Whipped Cream & Other Delights is a 1965 album by Herb Alpert & the Tijuana Brass, called “Herb Alpert’s Tijuana Brass” for this album, released on A&M Records. It is the band’s fourth full album and arguably their most popular release. The album sold over 6 million copies in the United States and the album cover alone is considered a classic pop culture icon. It was so popular with Alpert fans that, during concerts, when about to play the song “Whipped Cream,” Alpert would jokingly tell the audience, “Sorry, we can’t play the album cover for you!”
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| The cover art for the album Whipped Cream & Other Delights. |
In 1965, Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass were nearly finished recording their sixth album, Whipped Cream & Other Delights, when the art director for the record label, A&M Records, showed Alpert the photo he intended to use on the cover of the album. It was a salacious image of a beautiful girl who appeared to be nude, covered only in strategically-place whipped cream. Alpert recalled later that his first reaction was, “Wow, that’s too much. Too racy.” But the band ultimately decided to use the photo and the iconic image of the model, Dolores Erickson, became legendary. Erickson was three months pregnant at the time the picture was taken.
Photographer Peter Whorf had a clear vision for the album cover. He had been told that the title of the Tijuana Brass album would be Whipped Cream & Other Delights, so he knew immediately what he wanted to do. In his home studio, he asked Erickson to don a strapless bikini. She sat on a stool covered with a fluffy white blanket he used for Christmas snow shots. Then Whorf sprayed her with can after can of shaving cream. Whorf quickly discovered that real whipped cream melted too quickly under the hot studio lights, but shaving cream held up longer. Real whipped cream was used on Erickson’s head and on her finger... the one she is seductively pressing to her lips.
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| Herb Alpert and Dolores Erickson, the model who appeared on the cover of Whipped Cream & Other Delights. |
As a model, Dolores Erickson didn’t find it strange that she was asked to pose with whipped cream. She had stranger modeling gigs before. Besides, working with Peter Whorf was like working with an old friend. She recalls, “We just had a lovely time.” Erickson was paid about $1,500, plus expenses for the job. In today’s dollars, that would be around $11,000.
Several months later, Peter Whorf mailed a few of the pics from the photo shoot to Dolores Erickson and she was shocked at the seductive nature of the images. She later said, “I was shocked. I screamed. I was a Christian girl.” Erickson was so stunned by the pics that she hid them from her then-husband, who was much more conservative than she was. A year later, she destroyed one of the pics because she felt it was too revealing.
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| Outtake photos from the album cover. |
The Whipped Cream photo was one of Erickson’s last shoots as a professional model. She gave birth to her son, then divorced her husband and moved to the Seattle area to be closer to family. The Whipped Cream & Other Delights album was a huge success for Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass, in part because of the tantalizing cover photo. The album spent a whopping 141 weeks on the Top 40 album chart.
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| Dolores Erickson posing with the album Whipped Cream & Other Delights. |
I was 8 years old when my Dad brought this album home, I still remember it like yesterday.
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