HERB ALPERT’S COVER GIRL

Forty-seven years ago Herb Alpert released a record on his A&M label that went on to sell over six million copies. The playfully erotic LP cover, which was risqué at the time, featured a whipped cream-covered fashion model named Dolores Erickson. The image, now a pop culture icon, certainly didn’t hurt sales.

Today, Erickson is a successful painter and looks back at that time with fond memories, “I was wearing a bikini, and there was a cotton cloth that went around my body. It was shaving cream on the cloth, but on my head was whipped cream. And of course it was whipped cream on my fingers, too.” She was 29 and three months pregnant. “But I wasn’t showing,” she says.

Years later, Alpert would tell concert audiences, “Sorry, but we can’t play the cover for you.”

(Cover Photograph: Peter Whorf)

(Photograph of Megan Fox below: Mark Seliger)