Herb Alpert: ‘He put tempos in a place where it penetrated your body’
The 89-year-old musician and bandleader was born in the same generation as Quincy Jones, as jazz gave way to pop in the middle of the century. He also co-founded A&M Records, soon home to artists including Burt Bacharach, Joan Baez – and Jones himself
In 1963 he produced It’s My Party by Lesley Gore, which seemed the opposite of Quincy – he was basically a jazz musician and came up through those roots. When I heard that record and found out Quincy had produced it, I was like: that’s interesting, he clearly has a wide range of interests.
When I had my first hit record, The Lonely Bull, he reached out to me and I spent some time with him. He was really an unusual guy – he had an authenticity that was habit-forming. He was real. He had this positive energy about him – it seemed like he was already reaching for something, for the stars.