reason “Ladyfingers” was posted on TikTok?
Alpert: Totally random. I mean, they picked it up, they didn’t know me; some person just picked it up. It’s kind of a jazz song and was written by Toots Thielemans. Somebody put the song on TikTok, one thing led to another, and it just took off. Toots was an amazing musician. The last time I saw him before he died was at the Jazz Bakery in Culver City. He gave me a big hug. Because, you know, “Ladyfingers” was on “Whipped Cream and Other Delights” and that album sold 14 million copies and helped him build a house wherever he was living at the time.
Q: You first came upon a trumpet when you were 8. Was it love at first sight, or at first sound? Did you have any idea what you were looking at?
Alpert: No, I just liked the size of it and feel of it. I couldn’t make a sound out of it, because I thought you just blow hot air into it. On some instruments you can get by with doing that: a flute, a clarinet, a saxophone. With trumpet, you need to buzz into the mouthpiece to get the sound. So, it took a while to feel comfortable with it. And when the sound started coming, it was coming pretty loudly because you can really blast off with a horn.
It was like the horn was talking for me, because I was a card-carrying introvert at a very early age. So, when this horn was making a sound for me, it was talking for me. It was saying the things I couldn’t get out of my mouth naturally.
Q: It’s not uncommon to hear rock musicians say that, when they were teenagers, girls never paid any attention to them - until they picked up a guitar or started singing. Did it work that way with the trumpet as well?
Alpert: I think so. It still does, by the way! I’m still an introvert, but I surround myself with great musicians. This sounds strange, but I have the ability to make music for one person - and that’s me. I make it for myself, and when I hear something that feels like someone else might appreciate it or enjoy it, I’ll put it out there.
But I never thought about trying to make a hit record. Well, at one time. I did. With “The Lonely Bull,” the first record we released on A&M Records, I was thinking about trying to make a hit record. But after that, I was just trying to make music that made me feel good … When I hit on this double trumpet sound that I played on all the Tijuana Brass records, that was basically the sound I felt very comfortable with.
Q: Miles Davis, after hearing and playing bebop with Dizzy Gillespie in the 1940s, realized he couldn’t compete on that high-velocity level with Dizzy and instead created something entirely different on trumpet that was all his own. I’m wondering if, for you, hearing Clifford Brown play trumpet steered you in the direction you ended up going on the horn?
Alpert: Oh, well, first off, Clifford Brown scared me. I thought, like, holy crap! This guy was doing everything I thought would be possible to play, and it was encouraging and discouraging at the same time. That’s how I think most trumpet players felt when they heard him. He was extraordinary. And he died when he was 25 years old.
Q: It was such a major, major loss. Hindsight is 20/20, but if someone had told you in 1965 that - in 2025 - you would begin touring with a revamped Tijuana Brass and performing songs from “Whipped Cream & Other Delights” and songs from other Tijuana Brass songs, would you have looked at them like they were crazy?
Alpert: I would never have thought of it. And the Tijuana Brass thing happened, I wouldn’t call it by accident. But I never listened to mariachi music at the time I made those records. I was just trying to make music that made me feel good.
Now, at 91, I have this incredible run going again with the Tijuana Brass. I’m not trying to play something that’s going to be a burden for me. I like playing; it’s fun to play. And it’s fun to try to just be original and create in the moment. All these songs have very interesting melodies and I know the melodies are good. That’s why people like listening to this sound that I have. I try to make it in the moment so it’s not a cookie-cutter concert that people are hearing. They’re hearing the real stuff and they feel it. And I know they feel it, because I see the reaction.
Q: Am I correct that, at your concerts on this tour, you take some questions from the audience?
Alpert: Yeah, I open it up and I try to make it very casual, so people feel part of it. I get some interesting questions now and then.
Q: What kind of left field questions have you been asked that you especially liked?
Alpert: (laughs) At one concert, someone in the audience asked me: “What happened to your first wife?”
Herb Alpert & The Tijuana Brass & Other Delights
When: 7:30 p.m. Wednesday, June 17
Where: Jacobs Music Center, 750 B Street, downtown
Tickets: Sold out
Online:ticketmaster.com
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This story was originally published June 12, 2026 at 6:26 AM.