Herb Alpert's Tijuana Brass
Whipped Cream & Other Delights

This is an album I bought over a year ago, fascinated and intrigued by the cover, without knowing anything about this Herb Alpert.
The classic purchase made on a "feeling" or in a moment of insanity... the choice is yours.
I didn't know what awaited me once the CD was loaded, and I was full of expectations and also a bit afraid of having wasted ten dollars.
The beautiful damsel covered in whipped cream (Dolores Erickson, whom I discovered had been in the fantasies of many young people of the time thanks to this cover) and a deeply '60s look, in the end, gave me confidence... and I must say that my sixth sense that led me to pick up this CD was right.

From the very first track, the hit "A Taste Of Honey" (which in 1965 earned 3 Grammy Awards) you’re catapulted back forty years, the foot begins to tap, and without realizing it, you start humming and nodding your head, allowing yourself to be carried away by Herb's trumpet into a festive atmosphere full of the lightness typical of those years.
The party continues with "Green Peppers", where Herb's trumpet, lively and enticing, reveals Herb's mariachi soul, which fully unfolds in "Tangerine", a ballad with a slightly melancholic and dreamy Mexican flavor that transports us to a hypothetical "Enchantment Under the Sea" school dance...
The pace picks up again with "Bittersweet Samba", a tiny adrenaline-filled interlude (just a minute and a half) that paves the way for "Lemon Tree": slow, with a vaguely epic connotation featuring a melancholic trumpet and background guitar that would not have been out of place in the soundtrack of Desperado.
You start whistling again with the famous "Whipped Cream", which was the first single of this album and influenced the style, even in the titles of the tracks, all referring to foods and confectionary delights. Here Herb's trumpet becomes downright irreverent, joyfully slipping between slow and pronounced trombones and a piano that at times almost manages to catch it.
Change of tone when the trumpets open "Love Potion n. 9", a track that in its slow and pronounced cadence immediately evokes memories of burlesque-style stripteases, elegant, witty, but never vulgar.
The rhythms then chase each other frenetically in the mandolin with a vaguely homely taste of "El Garbanzo", the bouncing "Peanuts", and "Lollipops and Roses", the latter being a bonus track included along with two unreleased songs "Rosemary" and "Blueberry Park" in the 40th anniversary edition of this album that marked the history of '60s music.

The secret to appreciating this album is definitely to listen to it in the same way Herb Alpert and his Tijuana Brass played it: having fun.
There is no room for sadness in this lineup of 14 instrumental tracks that celebrate dancing and joy, which at the time were capable of bringing together hippies, squares, elderly and young people with an enticing mix of light jazz, Dixieland, samba, bossanova, and pop.

Definitely worth listening to lift your spirits on those mornings when waking up is particularly tough ;)