Artist: Eugene Blacknell
Album: I've Been (Down So Long) - Single
Label: Seaside Records
Year: ?
1. I've Been (Down So Long)
2. Holding On
I've been really busy lately, but here's a quick post just to keep things going. I found this single in a box outside of Rasputin's record store up here in Berkeley. Eugene Blacknell was a funk and soul guitarist from the Bay Area (Oakland, to be specific). You can read a short bio on him from AllMusic here. Not mentioned in this bio is that he died sometime in the 1980s, clearly much too young.
Apparently, he never released a full-length album, just various singles. With that in mind, it's a little sad to see "from the Forthcoming L.P." on the left-side of the label; I wonder why he never was able to release an entire album, and what it might have sounded like. If anything like the B-Side of this single in the video below, then we really missed out:
According to some info on him from a Ubiquity Records video, "[Eugene's] musical career stretched from the early 1960s to the end of the 1980s and during that time he established himself as an East Bay original, an entrepreneur, an activist, and a family man. With so many accomplishments it's an irony of fate that he died before releasing an album despite having recorded enough material for several."
Ubiquity Records released a compilation album of Eugene Blacknell's work, which you can purchase here. For now, I hope you enjoy the single.
Ripped from vinyl at 320 kbps (mp3). Download the single here.
Much love,
This Mutha
