A lot of people look forward to retirement as the time they’ll be able to stop doing whatever it is they do to make money and start doing the things they enjoy. For Herb Alpert, 81, who has been making money doing what he enjoys doing for more than 50 years, retirement is a nonstarter.

Consider, for example, that Alpert was the “A” in A&M Records, the label he and his business partner Jerry Moss sold for something around $500 million in 1987. Or that he was the founder of the Tijuana Brass, one of the biggest instrumental groups of the 1960s.

Alpert is also the only recording artist who has had No. 1 hits on the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart as a vocalist, with “This Guy’s in Love with You” in 1968, and as an instrumentalist, with “Rise” in 1979.

No surprise then that 37 years after he topped the Hot 100 with “Rise,” Alpert is still recording hits. His current album, “Human Nature,” is one of the five finalists for Best Contemporary Instrumental Album at the 2017 Grammy Awards.

“I like to take melodies that people are familiar with and find a way to do them in a way that they haven’t been played before,” Alpert said, explaining how and why he chose to take on one of Michael Jackson’s many signature hits and make it the title song of the project. Arrangements usually start “with a groove, and I take it from there,” he said. “If it’s not done in a unique way, it isn’t going to work.”

This year marks the 50th anniversary of Alpert’s four Grammy wins for his instrumental recording of “A Taste of Honey,” the opening track on his fourth full album, “Whipped Cream & Other Delights.” Released in 1965, the album topped the Billboard 200 Album chart for five weeks in 1965 and for three more in 1966.

It was a very good year for Alpert. Add the chart performance of several albums he released after “Whipped Cream & Other Delights,” and he held the No. 1 spot on the 200 album chart for 18 weeks total in 1966.

Alpert is celebrating by reissuing 24 of his classic albums — including “Whipped Cream & Other Delights,” of course — remastered from the original analog tapes. Alpert’s fans have snapped them up so enthusiastically that several of them have appeared on some of Billboard’s specialty jazz charts.

“I’m flattered by their interest,” Alpert said of his fans. “I’m 81 and I’ve enjoyed playing some of these songs for a long time.”

Hawaii gets to enjoy Alpert and some of his favorite songs when he and his wife, vocalist Lani Hall, return to Hawaii for four nights at the Blue Note, beginning Thursday.

The couple was here two years ago for a concert in the Blaisdell Concert Hall. Alpert said he is looking forward to the intimacy of the smaller venue this time.

He and Hall will be working with a drums-bass-and-keyboards trio. The program will include a Tijuana Brass medley, some of Alpert’s later classics, songs from “Human Nature,” and Hall singing a tribute to her former group, Sergio Mendes & Brasil ’66.

Alpert and Hall met after he and Moss signed Mendes to A&M Records, added Hall and a second English-speaking female singer to Mendes’ existing group, and then named the new group Sergio Mendes & Brasil ’66. The new group’s first album was titled “Herb Alpert Presents Sergio Mendes & Brasil ’66,” and they toured with Alpert and his Tijuana Brass.

Hall left the group for a solo career in 1971. She and Alpert were married in 1972.

“She’s my angel, she changed my life — and she’s a world-class singer,” Alpert said.

Looking back over the 54 years since his first hit, “The Lonely Bull,” was released in the summer of 1962, Alpert said that he was “certainly very lucky” that the song’s unusual sound caught the ear of the American public.

Taken on technical terms rather than simply its memorable melody, the song was a recording studio milestone.

Alpert made the basic recording in his garage. He’d heard a mariachi band play at a bullfight in Tijuana and wanted to create a recording that captured the experience. He overdubbed the trumpet part using a pair of tape recorders and added crowd cheers to the mix.

A team of “first call” Los Angeles studio musicians did the rest.

“The Lonely Bull” reached No. 6 on the Billboard Hot 100 and was followed by an album that was credited to Herb Alpert & The Tijuana Brass. For more than a year after that the Tijuana Brass existed only as a studio group, but by the end of 1964 there was such public demand that Alpert assembled a band he could tour with.

“We’ve been coming to the islands for years and years,” he said. “It’ll be great to be back. We have a terrific group and we have a good time. It’ll be great to be back.”