The “Name-The-Band” Session

Jack makes it seem like Dan Mahoney suggested “Mighty Yascha and the Pearls”, and we all agreed, and that was that. What I remember was one evening in Spring of 1966, all of us gathered around a table at the Snack Bar in the Student Center – where we usually played cards (mostly Bridge or Whist) – struggling for hours to come up with a name. I think we were sober, but we seemed to be challenged by the inability to suggest anything that wasn’t gross, obscene, or ridiculously stupid.  One after the other we went around the table, each of us offering something more inane than the last.  To the casual observer, we were having a rollicking good time, but we really weren’t getting anywhere.  I’m not exactly sure when the word Pearls was proposed, but I don’t think it was direct.  One of the bad ideas may have been something like Mighty Yascha and the Pig F**kers, and from Pigs we got Swine, and from Swine we got Pearls, as in Pearls Before Swine – a band led by Tom Rapp that actually came into being in 1965 in Florida, but didn’t become well-known until 1967 when they recorded “One Nation Underground”, so we couldn’t have stolen it.  Eventually they became pretty successful. To this day I think of us whenever I hear their name mentioned.

Honestly, I don’t remember the exact order of things – whether we committed to “Mighty Yascha” first, or “and the Pearls”, but it wasn’t gross or obscene, and everyone didn’t immediately hate it or dismiss it, so it stuck – dumb as it may have been.  Anyone remember where we went after that?

It actually took us way too long to realize that Mighty Yascha and the Pearls (without Yascha) was just too unwieldy, too hard to explain, and wouldn’t fit on the front skin of the bass drum.  So we became just “The Pearls”.  Not bad, and about as close to “The Stones” as we were ever gonna get.

Origins 3

PEARLS origins -  from Jack Hudock

May I follow up on the Pearls’ instruments briefly?  It really helps to have the financial support of parents who don’t think playing rock ’n roll is sacrilegious.  When George first began to take lessons, Mom and Dad bought him a used Gibson ES-175, a big fat (about 3 inches deep) hollow jazz box with two PAF Humbuckers, split parallelogram fret board inlays, tobacco sunburst paint job, and a single Florentine cutaway.  I believe it had an ebony fret board, but maybe not.  I was largely unaware of such nuances back then.  You, or your parents, can still buy one of these new, but at very close to $4,000 you had better be serious.

The Pearls rhythm guitarist, Bill Crepet, still has one of the original ES-175 models with a single P-90 in the bridge position.  That was the original configuration beginning in the late 40s.  It has a very ballsy scream through some solid state electronic distortion and is a dream of easy playability.  Nice catch, Bill.

George, who (like me) was spending our parents’ money, discarded the 175 for a Stratocaster because the 175 was prone to feedback.  Who knew that feedback would become a trend?  When it became a trend, the Strat went down the well in favor of another Gibson, the big ES-355 TDC.  In the photo at the top, George is playing a Gibson ES-335 he borrowed.  He’s standing next to a Fender Jaguar (I believe) he also borrowed.

Bill Crepet who, in retrospect, seems to be the sensible Pearl got himself a beautiful black Gretsch that he still owns.  It served him, and the band, well through our lives together as a band.  I played it recently.  I’d keep it too if it were mine!  What a great guitar.

At one point, my Mom bought me a Guild F-212 12-string guitar made in the old factory in Hoboken.  This was long ago, after Guild had left Manhattan, and before Guild moved to Westerly, Connecticut.  We never used it in a performance because we couldn’t figure out how to amplify it.  And, I couldn’t play it very well!  It was a great guitar that I ruined by years of neglect and clumsy luthiery work.  Eventually, it had to go because I wanted to be Steve Cropper, but I had Leadbelly’s guitar.  I traded it for another guitar I no longer own.

Regarding the PA we finally acquired:  Bill Crepet got a Traynor column with 4 twelves in it and we drove that baby with a Bogen 50 watt PA amplifier.  In an effort to polish our vocal style, Bill found a Fender tape echo machine that made our PA sound like the voice of the almighty.  It didn’t change the fact that we couldn’t hear ourselves sing over the instruments but it was tough as nails especially considering its many moving parts.  I don’t know if you can get such a sweet and versatile echo effect out of the modern solid state gear.  That Fender echo was another dream.

THAT NAME.  What are these Pearls of which you speak?  Here’s what I think I remember:

At the time the name was coined, George was living with Dan Mahoney in the dorms.  Dan was a tough, serious guy who could be flamboyantly and distinctively funny.  I remember him sticking his whole body, from the waist up, out of the dorm windows from time to time, waving his arms in an imitation of a papal blessing on St. Peter’s square.  In the persona he occupied on those occasions he was “Mighty Yascha” and all men bowed before him.  Dan, I think, suggested that it wouldn’t do for us to take ourselves too seriously.  Boy, was he right. He also wanted to have some involvement in the band.  For reasons of self-deprecating humor content he suggested we name ourselves (just as The Ink Spots did) with some reference to skin color.  Mighty Yascha & the Pearls filled the bill perfectly.  Dan was in, and we were white.

Dan, as I recall, promised (or perhaps threatened) to make himself a “Mojo Stick” out of a tomato pole with soda bottle caps nailed to it, and show up at gigs to stomp around on the stage while we played.  He never did.  I recall having to announce from the stage repeatedly that “Mighty Yascha ain’t here tonight.”  I had to, on occasion, also announce in the first set that we had already received numerous special requests but we were going to play the whole four sets anyway!

If by now, gentle reader, you can’t see why all of us thought this was great fun then you should blame it on your browser and click to some less comical adventure story.

HIRING BILL BENDER. An attempt at self improvement.

We never figured out, until too late, that our vocal failings came as a result of not being able to hear our own voices through the PA.  We brought Bill Bender on because we figured he could make us sound better.  The man can sing harmony (by instinct it seems) to this day.  We had no idea he’d already been to New York and recorded.  We also had no idea that we should figure out how to drive at least one stage monitor with the PA.  It was long ago in geological time, children, and I’m not sure any of the local bands had monitors then.  These days, you ain’t nothin’ if you don’t have lights, a smoke machine, eye make-up, and a cape.  But we worked back in the day.

We had toyed with the idea of bringing in someone with a keyboard to enlarge the sound.  The one fellow we briefly considered (name? Who remembers names at this point?) wasn’t very good and he had a small, wheezy Farfisa Combo Compact that didn’t have an impressive sound.  It seemed like a bad bet to all of us that he could help us and truly earn a share of our revenue.  The revenue was skimpy to the point of being ridiculous; we didn’t mind because it was a great hobby.  But splitting it 5 ways instead of 4 seemed dopey until we got the chance to make Bill Bender a Pearl.

I seem to remember Bill requiring us, as part of basic training, to sing the Don and Juan hit (What’s Your Name?) in the dorm’s concrete stairwells in harmony (well, the best we could approximate) so we’d get the hang of singing together.  In the stairwells, we could hear our own voices, you see.  It was fun, and it may have made a difference.  The fun was what we were after.  And Bill didn’t mind the skimpy pay.  He already knew, I think, the lesson Billy Preston taught us all when he sang Nothin’ From Nothin’ Means Nothin’.  Bill is still a Pearl, still playing his Strat, and jamming with Doug Morgenstern.

NEXT:  Pearls gigs I can remember.  Nothing beats performing, especially among friends.

El Cinco de Pearlas

Musings of Bill Bender

This is very interesting  for me because it preceded my days as a Pearl member.  Before the Pearls, I was singing rock and roll in the dorms (Chenango) with Doug Morgenstern playing guitar.  I also sang some harmony with a guy named Joel Schwartz, who also played guitar and had a real deep voice like Bill Medley of the Righteous Brothers.  I also sang with a guy named Pete Morticelli, who actually wrote songs.  In my freshman year (1966), based on a contact he had in New York, we went to Manhatten and recorded a record (called Lost) at the Kama Sutra (sp?) Studio (the record company that had the rights to the Lovin Spoonful).  We brought a lead guitarist who we knew (can’t remember his name) and we actually recorded the song and the reverse side (which sucked).  I sang background and harmony and the completed song actually sounded pretty good.  It got played a little on the Binghamton radio stations but then disappeared like the Titanic.  Recording in the studio was cool, as we had earphones and I had to harmonize to what I was hearing because we all sang separately.

But the real fun for me began when I met Jack and George and Bill and Andy. 

Origins 2

PEARLY ORIGINS: Part 2  -  recollections of Jack Hudock

I admit I’m a little fuzzy on the exact chronology here, but which of us is not at this age?

I don’t recall the “first gig.”  It may not have been memorable, and that would explain my lack of recall.  One early gig I do recall was the one upstairs in the Endicott bowling alley called Rainbow Lanes.  I’m sure it was an early gig, because I recall that I was still playing the venerable Conrad bass.   It may have been the one where we “loaded in” out of my father’s Rolls Royce. That I recall it at all is because of an event that happened in the midst of a song I was singing.

The cheap leatherette strap I was using to hold up that heavy, unbalanced bass was the kind that came with a series of holes punched in it. To adjust its length, you put the strap button in a different hole.  In mid song, just as the girls were beginning to swoon, the top strap button ripped out of the strap and suddenly I was holding this freaking log up with my hands.  Though I kept singing, I couldn’t keep playing and pop the strap button into a different hole because I’d left my third hand at home!  So I stopped playing and re-attached the strap, then proceeded to jump back into the instrumental mix.

No one in the band batted an eye.  We all went on as if nothing had happened.  I remember thinking at the time that it was now obvious we were a band, and one unexplained momentary drop out like that no longer could derail us.  Was it the first Pearls “eureka” moment?  Probably not, but it’s the first one I remember.

The band that was playing in another meeting room at the bowling alley that night was from the South Side of Binghamton.  They were called Jay Walker and the Pedestrians.  They were pretty good, with much more involved stage antics than we ever worked up.  That band was actually approaching the status of “show band” at the time.  In one of our first marketing/business development prevarications we started telling people that we had “opened” for Jay Walker and the Pedestrians.  It worked to our advantage.

The advantage came because another Tuskman, whose name I do not recall, was working on some student board or committee that was responsible for vetting and contracting for low-level student entertainment.  He got us many jobs, at very low pay because that’s all the money SUNY would allow student boards to spend.  But he got us jobs.  He probably got us the gigs in the snack bar.  He told the committee that we had opened for Jay Walker and the Pedestrians. Some of the amateur blockheads on the committee heard him say Junior Walker and the All Stars because they didn’t know the difference.  And so that was the advantage.

I soon got sick of that Japanese bass’ limitations and prevailed upon my Mom to buy me a “real” bass that was good enough that it was balanced.  I actually think my Mom & Dad were pleasantly surprised that we were getting paid and fairly regularly.  She went for the bass (a majestic Gibson EB-2 with a tobacco sunburst) but declined to spring for a bass amp.  We went to Sam Ash in Brooklyn to buy the Gibson bass.  Probably the bass amp was declined because on this same trip to Sam Ash she bought George that huge Gibson ES-355 TDC Stereo guitar and the Super Reverb amp.

I went to work during winter break that year as a bellhop at the Lake Placid Club to make enough money to buy the Bassman amp that Bill Crepet and I played through for the duration.  Fargin’ Harpur was on a trimester calendar at the time so we had to take finals when we returned from winter break.  What monsters.  Anyway, I did more reading and studying of invertebrate zoology on that winter break than I worked.  The LPC noticed, and declined to hire me back, or to hire me ever again, the following summer.  But I got the Bassman.

So there we were.  We had a professional drummer, expensive instruments, and a PA system.

COMING UP:  The Pearls name; where did it come from?  And, the Pearls determine to improve their sound.  Will it be a keyboard guy, a 12-string guitar, or shall we get Bender to teach us how to sing?

Origins 1

PEARLY ORIGINS: Part 1  -  recollections of Jack Hudock

George graduated from high school in 1965 then went to Harpur.  He had taken guitar lessons for several years in high school.  When he got to Harpur (later in '65 or perhaps in '66) he announced that he was going to start a band.  This was in the early spring of '65.  He had several friends in a local band (their name was Just Us) and was inspired by the lead guitarist's use of a primitive device called the Maestro FuzzTone to conceal the guitarist's lack of skill in solos.  It worked for that purpose, and George used it well, as you may recall.

I told George that I wanted to be in the band, but he observed that I didn't play guitar and he saw no need for a clarinet, trombone, or coronet in his band (instruments I had cast aside many years before).  He said, "You like stereo gear.  Why don't you be the sound guy?" I observed that I didn't think the sound guy would get laid much.  That was my principle motivation for many behaviors back then.  So George allowed as how he had no bassist and if I could learn the bass in three months I could give it a run at the first gig he had lined up the following November.  At the time, I was planning to return to my summer employment at the Lake Placid Club and George had a job lined up there also.  My parents were supportive because, I think, they wanted us out of town and gainfully employed for the summer so they could catch a break and stop worrying about us as corrupting influences on my younger brothers. 

My Mom learned of the challenge I had accepted from George so Mom and Dad bought me a cheap (very cheap) electric bass made in Japan; I got no case.  The brand name was "Conrad."  It was a cheesy copy of a Fender bass with a sunburst finish.  You can see them on ebay from time to time, selling for well less than $500 even as "vintage" instruments.  It was hugely neck heavy and hard to play because I had to hold the neck up with my left hand while trying to fret notes.  I took it to Lake Placid with me along with George and his black strat and a very tasty old Gibson tube amplifier. 

I got the bassist in the hotel's cocktail lounge trio (he played a stand up bass) to give me lessons that summer.  George and I would entertain the other busboys and bellhops in the staff dorm at night until security made us turn it off.  George was surprised at my rate of progress as was I, and my instructor too.   

The following fall, the nameless band began. I know that when we actually began to play together Bill Crepet and Andy were part of the group.  I didn't even know where Andy came from, but a steadying influence on the group was our acknowledgement that Andy and, to a lesser extent, George were musicians so there was no arguing about who would call most of the shots.  The early playing was probably done in dorm lounges, billed as "practices" and lord knows we needed it.  I also recall that we'd end a song (more or less together) and every one would back away from their microphones and say nothing.  By default, because I didn't know better, I became the "guy who talked."

Actually, in the beginning we had no PA.  George and I talked our parents into buying one and I sort of figured out how to patch it together and then tear it down so that early in the game we had a PA, but probably not at the beginning.  We never had stage monitors and, as a result, couldn't really hear our voices over the drums and guitars.  This was the cause of the audience's widely held view that we couldn't carry a tune in a bucket!  I knew I could sing, because I sang in dorm rooms with Bill Bender.  But in those informal venues, we could hear our voices.  That was a big help.

This is enough for now.  The Pearly Gem from that summer in Lake Placid is this:  One night George climbed onto the roof of the staff women's dorm with his strat and the amp, and blasted Wild Thing into the night.  The guys and I thought this was fargin' great.  Some of the younger women thought it was cute.  Hotel management saw to it that George was fired summarily.

UP NEXT:  The Pearls get paid for a couple gigs so George and I get our parents to spring for new instruments and a couple of princely amplifiers.