Alpert rewhips a new version of classic album

After 41 years, ‘Whipped Cream and Other Delights’ updated with remixes

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updated 6:47 p.m. ET April 20, 2006

MIAMI BEACH, Fla. - Herb Alpert wasn't too jazzed when he heard about a remix of his classic "Whipped Cream and Other Delights" album — until he tasted some of the new cuts.

He liked what he heard, and the trumpeter and music-industry pacesetter threw his weight behind the new version of the toe-tapping, genre-bending album that featured Grammy-winner "A Taste of Honey" and "Whipped Cream," and other food-oriented treats.

Alpert said he was approached by Shout Factory's Shawn Amos about the project to reinvent the 41-year-old album.

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"At first I wasn't crazy about doing this project until I heard what these guys had in mind. I just wanted to leave that classic album alone," Alpert, 71, recently told The Associated Press during a pool-side party at a South Beach hotel.

"As it turns out, I'm very happy with it. They were working through me as well. They were sending me the ... file, then I overdubbed some trumpets on top of the original trumpet I had, sent it back to them, they mixed it up and I was pleasantly surprised at the result."

"Whipped Cream and Other Delights: Rewhipped" is an appropriately cool update to the sexy, stylish album that spent eight weeks at No. 1 and won four Grammys in 1965. Instrumental impresarios such as Madeski, Martin and Wood, and Anthony Marinelli and John King of the Dust Brothers attack the tight rhythms of the original.

Also redone was the old cover — the sultry image of a brunette bathed in a white substance (the cream, the liner notes say, was of the shaving variety, not the whipped), her fingers touching the tip of her tongue.

The original "Whipped Cream" album mixed polka, Dixieland, jazz and Mexican sounds and rhythms, and featured a solid lineup of horn men behind Alpert to make up the Tijuana Brass. Its provocative cover and good-looking frontman helped the popularity of the album.

Alpert had a hunch that the lead song on the original album, "A Taste of Honey," would do fine.

"I was playing at a little club in Seattle, Wash., the Edgewater Inn, and every time I played `A Taste of Honey' prior to its release, people would go crazy — well not crazy, they wanted us to play it again — so I got the feeling that maybe that could be a great single," he said.

The song starts with a mariachi-like introduction that flows into a bass-drum lead-in. A walking bass guitar, drums and piano accompany the horns, with Alpert's trumpet up front. Its catchy tune and buoyant feel is irresistible.

"It was the `Taste of Honey' record that really catapulted the Tijuana Brass to a new level," he said.

CONTINUED : True to the original

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