“Black Pearl” (Sonny Charles and the Checkmates)

Today’s classic song of the day is one of Phil Spector’s last Wall of Sound productions, “Black Pearl” by Sonny Charles and the Checkmates. Released in April of 1969, the song hit #13 on the Billboard Hot 100, #10 on the Cash Box Top 100, and #8 on Billboard’s R&B chart.

“Black Pearl” was written by Toni Wine and Irwin Levine, with the typical assist by producer Phil Spector. You know Toni Wine as the writer or co-writer of such hits as “A Groovy Kind of Love” for the Mindbenders (and later covered by Phil Collins), “Candida” for Tony Orlando and Dawn, and “You Came, You Saw, You Conquered” by the Ronettes; she also sang backup for a number of artists, most notably for the fictional group the Archies on their hits “Sugar Sugar” and “Jingle Jangle.” Irwin Levine was also a prolific songwriter, writing or co-writing hits like “Tie a Yellow Ribbon Round the Old Oak Tree,” “Knock Three Times”, “Say, Has Anybody Seen My Sweet Gypsy Rose,” and (with Ms. Wine) “Candida” for Tony Orlando and Dawn; “This Diamond Ring” for Gary Lewis and the Playboys; and “I Woke Up in Love This Morning” for the Partridge Family.

Here’s what Toni Wine said inspired the song:

“It was about a black woman. The male is singing to her, she is his sweetheart. She is his world, and she is his black pearl. They’re dreaming of better times, better days, and he is saying ‘Black pearl, pretty little girl, let me put you up where you belong. Black pearl, precious little girl, you’ve been in the background much too long.’ Which, at that time, with segregation, you had black students, white students, but older people, a lot of the black women, were depicted as being housekeepers, cooks, rather than having positions in companies, whether they were capable or not. It was a very difficult time period. They really weren’t given the chances that their counterparts, the white women, may have been given. And it was time to have a song putting them on a pedestal. Because it shouldn’t be ‘they’ or ‘us’ or anything. We are all capable of doing the same job, and should be given that chance. If we do a job well, we should be given the opportunity to do it, regardless of black or white. And in those days it wasn’t as easy.”

Phil Spector, of course, was that genius/madman producer who pioneered the Wall of Sound in the 1960s. That sound had gone out of favor by the end of the decade, but he still applied those production techniques to the “Black Pearl” single. The result was a terrific track with socially conscious lyrics and a sound that stood apart from just about anything else on the radio at the time. Spector still had it and, when working with a song like “Black Pearl,” could still put a song on the radio and on the charts. It’s one of my favorite Spector songs; it just soars.