The Meters A Message From The Meters

♫ In every good Blues song there’s a litle bit of Soul, and without the Blues, Soul would not exist. On these 2CDs and in 40 songs by some of the greatest Blues & Soul artists, we tease out that relationship to reveal some gems of the genre. Whether it’s socially conscious Soul, or down home dirty Blues, these are the best you can have ♫

Rhino's Funkify Your Life: The Meters Anthology was the first truly comprehensive and widely available CD retrospective of the groundbreaking New Orleans funk band's work. These two chronologically arranged discs run down virtually every important track the band recorded under its own name, finally allowing a more general audience to hear why the Meters had earned such a stellar reputation among die-hard funk collectors and sample-minded hip-hoppers. Disc one, subtitled "The Josie Years," traces the group's 1969-1971 beginnings as a Booker T. & the MG's-like outfit, cutting brief instrumentals with a similar guitar/organ/bass/drums lineup.

Among the most sampled groups of the 60s and 70s by a slew of top rap and hip-hop artists of the 90s and beyond (including 2 Pac, Ice-T, A Tribe Called Quest, Public Enemy and Beastie Boys among others), the legendary New Orleans band and Grammy Lifetime Achievement awardees The Meters created an instantly recognizable sound through almost a decade of recording, initially for the Josie label and then for Reprise and Warner Brothers. Group members guitarist Leo Nocentelli, bassist George Porter Jr., drummer Joseph ‘Zigaboo’ Modeliste and keyboardist/singer Art Neville formed the core of the band, later augmented by Art’s younger brother, percussionist/singer Cyril who joined The Meters in 1975.

The first family of New Orleans had crossed paths countless times, but banded together in the '70s to play a smooth mix of R&B, jazz, and blues.

Organist Art Neville formed a band in 1966 in New Orleans with his brothers Aaron and Charles on vocals, Leo Nocentelli on guitar, George Porter on bass, and Joseph “Zigaboo” Modeliste on drums. Billing themselves as Art Neville & the Sounds, they signed to Sansu Enterprises, a label founded by Marshall Sehorn and writer, producer, arranger, and recording artist Allen Toussaint, and minus the vocalists, and now called the Meters, they became the house band for the label, providing backing tracks for releases by Lee Dorsey, Earl King, Betty Harris, and many others, including many cuts by Toussaint himself. The Meters would also track instrumentals that were used as filler tracks on LP releases by Sansu artists, and in time, there were enough of these instrumentals to release an LP in 1969 called the Meters, which Sehorn shrewdly placed with Josie Records because of that label’s connection to its parent company, Cosnat Distributors, at that time the largest East Coast music distributor. The Meters were something special, and their swampy precision practically defined the meaning and template of funk. Two more LPs, Look-Ka Py Py and Struttin’, appeared a year later in 1970 on the Josie imprint. When Josie went bankrupt in 1971, the Meters moved on to sign with Reprise Records and continued to release thundering funk records through the decade before gradually morphing into the more vocal-oriented group the Neville Brothers. This two-disc set collects the Meters' entire Josie catalog, including all three LPs, the A- and B-sides of four singles, four tracks billed to Art Neville & the Meters, and two tracks attributed to Cyril Neville & the Meters. The end result is a joyous and impressively funky survey of this stellar and professional band’s earliest recordings.

The Funk Box is a 4CD compilation released in 2000 consisting of some of the most primal funk and soul music, many of which are now owned by the Universal catalog and is there a reason this was released by Universal reissue subsidiary Hip-O? Yes.

In the late 60s there was a panic going on at jazz record companies. Records just weren't selling - sure Ella or Miles were shifting units, the big international stars, but new acoustic talent was having a hard time. Soul and funk was what was being danced to in the clubs. There was one ray of hope shining through. Since 1967, when Lou Donaldson had scored a Top 10 R&B album with Alligator Bogaloo his band had developed a hybrid of funky jazz that was selling units and filling the clubs. Donaldson's band, built upon Idris Muhammad's drumming base, played a mixture of originals and covers of hits by artists such as James Brown and Lee Dorsey.

Funky Miracle is a compilation album from the funk group The Meters on the Charly Records label, containing re-issued material mainly from their first three albums with Josie Records: The Meters (1969), Look-Ka Py Py (1970) and Struttin' (1970). In fact, 35 of the 36 tracks from these albums are present on Funky Miracle with only Wichita Lineman from Struttin' missing.

Funky Miracle is a compilation album from the funk group The Meters on the Charly Records label, containing re-issued material mainly from their first three albums with Josie Records: The Meters (1969), Look-Ka Py Py (1970) and Struttin' (1970). In fact, 35 of the 36 tracks from these albums are present on Funky Miracle with only Wichita Lineman from Struttin' missing.