Herb Alpert still performing, finds his songs in pop culture!

Herb Alpert is still making waves even in his 80s. The iconic trumpeter — who’s scored nine Grammy Awards, 15 Gold albums, 14 Platinum albums, sold more than 72 million records and co-founded A&M records, one of the most successful independent record labels of all time — is now reaching Gen Z crowds.

“Somebody on TikTok used one of my songs that I did 60 years ago or 55 years ago in the ‘Whipped Cream and Other Delights’ album called ‘Lady Fingers.’ And it kind of went viral on TikTok. I got this message last week. It was unbelievable — it’s been overwhelming even to talk about it — but I heard that song on the various formats like Spotify, iTunes, Amazon, all the others. There were 100 million streams, which I don’t even know what to do with that number,” he says with a laugh.

His latest release, “Catch the Wind,” hit No. 2 on the Billboard Current Contemporary Jazz Album Charts while his 1979 hit, “Rise” which was famously sampled in Biggie Small’s mega-hit, “Hypnotize,” has hit the charts again after being included on the soundtrack for the movie “Spiderhead.”

Alpert says that he’s just as surprised when his older songs reappear in pop culture.

“I thought ‘Rise’ was gonna be a hit. It was one of the few records that I recorded that I thought to myself, ‘This is really good.’ I like that there’s something about it that feels good because I think all music is about a feeling,” he says. “I don’t think you can identify music on the word level. You can’t really give a reason why you like a certain record or you like a certain artist or you like a certain painting or sculpture. … It’s all like that other dimension, which I like so much. Art is a mystery. I don’t think we listen with our ears. We listen with our souls. And when it touches us, it touches us.”

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