Legendary trumpeter Herb Alpert is coming to Fox Tucson Theatre on Saturday, Sept. 26, and Nogales, Arizona, native Marco Antonio Flores will be in the audience.
He and Alpert met once. It was a lifetime ago. Alpert would not remember Flores if the two bumped into one another in the Fox lobby.
But those close to Alpert say the composer and performer has never forgotten how he and Flores met.
It involved a birthday cake, a very large present and a plan so fantastic that it could only be dreamed up by a naive kid.
In all started in 1974, when Flores, who was 24 at the time, submitted a demo tape to Alpert’s A&M Records label. He fancied himself the next big thing, and Alpert’s then dozen-year-old Hollywood imprint was the biggest game in town.
“I went through the proper steps with the agents he had there at A&M, and one of the agents told me they were great. Another said no,” said Flores, who was living in Los Angeles back then. “So I thought, ‘OK, I’ll find another way to get through to Herb Alpert’.”
That’s when he saw a large refrigerator crate, and it gave him an idea: Why not ship himself to Alpert? So he called up the record mogul’s secretary to see if he was in town.
She wouldn’t offer any details about Alpert’s whereabouts.
A couple days later, he tried a different approach: He called and pretended to know her, speaking in that I’m-about-to-board-a-plane, don’t-you-remember-me sense of urgency. She bought it and confirmed Alpert’s schedule. He would be in the office on the morning of his birthday in two weeks.
Tell him to expect a large package for his birthday, he told her. It would be delivered that morning.
“That was it. I’m in,” Flores recalled.
He had to act fast. He found the ideal crate, built a seat inside and installed handle bars to hold onto during the ride. He created a drawbridge-style opening that would be padlocked from the outside. He labeled the box in big letters: “This side up,” “Handle with care,” and “Open within 24 hours.”
Then he called up movers he had found in the phone book and made the arrangements. His sister, also living in LA then, reluctantly agreed to help. She warned her brother he would likely be arrested.
When the shippers came — three guys in a truck — Flores, dressed in a three-piece suit, was inside the box holding a birthday cake and a demo of his music.
“It was so funny. As we were driving, I could hear the guys. ‘What’s in the box?’ ‘I wonder if it’s marijuana’,” Flores said. “Then one of them said, ‘We’re getting paid to deliver the box, and that’s what we’re doing’.”
The ride took 45 minutes. When they pulled up to the gate of the old Charlie Chaplin Studios, where A&M was headquartered, Flores could hear the movers talking to the guard. He passed them through.
The movers unloaded the crate and wheeled it up to Alpert’s office.
“They were gentle, and there I ended up,” Flores said.
He could hear people outside talking about the box: “I wonder what’s inside?” and, “Wow, that’s some present.”
Then Alpert came into the room and took off the envelope attached to the crate. Inside was a note: “Happy Birthday. Open with key inside envelope.”
“He took the key and opened the padlock, and I start singing ‘Happy Birthday,’” Flores said.
Alpert was naturally stunned. “You scared the hell out of me,” Flores recalled him saying, among a few other phrases that are probably best left unrepeated.
“What are you doing?” he asked Flores.
He handed Alpert the cassette tape.
“You went through all this trouble just to get this to me?” the trumpeter asked. “You know we have an A and R (artist and repertoire) department for this.”
Flores explained that he had gone through the proper channels with no satisfaction.
“Doesn’t that tell you something?” he remembers Alpert responding.
“Tells me you need new agents,” he answered.
Alpert took the cassette and graciously invited Flores to visit the recording studio where one of A&M’s artists was at work. After a few minutes, a burly security guard placed a firm hand on Flores’s shoulder: Time to go, he told him.
“No, I’m with Mr. Alpert,” he told the man.
Nope, it was time to go, the guard said, and escorted Flores out of the building.
So whatever happened to that cassette and Flores’ rock ‘n’ roll dreams?
Two weeks after the special delivery, Alpert sent Flores a nice letter “that basically said (the songs) sucked,” he said.
Flores returned to Nogales in 1980, then moved to Tucson a couple years later. He’s been a businessman, raised a family, and recently wrote a suspense novel centered on life along the border in Nogales. The 65-year-old father of two said it will be published early next year.
And every year around Herb Alpert’s birthday — he celebrated his 80th last March — Flores sends him a card.
“He never responds,” he said. “Forty years later, I think we should have lunch.”
