‘Whipped Cream’: The erotic album that outsold every Beatles record in 1966
Smoother than oiled silk, cooler than a polar bear’s toenail, and sweeter than strawberries and cream, Herb Albert was quite the horn-parping lothario back in the 1960s.
Now, the trumpeter is the sort of artist you mostly come across in the vinyl section of charity shops. While thousands of students this freshers season will no doubt be trying to impress their new pals with ‘60s playlists as the era races back into vogue, poor old Albert isn’t likely to take pride of place alongside The Beatles.
However, there was a brief time when he towered above them. The sunny World Cup-winning year of 1966 is deemed a pivotal one in the lore of the Fab Four. It was the start of their progressive patch with the band releasing Rubber Soul in the December of ‘65 and Revolver the following August.
However, while both of these records might have later been deemed masterpieces, they were actually cause for concern for the band at the time. “During 1966, The Beatles were having a bit of a setback,” George Martin said, “It wasn’t generally known that their general popularity seemed to be a little bit on the wane. Brian Epstein was very worried about it indeed.”
While that was partly due to the fact that the group had perhaps fallen foul of the classic commercial crime / critical landmark of leaping a few lightyears ahead of their time, it was also due to a rather more cynical oversight. When they first burst onto the scene, the cheeky chaps were full of sex appeal.
Their romantic songs sprang the liberation movement into life, and they were more than happy to play into it with a boyband-like appeal. There’s nothing about the stern monochrome psychedelia of the Revolver album cover that says: sex.
Albert, on the other hand, decided that the cover for his latest Tijuana Brass Band album, Whipper Cream and Other Delights, should feature a woman wearing, well, nothing but cream. This sleeve stirred all but the dairy-intolerant youth into a frenzy of erotic curiosity. And the band had the tunes to match, with their sultry jazz swing securing plenty of airtime on a cross-appeal station.
So, Whipped Cream and Other Delights, showcasing Albert’s keen eye for both marketing and ability to blend the sounds of all the various demographics from his native Los Angeles, became a best-seller that year. In fact, no artist sold more than cool hands Albert in 1966, with the trumpeter winking his way towards the lofty 14 million mark.
The oft-forgotten legend even achieved the record-breaking feat of having five albums simultaneously stacked into the Billboard Top 20 list that year. Not bad at all, considering the vast majority of the general public couldn’t name you a single song on Whipped Cream and Other Delights. But by the same token, with one listen and perusal of the sleeve, the same public would easily be able to accept why it became such a hit.
As for the erotic cover that helped to secure his golden fate in ‘66, Albert told Billboard, “My first reaction was, ‘Holy shit, man. Too racy’. Obviously now it would hardly register, but at the time I thought, ‘Wow, that’s a little much.’ And I didn’t know, quite frankly, whether it reflected the album, the music I was doing at the time. But we decided to go with it. Obviously that was fortuitous.”
That uncertainty wasn’t necessarily shared by Dolores Erickson, the model on the cover, whose attitude was closer to professional ambivalence. She was an associate of Albert’s anyway and had already featured on a fair few album covers at the time. So, sitting in a cleverly concealed bathing suit in a pile of shaving foam, owing to the fact that cream gets too runny and smelly under hot lights (barring the genuine dollop of dairy on her head and finger tip), wasn’t all that much of an unsual assignment for her, even given the fact she was three months pregnant at the time.
By the same token, she certainly didn’t think that the rather low-budget shoot in a converted garage studio would go on to grace millions of homes in America, either. Certainly not more homes than The Beatles, Bob Dylan, Bo Diddley and everyone eon ither side of those famous Bs.
Never Miss A Beat
The Far Out Beatles Newsletter
All the latest stories about The Beatles from the independent voice of culture.
Straight to your inbox.