"Sam & The Soul Machine were a band connected at birth with The
Meters. As Meters fans may know, during 1967 The Meters played New
Orleans clubs as a 7-piece band called the Neville Sound; later that
year a club owner offered the group - which had included Cyril and Aaron
Neville as well as a sax player - a residency, but only able to
acommidate four pieces, Cyril, Aaron, and the sax were dropped. With
only one Neville left the group's name was changed to The Meters, and
after Allen Toussaint caught the group live the legendary producer
started using them on sessions by Willie West, Lee Dorsey, Betty Harris,
and others on his and Marshall Sehorn's Sansu label. Meanhile Cyril
joined forces with Sam Henry (late of the Sam Henry trio, which included
guitarist Leo Nocentelli!) to form the Soul Machine, and before long
the group became hot in N.O. clubs, but never gained much attention
outside the city. Meanwhile, during 1968 Josie Records signed The
Meters.
By early 1969 The Meters were hitting the national charts.
Allen Toussaint arranged for Sam & The Soul Machine to record an
album at Cosimo Matassa's studio; shortly thereafter the IRS closed in
on Matassa for tax evasion, confiscating assets and master tapes that
included the unreleased Soul Machine album. Thirty-five years later,
Funky Delicacies has restored and issued this legendary lost artifact in
New Orleans' musical history.
Compared to the Meters - which is
inevitable if not fair - these guys have a more langourous, laid back
approach, and in Gary Brown a prominent and talented sax player (which
leads one to guess it may be Brown who plays on the Meters' debut album
bonus track called 'Soul Machine.'). For some reason, Cyril Neville, who
drummed at gigs and appears on this CD's group cover photo, was
replaced by Henry for these spring 1969 sessions by one Joseph
Modeliste, whose style and virtuosity is unmistakeable. That was a
fortuitous choice, for what better drummer could one hope for in a
funk/soul band? Though the music doesn't emphasize the amazing
syncopated rhythmic telepathy as the Meters' does, one can hear
Modeliste catch fire on the J.B.'s-style workout "Meditation," and
elsewhere. Henry himself is not as rhythmic an organ player as Art
Neville - his sound more fully suffuses the music and his playing is
less percussive than Neville's. Guitarist Eugene Sinegal is a more blues
influenced player than Leo Modeliste - check out the title track. And
though nobody competes with the Meters, comparisons - whatever these
guys' origins - should end when you hear this long lost album. The
tracks are indeed funky, laid back and if the sonics aren't up to
Sundazed's state of the art remastering job on its Meters reissues, this
band has its own identity and skills, and the music grooves along
nicely. And there's no question they can play - the music is strong
enough to make one wonder what might have happened if the S.M. had
gotten its break instead of having this master lying around Sam's
quarters all these years. Besides a terrific, jazz- and r & b-
influenced funk set, bonus tracks are included (without annotation as to
who's playing or singing), by an edition of the group that emphasized
vocals more than the original, and that put out one or more singles (the
cover states these recordings are from 1969 - 74). In the mid '70s, the
S.M. moved to Nashville, played regularly at one of James Brown's clubs
until 1978 when, live bands falling by the wayside with the ascendence
of disco, Brown himself let the Soul Machine go and turned his club into
a disco. Sam Henry later taught music in New Orleans' public school
system. Cyril Neville, who had a Meters-backed solo single out on Josie
in late '69, soon was playing congas with that bandand by the mid '70s
was an official Meter.
Meters fans with copies of that group's debut
on CD, take note of the track "Gospel Bird." Fans of N.O. r & b, or
funk, check this set out and enjoy the inventive arrangements and raw
power."
That was how Wild Jimmy Spruill (June 9th, 1934 –
February 15th, 1996) described his playing style to researcher John
Broven, in 1986. He went on to explain it as “…up and down strokes,
but I knew how to choke the strings… you had to choke all the way down
the neck to get that scratchin’ sound. Then I bent the notes, eight
notes above from where I started… you know, ‘Eeeeooowwww’ back down.
It’s hard if you don’t know how to do it, but to me it come natural. It
was my own sound. I don’t go behind nobody… if I can’t be my own person,
I don’t bother with it!”
