Herb Alpert, and Other Delights

So last night I went to see Herb Alpert play for a sold-out house at the historic Tennessee Theater downtown. The theater is about to turn 98, Alpert will be turning 92. Both appear to be in fine shape. (Alpert praised its beauty, and remarked that it was an increasingly rare pleasure to perform in a venue that is older than he is.)

For a 91 year old guy, he can play. (He even danced a bit, though he mostly sat in an Aeron chair). The show lasted just short of two hours, he performed a lot of his greatest hits, and he played quite well.

He still had wind. He stopped every few songs to tell stories, and the big video screen backed his performance with vintage stills and videos of 1960s performances. (1965 Herb Alpert was a handsome dude, with a bit of a surprising resemblance to 1965 Guy Williams.)

I wasn’t exactly dragged there, but an old friend who became a fan at age 8 when he started to play the trumpet, and has remained one ever since, invited me to come and I was happy to. I always like Alpert okay, but I have to say the live performance was so much fuller and more intense than hearing the Tijuana Brass on an AM radio, which is mostly how I heard them back in the day. The musicianship was superb across the board — if a legendary musician who is also the founder of a major record label (A&M Records, with Jerry Moss, who was pictured a couple of times) can’t put together a good backing band, where are we — and the light and video accompaniment was beautifully chosen and suitably subdued.