SoCal native finds voice in Deep South blues

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SoCal native finds voice in Deep South blues
April 15, 2009
By JIM TRAGESER
North County News

His latest CD is a collection of classic blues songs. He's played behind blues luminaries ranging from Johnny Shines to J.B. Hutto to Big Mama Thornton.

But Bernie Pearl (playing April 17 at Old Time Music in San Diego) doesn't hail from the Mississippi Delta, nor has he ever lived on the South Side of Chicago.

He's Southern California born and bred ---- an L.A. native who's called Long Beach home for the past 30 years.

"I was born in East L.A. and was there until I was almost 13, then we moved to West Adams (a community in L.A.)," Pearl said earlier this week by phone from his Long Beach home. After graduating high school, he went to Los Angeles City College, and then graduated from UCLA ---- where he earned a degree in Middle Eastern studies.

"It was an interest of mine, and it would have been my academic pursuit," he said of his major. "But at this time, I was also working at my brother's club, the Ash Grove, and encountering all these wonderful artists. That really kind of drew my interest ---- otherwise I woud have been an academic, and happily so."

Working at his brother's nightclub as a teenager was what first introduced Pearl to the blues in the late 1950s.

"That was the actual, solid, real encounter ---- it was there that I was able to see and meet and take lessons from people like Brownie McGhee, Lightning Hopkins, Mance Lipscomb, Mississippi Fred McDowell."

But Pearl said he'd been playing guitar for a few years before he began working at the Ash Grove, before he began picking the brains and bumming musical tips off the many blues giants who came through there.

"Prior to that, my sister would host hootenannys. That's where I first began playing guitar," he said, adding that he was 13 or 14 at the time. "It was primarily a lot of the UCLA folk song chorus at the time, and they would do all these Burl Ives, Pete Seeger and union songs."

The youngest of five, Pearl was the first of his family to become a professional performer ---- but a nephew followed in his footsteps. Randy California, the innovative guitarist for the 1960s rock band Spirit, was the son of Pearl's sister, and also got his start working in the family business at the Ash Grove.

Tthrough the years, Pearl said, he's managed to make a living from music, even if his reputation as a name player has been late in coming.

"My development has been along the lines of doing everything from teaching to deejaying to booking to being a bandleader," Pearl said. "I always generally had a band I would lead. I did a lot of the backup work at the Ash Grove ---- they'd come out as individuals, and I'd get a band together.

"Through the years, I've done all those things. I've produced, done radio, done a lot of teaching."

In the 1980s, Pearl began to earn a reputation beyond Los Angeles when he began playing with Harmonica Fats and Papa John Creach. He started up his own label, Bee Bump Records, and recorded albums by both men, with his band backing them.

When ill health forced both Fats and Creach to retire (before both men died), Pearl decided to continue forward under his own name.

"I began thinking of going out on my own, not only as the leader but also promoting myself as a solo blues artist," he said. "I was developing new ideas on how to play, addressing the challenge of doing my own vocals."

And while he said he always encouraged Fats to write his own songs in order to create his own musical identity, Pearl said he doesn't feel the same impetus himself.

"I don't feel the urge, and I find my expression through the classics," he said.

"And my focus is really on the guitar. I want to sound authentic, but I don't want to sound like I'm copying."