NASHVILLE, TN- Who was the first all-Black punk band? This has become an increasingly frequent question among music fans over the last several years, as Black-art previously forgotten by mainstream media has gradually resurfaced into public appreciation. However, there is one band that was engrossed in the thriving hotbed of aggressive creative energy that was the 1970s New York City underground punk scene, living and performing alongside punk legends such as Sid Vicious, the New York Dolls, Dead Boys, the Cramps, and the Germs, still without their due time in the public spotlight. Their name is Pure Hell.
Formed in 1974 by four Iggy Pop, David Bowie, and Jimi Hendrix obsessed teenagers in West Philadelphia, Pure Hell would introduce their own edge to their music immediately. The line-up, consisting of vocalist Kenny ‘Stinker’ Gordon, bassist Lenny ‘Steel’ Boles, guitarist Preston ‘Chip Wreck’ Morris, and drummer Michael ‘Spider’ Sanders, found themselves moving to New York soon after, where they had more room to find their footing as a band.
“Growing up in West Philadelphia, which was all black, we were some of the craziest guys you could have possibly seen walking the streets back then,” said Gordon in a Dazed Digital article. “We dressed in drag and wore wigs, basically daring people to bother us. People in the neighborhood would say, ‘Don’t go into houses with those guys, you may not come out!’”
In 1975 Pure Hell dove head first into the New York social scene, moving into the Chelsea Hotel temporary home that would house a long list of influential characters including Bob Dylan, Janis Joplin, and Jim Morrison. Their first gig located at Frenzy’s thrift proved to set the flame behind what would be remembered as fiery performances from the band, as Gordon in Dazed said Morris “rather memorably caught the amplifier on fire due to a combination of maximum volume and faulty wires.”
Rather than aligning themselves with labels like many of their counterparts, Pure Hell aligned themselves with the management of Curtis Knight, who claimed in his auto-biography to have discovered Jimi Hendrix as the lead singer of Hendrix’s first real band The Squires. While Knight and the band had an excited and passionate relationship at first, real tensions first arose when Pure Hell took issue with the way Knight promoted them for their first European tour in 1978. When recounting the event in Swindle Magazine, Gordon said the band took issue with being promoted as, “The World’s First All Black Punk Band,” which made him feel like the part of a novelty act rather than a respected punk band in their own right.
During this tour, Pure Hell released their only two singles on Knight’s record label Golden Sphinx, a cover of Nancy Sinatra’s “These Boots Were Made For Walkin’” and their original song “No Rules.” It would be shortly after a second European tour in 1979 that Pure Hell would fall-out with Knight, who then flew back to America alone with the master tapes of the band’s upcoming album, and the band itself would break up in 1980.
What followed was decades of unreleased music until the 2000’s when Pure Hell’s lost album Noise Addiction was auctioned off by Kathy Knight following Kurtis’ passing. It was then that Mike Schneider of Welfare Records bought the album which is now available online. Hardcore punk legend Henry Rollins of Black Flag also tracked down the original acetate of the band’s first single and reissued it on his label 2.13.61, in collaboration with In The Red Records.
