Black Pearl - Live! (1970, US, bluesy soulpsych, Prophesy vinyl rip,single wav + cue, log, DR13, artwork)

Live Fillmore West October, 1968

*** Reviewed by great fellow Adamus67 ***

“Black Pearl appeared with a promising first album – no real experiments, but a distinct Yardbirds echo in the metallic clanging cacophony of precisely distorted guitars. Their second LP fizzled out in bad soul music.”

Yardbirds echo? Metallic clanging cacophony? Precisely distorted guitars? Oooh, yum. Time for a little online research and, hopefully, discovery…Turns out Black Pearl was a Boston band. Well, ultimately San Francisco-based, but originally from Boston (and coming from that area myself, there’s always a place in my heart for a Boston band). And their backstory is one of those classic gems you love to uncover when doing music-archeology.

Black Pearl was Bernie “B.B” Fieldings (vocals), Oak O’Connor (drums), Tom Mulcahy (guitar), Geoffrey Morris (bass), and Jerry Causi (guitar) and Bruce Benson (guitar). Morris, Causi and Benson had been members of the Barbarians, a mid-‘60s garage band from Cape Cod noted for a couple of reasons. They had longer hair than most bands at the time (which was still a big deal in the mid-‘60s), and their drummer, Victor “Moulty” Moulton, played with prosthetic hook, having lost his left arm in an explosion at the age of 14. He actually held one of his drumsticks with the hook! And, not only that, the Barbarians wrote and performed a rather melodramatic (albeit slightly humorous) song chronicling the drummer’s life and loss, “Moulty.” But the Barbarians were perhaps best known for their appearance in one of the first rock concert movies, The T.A.M.I. Show, with such big-timers as James Brown, Chuck Berry and the Rolling Stones, as well as their chart hit “Are You a Boy or Are You a Girl?”

Black Pearl’s live album was recorded at the Fillmore West in San Francisco in 1968. The record starts off with a soulful song called Uptown before hitting the Blues with I Get The Blues Most Every Night. The flipside is what you really need to listen to however. First there’s a cover of James Brown’s Cold Sweat. The tune is played a little more laid back with a much loser arrangement than the original, and it’s strung out to around 11 minutes. The drummer also drops a nice and long drum break in the middle. The album ends with another extended rendition of People Get Ready.

As you’ve probably guessed by now, if you’re a fan of the MC5, it would certainly be worth it to hunt down a copy of Black Pearl.

Thank you so much Adam for that effort

 gigic2255

Black Pearl was composed of Bernie "B.B" Fieldings (vocals), Bruce Benson (guitar), Oak O'Connor (drums), Geoffrey Morris (guitar), Tom Mulcahy (guitar) and Jerry Causi (bass). Morris, Causi and Benson had been members of the Barbarians, a 60s garage band noted for their extreme long hair for the times and their single, " Are You a Boy or Are You A Girl". The Barbarians were also noted for the band's drummer, Moulty, who had lost one hand in a childhood accident and consequently played drums with a hook. The band was formed after Barbarians' singer and drummer Moulty refused to travel to Boulder, Colorado for a two week engagement. A new drummer, Oak O'Connor, plus Mulcahy and Fieldings, joined with ex-Barbarians Morris, Causi and Benson, all initially based in Boston, to form Black Pearl in 1967. The band relocated from Boston to San Francisco, after a period of time in Colorado. Fieldings, who was white, was a wild showman who modeled his stage presence on that of James Brown. His admiration for James Brown was evident on the group's live album, which contains a twelve minute version of James Brown's "Cold Sweat". As noted by one reviewer, "Black Pearl crank out some hard rockin' psych-rock music with the most ferocious drumbeats you've heard in a while." The band's three guitar lineup was considered to be both unique and powerful, being a format also found in contemporaries Moby Grape and Buffalo Springfield. Black Pearl released two albums, Black Pearl (1969) and Black Pearl - Live! (1970), with the second being less well-received than the first.
(~wikipedia)

Might revise this tomorrow, but wanted to get something up tonight before my radio show at KCRW. Best I can gather, Black Pearl was a Los Angeles based group, who put out a couple of records in the rock’n'soul vein (the other being a self-titled record on Atlantic with some really great artwork). They were led by B.B. Fieldings and featured not one, or two but three…count ‘em up, three guitarists (or four if you include the bass player). Recorded live at the Fillmore West in Frisco in 1968, this record is fairly highly prized because of a pretty solid breakdown in “Cold Sweat.” Overall the record is a solid showcase for the group and for Fieldings’ sincere appreciation of black music. “Cold Sweat” shows off the best parts of the group, solid groove, nice and funky, mostly based off the James Brown original, but with other bits thrown in, particularly at the breakdown as B.B. calls out each member of the band “Memphis Soul Stew” style beginning with the drummer who he implores to do it “dirty” and “nasty”. “Uptown” is similar in style and feeling to “Cold Sweat,” though with some “mildly” racist essentialism associated with white folks going to the “darker” side of town to let it all hang out, though I think B.B.’s sincerity makes it seem more endearing (especially when he’s talking about soul food) than totally ignorant (A fine line admittedly, and maybe it’s just me, but since I’ve been doing cultural studies research on race and representation, I feel like I hear this trope a lot in the 50s and 60s). B.B. certainly was attempting to do his part to bridge the Soul / Hippie divide, this especially comes out during his version of “People Get Ready” which contains these pearls of wisdom towards the end.
(~meltingpotblog)

Tracks:
side one
A1.Uptown
A2.I Get The Blues Most Every Night
A3.Hermit Freak Show
side two
B1.Cold Sweat
B2.People Get Ready

Black Pearl:
Bernie "B.B" Fieldings - vocals
Bruce Benson - guitar
Oak O'Connor - drums
Geoffrey Morris - guitar
Tom Mulcahy - guitar
Jerry Causi - bass

[Rip and Scans by gigic2255]



Click  -  http://www.mediafire.com/download/zu7ixd94wzwnhkl/Black+Pearl+-+Live%21+%281970%29.rar

or

Black Pearl - Black Pearl + Live! CD, WAV


http://www.mediafire.com/file/74yab52chg922gh/Black_Pearl_-_Black_Pearl__Live%21_.rar