Herb Alpert

Published Mar 26, 2012, 4:00 AM

Alec talks with Herb Alpert, legendary trumpeter and co-founder of A&M Records, the independent record label Alpert eventually sold to Polygram. In 1966, Alpert’s band, The Tijuana Brass sold over 13 million records, outselling The Beatles.

Alpert talks about the thrill of signing musicians like The Carpenters, Cat Stevens, and The Police but also reveals what it was like to lose -- and slowly regain -- his trumpet voice over a period of nearly 8 years. The struggle was so intense it made him question everything: “I just want[ed] to find out who I am and why I’m here. Everybody is looking for the same thing: a life of purpose and meaning.”

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This is Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the thing. If you were listening to the radio in n it was a true hodgepodge of what was then considered popular music. And right up there with the Supremes and Simon and Garf Uncle and Frank Sinatra and even the Beatles, was this guy, Yes, that signature Tiajuana Brass sound. Herb Albert had no Latin roots, but wanted to recreate the sound he'd heard at the bullfights in Tijuana. When he decided to overdub his trumpet on two different tape machines, he captured it, and he captured more than that. Whipped Cream and Other Delights was the number one album in the country in nineteen sixty remaining on the charts for three years. In nineteen sixty six, the Tijuana Brass sold over thirteen million records, out selling the Beatles. I started playing when I was eight, and I was earning a living on weekends playing. I love playing. What happened when you were eight? Well, what had you seen or heard that made you say I want to pick up a trumpet? Some fine? Well, yeah, I was really fortunate in my elementary school they had a band appreciation class and they had this table filled with various instruments and I was able to just pick one up. And where were you going to school? Melrose Elementary School in Los Angeles. What did your dad do? Ladies coats and suits? Yeah, that was he was in the clothing business. He was a Schneider. You know. My brother was a professional drummer. My sister played the piano, mother violin, and my dad played the mandolin by ear. So your parents were musical, very musical, but it wasn't their professional No, not at all. What did your parents think about when you were so devoted to music? Were they discouraging you? We doing there? Then? Dad wasn't so crazy about it. He thought, what do you want to play? And sawdust pits the rest of your life? That was his image of it. The Brass as they were called, toured often as a kind of review in the sixties. We played some college affairs in uh, Upper California. What do you Allen opened the show for us as a stand up comic. Yeah, it wasn't a concert style music. You had comics open for you in different kinds of Yeah, what are you open for us? George Carlin opened for us, Jim Carey opened for us. I go back aways, Man, I'm older than dirt, you know. At the time he didn't know it, but Albert was on just beginning an extraordinary career as a musician, eventually earning five number one hits, eight Grammys, fourteen platinum albums, and fifteen gold However, those achievements might be seen as a kind of act one to his later, unimaginably successful career as a music producer. We've only just speak use. In nineteen sixty two, with his friend Jerry Moss, Albert founded what would become the world's largest independent record label, A and M Records. They signed such artists as The Carpenters, Cheryl Crow, Janet Jackson, and the Police Rocks You Don't Have to the Red Night those days to the nine. Albert and Moss started the whole thing with two hundred bucks and a handshake, ultimately selling A and M to PolyGram Records for half a billion dollars. Today, Albert's a prolific sculptor and painter and continues to make music, touring occasionally. He's seventy six and still as handsome as ever. Herb Albert has always had matinee idle looks, but he never took up acting. Let me tell you something. When I was in high school, I was working at a gym. This agent came up to me says, man, you look like you should be in the movies. So I said, well, what can you do for me? He set me up with the people at Paramount. I auditioned. They said I was a little green, so I started taking lessons. I studied with Jeff Corey and also Leonard Nimoy, and I realized I didn't have it. I'm passionate about playing the horn. What's the music scene like in Los Angeles? Then? For a young guy who wants to play, well, it was quite different. It was shah Boom, shah boom, sixty minute man in those type of songs that were kind of popular at the time. I had a great experience, though. I was partners with Lou Adler at the time. How did you become partners with him? Well, he was dating my ex wife. Oh Hollywood, yeah, I forgot. We're talking about l a. Lou was writing poetry and I started writing some some you know, music to his poetry. And he's kind of a knock on every door type of guy, and I'm on the shy one. So we got this job at Keen Records in Los Angeles and started working for Bumps Blackwell, who was the producer for Sam Cook and Lou and I became really close friends with Sam Cooke. We wrote Wonderful World together with him. He was really special. He had something very unusual. He's very unpretentious guy, but very elegant. What did he teach you? Sam had this number one records you sent me and his follow up was I love you for sentimental reasons. And so the owner of this company that I was working for was like an amateur piano player. So Sam was recording, goes into the control room and starts listening to a playback. I was there with this owner, and the owner walks up to Sam and says, Sam, you know in bar twelve you can put in a whoa whoa, and in bar thirty five you can put it in another wow. You know. He had the sheet music, and Sam looked at the guy and says, it's jack, Yeah, just put in a whoa whoa whenever you want. Man, you gotta feel it, he says, Man, you're listening to a cold piece. Of wax, and it either makes it or it don't you know? He broke it right down to the nub. For me, what's interesting about your career is not just virtuosic musicianship, but you go on to become a very serious and like incredibly successful producer. Did you feel when you met those people did you have that skill as well? Oh? No, I didn't have any skills wise. No, in producing wise. I didn't even think about it. I had an experience at a place, uh called the Annex in Los Angeles, a recording studio, and I was watching a reasonably famous producer producer record. So the musicians rehearsing. Plas Johnson was a saxophone player. He was a saxophone player that played on the Pink Panther. Yeah, they rehearse Plas played this incredible solo. Producer gets on the horn and said, okay, Plass, beautiful, just play the same thing again. Plas, what do you mean? He said, just play that solo again? I love that. He says, did you record it? He says, no, but you know what, you know what you did? Just play it again? I said, well I can do this. This is always be rolling. Oh well, I always do that. Oh yeah, No, great success for you with t Juana Brass and great success for you recording albums. And when does producing become something, if ever, that was as important to you? I mean A and M is not some mom and pop shop. You and Moss set up a huge company that you sold to PolyGram for an enormous amount of money. Could you strike me as a guy that's there is a real artist. You're painting and your sculpting, and you're playing music. When does it start to really take over the business side? And A and M? Well, you know, I surround you let Jerry do that well exactly, and I surround myself with really quality people that people that can do things that I can't. And I'm a right brain guy, you know, I'm percent on the right side of my brain. So business is uh was always a little funny for me, you know. Jerry and I always discussed the big broad stroke of n M, but you know, the little incidental things that happened on daily basis. I wasn't interested in front of the house, back of the house. Yeah, exactly. What was it about Jerry that you think it lasted so long and it was so successful? He's just a really good guy. He's an honest he has a lot of integrity. He doesn't lie. It sounds strange, but we never had a contract. Jerry and I had a and M on a handshake and the only time we ever signed a contract was when we sold to PolyGram. Now, during that period when you're producing, I know nothing about how records are made, which must be just completely unrecognizable now from what it was back in technically completely I did an album called Whip. We ripped, we whipped, you know, re whipped. Yeah, thank you very much. I'm your pr man than the guy who got the concept for this album. You know, got a bunch of young producers together to redo the Whip prim and Other Delights album. So they sent me music files on a c D or on a DVD or through the net. I would put my trumpet on, put the trumpet on a CD because it's all time coded, send the CD back to them. They would slip it right into their master recordings. And I never met these guys. I spoke to one, but ultimate Internet dating. These guys could have been in Afghanistan. It will work the same way. What was it like before when you recorded Whip Creaming of the Delights, which is obviously one of the most famous records you ever made. Where did you record that album? Well, it was recorded at gold Star Studios in Los Angeles. But you know, prior to that, my first recorder recorder was a wire recorder. I had a webcord wire recorders. If you wanted to, you know, inter cut some things, you need a soldering iron. Yeah. Do you feel that all this technology and all of the power that comes with that, has it made people lazy? Like people can't get in a room and they just can't play a song all the way through anymore. I don't think it makes them lazy. I think it gives them too many options. You know, now with the digital you know set up, you have empty album tracks and you can just keep going and keep going, and then you can tune them up and you can shift it around, take something that was happening at the end of the song and move it up to the front. Too many options. I think it takes some of the hardaway. Yeah. I mean I also wonder people say, what's the difference between you know, theater and film and more and more the technical cost of these highly technical fields, whether it's filmmaking, television, recorded music. It's expensive, and so they want everybody. It's almost to the point now where they don't care how you feel about the experience, because I'll stand there and I'll say, well, I want to do another take, man, and I want to feel it. You know, I want to do this whole speech on page two all the way to the bottom of page four. It's like a ski run. I want to ski that hill all the way to the bottom without falling. And everybody looks, goes, we don't have time for that, man, we gotta get out of here. Yeah, that's the way the music businesses now. No, I don't think so. I mean it depends on you know what artists you're talking about. Who's someone that you recorded that you sat there and you were like, wow, man, this is really a thrill for me as an artist to watch this man or woman. Well, there are a lot of men. We had a must incredible artists with the name A couple that you dug cast Stevens was wow, unusually special. Now I've been happy lately thinking about the good things to come and believe it could be something good at it begun, get us something magical. You guys signed him. Oh yeah, but I mean he was so passionate and so you know, the lyrics and so unusual. He had his own interpretation of all these songs that it was. He was beautiful. I remember those records, and of course, you know the police. Sting just writes a great song. And when we saw them, you know, Sting was bouncing around the stage like he was on a pogo stick. They were great to watch. And of course I had an unusual experience with the carpenters. I signed the carpenters, and on my iPod I have the Carpenters, I have Sting, and then I have Home. On a second, I have Cat Stevens on my iPhone. Oh yeah, you got a lot of my money. Man. Well, you know, in nineteen sixty this is an interesting story if you want to hear this joke. In nineteen sixty uh six seven, were I was doing a special for NBC. Jack Hayley Jr. Was directing. He said, why don't you sing a song? I said, well, if if I can find the right song, I'll give it a go. So, you know, I go through my brolla decks and I called Bert back rack. I said, Bert is there a song that you have that do you think I could handle? That you have tucked away in your drawer someplace where you find yourself whistling in the morning, or you know a tune that haunts you well. Three days later he sent me this Girl's in love with You? You see this guy? This guy love with you? Yes? Uh? Who looks at you the way? When I watched the video this morning of what have you singing the song? When he saw my ex wife, then that's your wife. Cute? I record the song, I go, I fly to New York. So how David Hell David would change you know, the lyrics to suit me. As I'm marking out of Hell's door, I said, how is there a song that do you think I might be able to handle? Or song that you have talked away in the door in the same yard I gave Bert. Two days later he sent me close to You, which was going to be the follow up to This Guy's in Love with You. I recorded it in the studio. I'm listening to the playback and my engineer friend Larry Levine rested. So look to me, says, man, you sound terrible singing this. I don't forget it. I lost my confidence. I put that thing in the drawer. When I signed the Carpenters in nineteen seventy, they had an album that didn't sell. I mean, the first album was zero and people have described the first album to rely on Richard Carpenter. No, no, it has had Karen. But it was very soft. It was very delicate and very it wasn't really radio friendly. Uh So a year later I gave him Close to You. They recorded it and it was really light. Again. I said this, we need we need a little bit more energy on this one, because because Karen thought she was a drummer, I mean she and she played drums and she was good, but she wanted to record and I when I listened to the recording, I said, no, it's a little too too light. You know, we need some more. They recorded again and it still wasn't quite there, and so finally we got the Wrecking Crew. I don't know if you know that name. Those these guys that did most of the sessions in l A. They held Held Blame on drums and Tommy Tedesco on guitar and Carol Kaye. The third recording was The Charm Why from every Time You Want just like me. What's the difference? How do they get there? For you? As a person who has this ear, this gift, something happens for you like an alchemy where you just go that's it. They got it? Well, yeah, how do they get there? How do you help them get there? Or do you you try to flag them down to the runway. You know, That's what we did with most of our artists. You know, we didn't try to sign the beat of the week. We tried to get you know, like I'm saying that Cat Stevens and the artists we chose, we're artists that just had their own little identity which we loved, and the carpenters had that. I mean, I signed them because it wasn't the type of music that I normally listened to. But they were so sincere about it, and we were so passionate about the music. Apologetic, Oh beautiful, one of the most clarion voices. Well, when I heard the original tape, you know they are. And the original tape was presented to me like studied one era tape, you know, And when he handed me a tape through the gates at A and M and I sat down in my couch at in my office at a m and I did what I usually do, put on the tape. The speakers were on the floor about ten feet in front of me. Closed my eyes and it felt like Karen's voice was sitting right next to me on the on the couch. So I was just really intrigued to meet them. And when I did, I just realized, this is the real deal. So you build this big company, you know, you gotta, you gotta, You've got a great record company, you and Jerry, and then the time comes and aside from deal making and aside from you know, PolyGram making it well worth your while, what was it like in terms of the decision to let it go and to sell the company. Well, I felt something coming. I felt the music file sharing, and something just just felt like the time is right. It was well in most of these companies were run by these big corporations, and you know, they were throwing millions and millions and dollars around for new artists, and we felt that, you know, you make one mistake at our size and then you your your ship is sinking. So we just thought it was it was time. And originally we were just going to sell, which we held on too for a long time, and then they said, look, we'd like to gobble the whole thing. And I thought, what can I do to throw in a little something. I'd like my catalog back, her Bopera, Tijuana Brass and her boper single catalog plus Lonnie Hall's catalog. And I got it. I mean, that's what all artists crave, right, is to control their own music. I wanted it back, and they agreed to it. We signed the contract and you may the deal and sold the company. Yea, to them, was painting and sculpting becoming more important in your life right at the same time you decided to get rid of A and m to polygraph. Not really those two things intersecting. No, no, no, I've been painting for forty two years. I started painting in nineteen seventy. I'm not a Sunday painter. I'm not a Sunday artist. I do it every day, you know, traveling in the sixties with the two Wanter Brass around the world, I used to go to museums and I go to the modern arts section. For whatever reason, that just appealed to me. And you know, I see these paintings like a black painting with a purple dot or something hanging on the wall, and I think, let me try something like that. I wasn't doing it to think something would come of it. I'll tell you what's great. And I know, Alec you know about this. It's just there's something about being an artist, being a musician, being a painter, being a sculpture. When you're doing it, you're in the exact moment of your life, and that's rare. You know, when you're not in that mode, you're you're thinking about yesterday or tomorrow or some other house a rye that really doesn't make any sense. But when you're doing it, man, it just feels so right on the moment. I feel that we would have'm on my boat. Well I don't paint, and I don't I wish I could paint. Well I should try it. I mean when I started painting, I painted like a monkey, you know. I would just I squeezed some paint on a canvas and moved it around with Yeah, you had no training, no training. I didn't know what I was doing. But I think there's an advantage to that. I think when you're an amateur and you're just fooling around, you have infinite possibilities. You know, if you go to a professional, they'll tell you what not to do and what to do and how to do it and blah blah blah. And I didn't know about that. I just did whatever. I'm always going for a feel, you know. It's it's I do that in music and sculpting and painting. It's like, I'm not looking for something that's going to, you know, excite my eyes. I wanted to something that's excites my soul, you know, it's something that really resonates. I'm assuming there's no preference between paint and canvas and sculpture for you. You enjoy them both equally. I got a copy from your office of the Black Totem's exhibit in the work you've done. Now, these are obviously immense pieces there in bronze, and these exclusively for people who have cliff side homes in Malibu with Really, I'm not interested in really selling, you know. I know, I'm to say they're big, they're big. Yeah, they're huge. I think of my homes in New York and on Long Island. I would be interested in buying the lower four feet of this way. If we could cut this into sections. Actually, that would be kind of that would work quite well for me. I don't have eighteen feet in Manhattan, but they're absolutely stunning. This is Alec Baldwin and I'm talking with Herb Albert. More in a minute. This is Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the Thing today. Talking with Herb Albert. What is music for you? Now? I know that's the the ultimate cliche question, but how do you how do you view the music world now beyond zeros and ones in the digital and everything. You must be sitting home and sometimes you sit there and go, wow, that sounds great. I really did that. Well, you know, I have really varied taste. So I love classical music. I love you know, listening to your favorite composer. Well, yeah, I love revel. I mean actually Ravel taught me a lesson. Actually, I was going to sc for a few moments. I was in the orchestra there and they were playing um Pictures at an exhibition, you know. I was in the Yorkshire playing that. Yeah, Missoursky wrote it, Ravel arranged arranged it good for you, and they were playing the last Monte rate Gate of Kiev, you know, And I was like, so intrigued with the sound of the orchestra. I was leaning forward listening to everybody and sounded like, wow, it's like natural stereo, and I forgot to come in. I've had to come in on my part. Right at that moment, I thought, hey, you know, this isn't for me. What I really want to do is just close my eyes and play. I love Miles Davis, I love Louis Armstrong. I love those guys that just, you know, create I want to try doing that. And so I started, you know, working on jazz, which is a very specific language. I mean, just because you want to play jazz doesn't mean you can play jazz. Had you been asked to score a lot of film, did you pass up? And you must have been asked to score? Well, I did. I did the title song of or I out with Bert backrack, but that was about it. Now, I don't think that's my thing. I don't. I don't think I didn feel it. I didn't feel it. Maybe my wife thinks I should still, you know, pursue that. But you know, I had an experience this is like a little different aside by it. I was in the studio recording the Going Places album and the brass was already going crazy. I mean, we were selling you know, it was going well. Yeah, it was going well. And I get a call from my partner. I said we and the album wasn't finished yet. I get a call from chair and he says, we just have advanced orders of a million, four hundred thousand, and I got depressed. I felt like tea. You know, if people love the album by it, if you don't, you know this. I just it was a strange feeling. I I know it sounds a little I just didn't want to be prejudged. I mean, I wanted people to listen to the album here and if they liked it, by it, purity what a yeah. I don't don't mean to be but I mean, yeah, I was looking for that real ride. Until we find a better word, will say purity. Okay, you know I was looking for that ride. Do you like it? By it? I love him? Where did you meet your second wife? Okay, you're obviously madly in love? Yeah so you don't know that story, right, let's hear it. This is good. So you know musicians as the nineteen sixty six I auditioned Brazil sixty six. Brazil sixty six, Lonnie was the lead singer. Jerry and I signed them to a long term contract. This was when the Brass was really cooking and we hired them to open the show for us, so they were playing for eighteen thousand people at a time. Lonnie and I became friends. We were just really good friends. She's very unusual. She's from Chicago. She can sing in Portuguese like a like a native, beautiful voice. And she loves music. Oh she have You have a similar kind of I don't want to say passion for music, but you have a similar ethic for music, is she? Oh? Completely. She loves jazz, she loves you know, all kinds of music. But we are really the opposite. You know, she's out well, I'm really quiet. I'm really kind of like a low key type of guy. She's more, you know, has more energy and more zip zapp. Yeah, more outgoing. Who makes the dinner reservations out there in California for you? Who's who's picking the restaurants? Your wife? No, she does not do that? Or do you really? Yeah? I just want to look at my wife and I want to go. Whatever you say, baby, what do you want to you want Indian food? You got it there. I don't want to have to make those decisions. I got this stuff I gotta think about. You know, it's it's kind of mutual with us. I mean, she's um. You know. I met her at a time and we became friendly and she was able to identify my neurosis, which is what well, you know, at the time, I was going through a divorce and I couldn't play the horn. How did that manifest itself? Well, I took a trip to Europe. We had a little time off. When I got back, we had some obligations to go back to Europe and do some concerts, and I had like two or three weeks to get back in shape. And I just couldn't do it. HUNG wouldn't go in the right place. I was all bottled up. I was stiff, my neck was tight. I couldn't make a sound out of the horn. It was really painful, you know. I was really upset about the divorce and I had, you know, a bottle of Melanta at my side there because you were unhappy. There was a hole in the stomach. You know. I just wasn't happening and I just couldn't execute. I couldn't play the home I lasted for years. Really, yeah, it did it? I mean it finally wanted would play down well nineteen sixty seventy. So right after you have this huge crest of the greatest score as a as a performer of your life, you kind of crashing and you know, did you literally didn't play well? I played, but it was painful. I had an experience in Germany. I did you know I had this obligation to play these concerts in Europe. I was in Germany in Frankfort, and I was on the stage, painfully playing, and all of a sudden, I had this out of body experience. Of a sudden, I was in the third row looking at me. You know, I was thinking to myself, well, gee, this guy is usually pretty comfortable on the stage, but when he's you know, off the stage, and he's in a in a room of you know, at a party or whatever, he's totally out of control, which I felt I was at the time. I said, when I get back to Los Angeles after this series of concerts, I'm gonna either throw this horn away, sell a and m do whatever. I just want to find out who I am and why I'm here. I mean, everybody's looking for the same thing. I think, a life of purpose and meaning. Without that, what else is there? Luckily I met a teacher in New York here. His name was Carmine Caruso. He played violin, he played saxophone. He didn't play trumpet, but he taught a lot of trumpet players. He likened the musician to an athlete. And you had to sink your body muscles to rhythm. And over a period of time, I just kind of unwoldness, terrible problem. And how long did it take? It took before I was really comfortable? Probably eight years? Really? Yeah, did you when you started painting? Well, that's interesting question, you know you said you started painting? Its Yeah, and you and you started to lose your mojo horn wise and sixty nine you did, painting and sculpting come into your life as you found you didn't want to play the horn. Well, sculpting came in later. Painting was a big relief. You had't have somewhere to put that energy exactly. Um. It was a rough period for me, but I've been there, man, And mine was a result of a divorce too, you know, and not like I thought I needed to be to stay in that marriage. But it was the way that those things ends. Oh yeah, need to sit there and go You're like, this is not not when you planned it, not what I bargained for. Let's hit rewind here trying to figure this out man, and he had the lete, yeah, we gotta, we gotta, you gotta do this again. When did you marry your current wife? So during this time as years have you not feeling great when you meet her and you meet this woman who's obviously the love of your life, right, But at the same time I was still playing. I was like I was playing forcing yourself, well, forcing myself. And seventy four we had a command performance for the Queen of England. We played, we played there and the bands, yeah, the band sounded great. And then meet Prince Charles who said, oh heavo you record in the in the den? You know I couldn't picture the den. Met the Queen, very lovely, nice smile. Uh. This was in nineteen seventy four. I was feeling pretty puffed up. I felt good about that. So go out the back door and there were hundreds and hundreds of people that are just waiting for the various artists that were on this show and this as I'm walking through the crowd that I hear these two ladies Tarry, I don't know that Chap. Who was that Chap? And for friends it I think that Sergio Mendez after feeling so good, I gotta get over here more often, man, I gotta get these people straightened up. You don't know me from Sergio. Yeah, so that's why I think that's a great thing that you're someone who you weren't feeling all that great at that time in your life, but you fooled the King and the Queen of England. Man with the band sounded no what I'm saying that you you got you got it done. Yeah, but you know there's something about you know, when you're you're good at something, you can you can fake it and and nobody really knows you know. No Now for you, who's a horn player that you take your head up? Whose one just giving one? Years? Just really dug? Listening to Miles David, I love Myles. You know, Myles was the real thing. Miles y well because he was completely authentic. He was just playing the music that was coming out of him. Uh, no compromise. He understood space, you know, the the silence that happens between the notes. You know. He understood that, and I think he was the key you know, you know, jazz musician of the twentieth century. I've met some really incredible jazz musicians in my day, and each one has their own little take on how to do it. Stan Guests was like a brother to me. I produced two albums with Stan and he played this one song. It was just men. Goose bumps were flying up my back. I said, man, what are you thinking when you're playing? And he says, oh, I think it like I'm in front of the whaling wall in Jerusalem and I'm dobvining stand. Oh. He was great, man. I love the sky. He wore his stuff right close to the surface. I had an experience with Guests where, you know, I did these amms and he said, can I do anything for you? I said, yeah, Man, give me, how about giving me some bebop lessons? He says sure, He says, how how honest you want me to be? I said, just because I'm just trying to get up to my own water level. I didn't play with Charlie Parker like he did. I just wanted to see how far I can take this thing. This is fine in my studio at home, and he's sitting down. I said, do you think, for one, I should work on the two five one chords in every key, which is page one if they teach at Berkeley. I mean that's how they you know, they start this thing. To five one is an all pop songs. It's just one of those things. I said, do you think I should work on this in every key five one chords? You know what? He said? What's that? He didn't think like that though. I mean, those old timers didn't play off of that ship that they're teaching at school. You know, who do you think made Sinatra? Sinatra? Oh Man very musical? He really was smart. He was grateful to the songwriters and the musicians whom he knew they made him. He brought what he brought. But he was a kind of man. The guy was. He was magic and plus the sound in his voice was beautiful, his timing. But I learned a great lesson. You know, when things started happening for me. My ex wife was friends with Nancy Sinatra, and I met Frank and I stayed at his house and then we flew to Las Vegas and the way After the show, Frank comes up to me and says, you want to play? It's in bakra. I said, I don't know how to play, but I'll go with you. He says, down on the Barbara. I'm standing behind him, and in twenty minutes he must have went around twenty seven thirty thou dollars, I know, and Nancy was standing right next me. So every time you want a party, throw off like ten bills to Nancy. So she had this pile looked like a bowling ball in her hands of a hundred dollar bills. And so Frank gets up abruptly and he he just leaves, you know, and Nancy looks at me, says, I hear her. We go take some of this and go gamble. And I looked at this pilot said, what do you mean takes? You want me to take a half a pound you want? What are you talking about? And I realized at that point, man, I'm never going to treat money like that. I'm gonna, you know, honor in a whole different ways. It could be that frivolous Herbalbert established the her Balbert Foundation in the nineteen eighties, giving away money his way ever since. In two thousand seven, he gave thirty million dollars to form the Herb Alpert's School of Music. How do you see, l A. I love music. I think music needs to survive. I think jazz needs to survive. It's a great American legacy. It's such an portant ingredient for a kid's health, you know. And I think through that they learned discipline and what's gonna help him in the academics. So it's just a natural. It should be a core subject. Do you teach to you over there and guest teach and so no, I don't, but I you know, I'm not. That's really not my strongest I think it would be very happy for you to show up, that wouldn't Isn't that your great gift that you just have to play? I think my great gift is that I have my own personality on the horn. A lot of musicians are trying to track Miles Davis or trying to check Charlie Parker, try to play like you know, I'm just trying to play like myself, and that's I think what everybody should be going for their only unique voice. It's just been it's been a nice ride. I feel thankful. Herb recently finished a sold out two week run at the Carlisle Hotel with his wife, singer Lonnie Hall, and I mean sold out. He couldn't get me any tickets. This is Albert and Hall performing I Feel You. Just another afternoon on the sidewalks of London, all the green and rainy days run together, hidden in the streets of stone. Suddenly I'm not alone. I feel you. I feel every time I think I have lost you, it seems like you find me, blowing through me, like the winds of decad where though you've gone away so far, still I turn and there you are. I feel you. I feel you. I feel you beside me, my head on your shoulder, your fragrance, your laughter, your ti I must in remembering reasons I miss you. So how could I ever think about a lifetime that happens without you, even if my only hope is a mad Please start, let us be apart, rub yourself around, mind, let me feed you. This is al Baldwin and you're listening to here's the thing

Here's The Thing with Alec Baldwin

Award-winning actor Alec Baldwin takes listeners into the lives of artists, policy makers and perfor 
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