Pearls Before Swine was an American folk rock band formed by Tom Rapp in 1965 in Eau Gallie, which is now part of Melbourne, Florida.
With high school friends Wayne Harley (banjo, mandolin), Lane Lederer (bass, guitar) and Roger Crissinger (piano, organ), Rapp wrote and recorded some songs which, inspired by the Fugs, they sent to the avant-garde ESP-Disk label in New York.
The album eventually sold some 200,000 copies, although management and contractual problems meant that the band received little reward for its success.
The five albums on Reprise were generally more conventional in sound, but contained a unique blend of humanistic and mystical songs, with some whimsical touches.
Some were recorded in New York and others – particularly The Use of Ashes and City of Gold – in Nashville with top session musicians including Charlie McCoy, Kenny Buttrey, and other members of Area Code 615.
In 1971, Pearls Before Swine toured for the first time, the group then comprising Rapp, Mike Krawitz (piano), Gordon Hayes (bass) and Jon Tooker (guitar).
After being contacted by the magazine Ptolemaic Terrascope, he re-appeared in 1997 at Terrastock, a music festival in Providence, Rhode Island, with his son's band, Shy Camp, and began recording again with 1999's A Journal of the Plague Year.
[6] Tom Rapp appears on the Neil Young 2-CD tribute This Note's For You Too with the song "After the Gold Rush" on Inbetweens Records.
Wolfert worked on albums by Barbra Streisand, Don Covay, and the Four Tops,[11] where he would produce the song "I Believe in You and Me" which would later be covered by Whitney Houston.
[13] Pearls Before Swine have been cited as a key influence by various musicians including The Dream Academy,Edgar Broughton, Damon and Naomi, the Bevis Frond, This Mortal Coil, and the Japanese band Ghost.