Lost for 50 years, Meters guitarist Leo Nocentelli's rediscovered solo album is finally out

Fifty years ago, Meters guitarist Leo Nocentelli recorded 10 understated songs for a solo album. He eventually moved on and forgot about his youthful, unreleased recordings. The tapes disappeared.

In 2018, the long-lost Nocentelli recordings turned up at a flea market near Los Angeles in a trove of master tapes salvaged from the late producer, pianist and songwriter Allen Toussaint’s New Orleans studio, which flooded during Hurricane Katrina.

Thanks to a series of minor miracles, Nocentelli’s “Another Side” was released in November by Light in the Attic Records, a Seattle-based company with a flair for specialty reissues.

As the album’s title suggests, “Another Side” shows a side of Nocentelli that fans of the Meters’ slinky, electric funk may not recognize.

What Nocentelli referred to as his “country and western” album was inspired by James Taylor and other folk singers of the early ‘70s. Nine sometimes introspective original compositions are augmented by a cover of Elton John’s “Your Song,” which was newly released at the time.

Nocentelli used a nylon string acoustic guitar on "Another Side." He also sings, which he typically didn’t do with the Meters. He's backed by an all-star New Orleans cast: Toussaint on piano, Meters bassist George Porter Jr. and drummer Joseph “Zigaboo” Modeliste, and jazz drummer James Black.

On Saturday at 4 p.m., Nocentelli will be interviewed by music archivist Melissa “DJ Soul Sister” Weber at Euclid Records, 3301 Chartres St. He’ll also sign copies of “Another Side,” which is available in CD, vinyl and cassette formats.

The resurrection of “Another Side” has reaped a publicity bonanza for Nocentelli. Recent articles in The New York Times, The Washington Post, the Guardian newspaper in London and Guitar Player magazine have chronicled the album’s remarkable back story.

“It’s a spiritual, phenomenal thing, what’s happening with me,” Nocentelli said this week. “I’ve been doing so many interviews. They’ve been bombarding my phone, trying to get the gist of what’s happening. It’s unbelievable.”

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The genesis of “Another Side” dates to a turbulent time for the Meters, the pioneering New Orleans funk quartet featuring Nocentelli, keyboardist Art Neville, bassist George Porter Jr. and drummer Zigaboo Modeliste.

Originally called Art Neville & the Neville Sounds, they held down a regular gig at the Ivanhoe on Bourbon Street. Toussaint recruited them as the de facto house band for his recordings at sound engineer Cosimo Matassa’s Jazz City studio. The second-floor space in an old warehouse at 748 Camp St. was the base of operations for Toussaint and business partner Marshall Sehorn before they built their own Sea-Saint Studio on Clematis Street in Gentilly.

In the late 1960s, the Meters laid the foundation for scores of recordings produced by Toussaint for his Sansu Records and other labels. The band also teased out three of its own albums for Josie Records: the instrumental “The Meters” and “Look-Ka Py Py,” both released in 1969, and 1970’s “Struttin.” Two singles from the Meters' self-titled debut, “Cissy Strut” and “Sophisticated Cissy,” climbed the national R&B charts.

But by 1971, the Meters were at a crossroad. Josie Records had gone out of business, leaving them without a record deal. With time on his hands and lyrics in his head, Nocentelli started recording his own songs at Jazz City.

“Keep On Pushin” and “Getting Nowhere” spoke to his career frustrations. “Riverfront” was inspired by stories Art Neville’s brother Aaron told of working on the docks. “You’ve Become a Habit” was a tale of sexual obsession.

Even as his solo material took shape, the Meters signed a new contract with Warner Bros. Records’ Reprise imprint. The 1972 Reprise release of “Cabbage Alley” ushered in several busy years for the Meters. They were constantly in the studio or on the road.

Nocentelli’s solo recordings languished. For years the master tape was buried with hundreds of other tapes in a room near Toussaint’s second-story office at Sea-Saint.

When the federal levees ruptured during Hurricane Katrina in 2005, Sea-Saint flooded. Thousands of tapes stored on the first floor were ruined.

In the chaotic days and weeks after the storm, when New Orleans was largely abandoned, anecdotal reports circulated about reel-to-reel tapes sitting on shelves in the badly damaged studio, unprotected.

By then, Toussaint didn't own the Sea-Saint facility. Music business veteran Bill Valenziano had purchased the studio in 1995. After Katrina, Valenziano dispatched Roger Branch, an engineer at the studio, to salvage what he could.

The surviving tapes were shipped to Los Angeles, where Valenziano lives, and put in storage. In 2017, according to the “Another Side” liner notes, a Valenziano associate moved several hundred tapes to a storage unit in Hollywood.

That unit was then foreclosed on. In 2018, the contents were purchased at auction by a vendor from Roadium, an open-air swap meet in Torrance, California.

The tapes were still on the vendor’s truck when they caught the eye of Mike Nishita, a Roadium regular with a music industry pedigree of his own. He previously worked as a deejay for Quincy Jones Productions, spinning tunes for studio audiences at tapings of TV shows.

Additionally, Nishita’s brother “Money Mark” Nishita was the Beastie Boys’ keyboardist, and his friend Mario Caldato was the band’s in-house engineer.

Mike Nishita bought all 16 boxes of old reel-to-reel tapes for $100 apiece. Sorting through the tapes in his garage with Caldato, he was stunned by the scope of the material.

The 673 tape reels, dating from 1968 to 1979, were mostly recorded at Sea-Saint. Some originated at Matassa’s Jazz City. A few came from studios in other cities. Taken together, they represented an invaluable documentation of the raw material of New Orleans funk, rhythm and blues, and soul.

Sam Sweet, the journalist who broke the story of Nishita's treasure trove in a 2019 article for The Los Angeles Times, reported that the collection includes the only known master recording of Toussaint’s soundtrack for the 1974 blaxploitation film “Black Samson,” about a nightclub owner who battles crime with a staff and pet lion. The soundtrack features songs written by Toussaint and performed by singer Willie West and the Meters.

The trove also includes quarter-inch master copies of the Meters’ self-titled 1969 album and the 1974 album “Rejuvenation.” Other tapes feature Dr. John, Irma Thomas, Huey “Piano” Smith, Lee Dorsey, Harvey Jesus and dozens of other well-known and lesser-known acts.

Much of the material has never been released — including those 10 songs Leo Nocentelli recorded back in 1971.

While writing The Los Angeles Times story, Sweet — who also penned the liner notes for “Another Side” — called Nocentelli in New Orleans. At first, Nocentelli said, he “didn’t think too much of it. I just figured it was some tapes that were taken from Sea-Saint from Katrina.”

He was stunned to learn his long-lost “country-and-western” album had turned up across the country nearly a half-century after he recorded it.

Sweet put Nocentelli in touch with Nishita. Much of the material in Nishita’s possession would need to clear numerous legal hurdles before it could be released, given the complexities of publishing and production deals and questions about ownership.

But Nocentelli, Nishita and Light in the Attic Records hammered out an agreement to everyone’s satisfaction to make “Another Side” the first commercial release from the rediscovered Toussaint trove.

Ironically enough, “Another Side” has run into another challenge. The resurgent popularity of vinyl records, coupled with limited production capacity and pandemic-related bottlenecks, has made keeping up with demand more difficult than usual.

“If you’re not Adele, you have to wait to get your record pressed,” Nocentelli said.

He’s already waited 50 years.