Herb Alpert had had thirteen Top 40 hits before recording “This Guy’s In Love With You.” And they were all instrumentals. This is the first time he sang on a record that was released as a single. Herb Albert was born in 1935 in the Boyle Heights section of Eastside Los Angeles, California. His dad played the mandolin and his mother taught piano. His brother played the drums, so it would have been weird if Herb didn’t acquire knowledge in some instrument. The one he chose was the trumpet.

He started taking lessons when he was eight and by the time he graduated from high school, he was playing well enough to join various bands and make a name for himself. During high school, he decided that he wanted to be a jazz musician as a living. After high school, he joined the United States Army and frequently played at military events.

In the late Fifties, he became a songwriter and co-wrote several hit records. Two that you might remember are “Baby Talk” recorded by Jan and Dean and “Wonderful World” by Sam Cooke.

In 1962 he got together with Jerry Moss and they formed Carnival Records. Soon, they found that that name had already been used and so Carnivel became A&M Records. Obviously the “A” from A&M refers to Alpert and the “M” refers to Moss. Herb would record all of his hits on the A&M label.

During a trip to Tijuana, Mexico, he heard a mariachi band and got the idea for “The Lonely Bull.” Although the label reads Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass, for this first record, it was just Herb playing. They overdubbed his trumpet many times to get the effect we hear. He couldn’t get away with that when he played live, however, so he hired a set of six session musicians and they became The Tijuana Brass. “The Lonely Bull,” was their first hit and peaked at number six. He then put twelve more songs onto the Top 40 before deciding he would like to do something a little different.

So, he approached Burt Bacharach and asked him he had any songs that he had never published and would be willing to share. Bacharach showed him “This Guy’s in Love With You.” and Herb thought that would be the ideal song to sing and play on his television special, The Beat of the Brass. The show aired on CBS on April 22, 1968 and Herb sang the song live on the show. It got such a positive response (thousands of people called and asked where they could get the song) that he decided to record it and release it as a single.

The show was taped in Malibu, California and if you find the video of the sequence, the woman Herb is singing to is his first wife, Sharon.

Herb only sang on two other records, but neither of them cracked the top fifty. Herb will probably be always best known as a trumpet player with the Tijuana Brass. A&M Records was very successful well into the Seventies, signing such acts as the Carpenters and Peter Frampton.

“This Guy’s in Love With You” debuted on the pop charts on May 25, 1968 and stayed at number one for four weeks. It would be a year and a half before Herb Alpert would have another number one and we will get to that when I cover 1969. (The song was “Rise” in case you can’t wait.)