As Time Goes By

Men of a certain age still remember the Brass;

You don't know her by name — maybe as the "Whipped Cream Lady" — but certainly by the album cover on which she is featured: the 1965 Herb Alpert & the Tijuana Brass' "Whipped Cream & Other Delights."

There she is, seemingly naked but covered in what is supposed to be whipping cream looking at YOU.

Whenever a list of the most memorable record covers is put together, that album is right at the top.

Mostly because of the force of gravity;

The shoot began midmorning and lasted through the afternoon. [Dolores] Erickson put on a bikini, but with the straps down.

She was 29 and three months pregnant. "But I wasn't showing," she says.

Erickson sat on a stool and from the waist down, [photographer Peter] Whorf placed on her a white Christmas tree blanket.

Then shaving cream was sprayed on Erickson. Under the bright lights, whipping cream would melt, although it was real whipping on top of her head.

The shoot kept going, Erickson remembers, and she didn't notice that the shaving cream kept slipping down.

Months later, Whorf mailed her two outtakes.

"He sent them to shock me. And it did shock me. I screamed," says Erickson. "I was a Christian girl."

Erickson has kept a copy of one of the outtakes, and it is a bit more revealing, but not by that much.

But she worried that her then-husband, a New York shoe manufacturer, and "conservative," would become upset. She hid the two photos behind the refrigerator at a girlfriend's home. Later, she'd tear up the photo she deemed the most revealing.

For which she was paid $1,500 (1965), or about $11,000 today.