The Meters – Gettin’ Funkier All the Time: The Complete Josie/Reprise and Warner Recordings 1968-1977(SoulMusic)★★★★
Instrumental groups were a thing of the Sixties. We had the Shadows of course and the Tornados of “Telstar” fame. But in the States they tended to be a little more soulful.
In Memphis, Booker T and the MGs reigned supreme, while further down south in New Orleans a four-piece group called the Meters were applying their own brand of Crescent City funk.
As this magnificent six-CD set of all their recorded material shows, they began in the late Sixties with a string of records that helped to redefine soul music and set it on a course that would encompass James Brown, Sly and The Family Stone and all things funky.
George Porter Jnr (bass) and Leo Nocentelli (guitar) supplied the Rock of Gibraltar-like rhythm section, Zigaboo Modeliste provided the inimitable New Orleans drum sound while holding it all together with glorious organ riffs was keyboards player Art Neville.
There was no one else who sounded like them – and tracks such as “Sophisticated Cissy”, “Cissy Strut” and “Look-ka Py Py” set the benchmark for other groups to follow.
Even when they were signed by major label Reprise in 1972, there was diminution in the sound or the power of the group’s output.
Famously chosen by Paul McCartney to play at the release party for his Venus and Mars album aboard the Queen Mary in Long Beach, California, they were spotted by Mick Jagger. He got them to open for the Rolling Stones during their US tour in 1975 and European tour the following year.
The album that followed Fire on the Bayou, became one of their most famous with tracks such as “Talkin’ About New Orleans”, “Mardi Gras Mambo” and “Jambalaya (On the Bayou)” providing that ever-present link to their hometown.
Sadly it couldn’t last. The band broke up in 1980 and although they reformed later they never quite recovered their hit-making status, although their music lived in the hundreds of samples that were picked up by groups in the hip-hop era.
As this great set shows, in their prime they changed the face and the future of black American music.
