The Meters: The Meters [JACKPOT]

Why you'll love it

Jackpot Records had Kevin Gray cut this reissue from the original analog master tapes. It holds "Cissy Strut" and "Sophisticated Cissy," both major R&B chart hits in 1969 and two of the founding records of funk.

This edition

• Cut from the original analog master tapes by Kevin Gray
• Stereo mix

About the album

Before they were The Meters, they were the band you heard behind everyone else. Art Neville, Leo Nocentelli, George Porter Jr. and Joseph (Zigaboo) Modeliste were the house band for Allen Toussaint and his Sansu Enterprises, backing Lee Dorsey and a stream of New Orleans singers, and in 1969 Toussaint and Marshall Sehorn put them in front of the microphone on their own.

There is barely a vocal in sight. Instead, four players lean into tight, syncopated grooves built on the city's second-line rhythms, with Nocentelli's choppy guitar and Neville's organ trading lines over Porter and Modeliste. "Here Comes the Meter Man" and "Live Wire" crackle, "Cardova" struts, "Ease Back" sits deep in the pocket, and "Sehorns Farm" tips its hat to the man in the producer's chair. Every tune is credited to all four members, which tells you how this band worked: nobody leads, everybody locks in, and the groove does the talking.

Hip hop producers have mined these grooves for decades, and in 2018 the band received the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award. Four chaps, almost no words, and the rest of funk has been taking notes ever since.

Also at Kops: more The Meters on vinyl · browse Classic Soul

Tracklist

Listen

On Jackpot (cat# JPR 086), a reissue of the 1969 album.