Michael Liggins met “Mighty” Mike Lenaburg in Phoenix, Arizona in 1963. Liggins was cutting his teeth with a band called The Soul Patrol. “We hit it off good. He was young, as was I,” Lenaburg recalls. “He was doing instrumental soul – it wasn’t funk. Not yet.”

Liggins progressed along. By 1966, The Soul Patrol had broken up and Liggins joined the Lenaburg-produced Soulsations. The Soulsations were close kin to Liggins’ later ensemble, The Super Souls. “They were mostly Mexican, except for Mike and Rudy (and Don, on “Loaded to the Gills”), who were black,” Lenaburg states. In 1968 Liggins left The Soulsations and The Super Souls were born.

“Psychedelic music was in at the time. I liked that kind of music,” Lenaburg recalls. “You have to remember, I was in my early twenties and I had a record shop in Phoenix – Melody Records. I listened to all the latest music. Locally, there wasn’t as much of a market for that type of music as we had intially thought. It was out there, so it didn’t really hit. Of course, I was young and really didn’t know what I was doing either. I recorded the band and released their records because I believed in the group. I wasn’t really aware of what was happening, but I liked the sound. We had more of a psychedelic sound than a funk sound. It was funk too, but it was more of a psychedelic thing. We looked up to Sly and The Family Stone and Funkadelic. I was very open-minded.”

In between the two Super Souls sessions (which appear on the Now-Again issued anthology record), Liggins ended up playing saxophone on the We The People songs that Lenaburg later released on Darlene Records. “We needed a B-side, so Sam (leader of We The People) worked with the group and got “Function Underground” together for us,” Lenaburg remembers.

Liggins and Lenaburg recorded a blues song called “Mama’s Baby, Daddy’s Maybe” in 1972. By then, The Super Souls had disbanded. “By 1972 they were disgusted and had just kind of lost interest in music. I continued to manage Michael until 1985,” Lenaburg recalls. “He was very talented, often working for five or six different bands. He then moved to Vegas, where he continued to play for a couple of years, but couldn’t make a living at it. Since he was a union plumber, he had a plumber’s license. So he started working maintenance in hotels in Vegas and finally just lost interest in music.”

Out of Indianpolis funk legends (and Egon’s Funky 16 Corners impetus) The Highlighters’ proverbial ashes rose The Rhythm Machine. Due to the stress and economic hardship of constant touring, many of The Highlighters quit the band in 1970 and returned to Indianapolis to strike out on their own. James Boone and James Brantley, determined to make a go of it as a show band, assembled another high-energy group of musicians. Boone’s cousin Julius Mack, living in Louisville, Kentucky, at the time, signed on for tenor sax, as did the awesome alto-saxophonist Mardie Williams from Muncie, Indiana. Young Kevin Farrell dropped out of Harry Wood High School to join the band. “I took him out of school when he was a sophomore; I raised that boy,” Boone remembers. Drummer Robert Dycus – fresh off his tenure with Billy Ball – obviously knew a thing or two about the funk sound.

Though the band recorded three singles and an LP, their strength was touring. “We couldn’t understand why we would draw,” Boone marvels, adding, “It was unbelievable man. If we had had a big record, we would have made it. But we were more into surviving on the road than we were into trying to be in the recording business.” Now-Again has issued the majority of the Rhythm Machine’s catalog on various CDs and LPs.

Houston, Texas, has always been a musical hotbed of Black music – from Melvin Sparks to Beyonce. Fans of Now-Again’s brand of Deep Funk rarities will be familiar with the legendary reign of the Kashmere High School Stage Band – the indomitable young warriors of sophisticated funk and soul, led by the experienced guidance of long-time band instructor Conrad O. Johnson.

Johnson put out numerous sought-after slabs of incredibly funky wax on his Kram imprint to showcase the sound of his high school powerhouse band. A lesser known fact has come to light recently: many of Johnson’s young Kashmere High players were trained under the expert tutelage of one Leon Mitchison – saxophonist, band-leader and one-time principal at Houston’s Isaac Elementary. Some of the top thoroughbred musicians from the Kashmere stable came up under Mitchison – including Gerald Calhoun (bass), Craig Green (drums) and Earl Spiller (guitar). This tight rhythm section was known as the Nut, Bolt & Screw over at Kashmere High. Along with Kashmere organist Alva Nelson, they were known as the Eastex Freeway Band when they recorded with Mitchison on his Mitchitone Records label.