Lawdy, Lawdy, Lawd

Warrior horse-woman of myth or chimerical beast of late 1970s funk? It is simply Centaura, available here for what amounts to the first time. For Atlanta hillbilly impresario Bob Riley, the 12" Spiral Series was part put-on, part hustle—but for Birmingham, Alabama’s Centaura, that spiral-in logo appeared as a long-shot leg up. Their record’s two-color, one-idea cover was mass-produced for Riley’s envisioned run of potential releases…though nothing but the enigmatic Centaura ever filled the jacket—and them just barely. Recorded in 1978, Lawdy, Lawdy, Lawd is a long-playing Golden Fleece of funk, disco, boogie, and deep post-Muscle Shoals balladry that would’ve surely failed to exist without Riley’s extreme penny-pinching tactics in service of a failed marketing ploy so ludicrous, it kept the LP out of stores, relegated to extreme scarcity forever. On Side One, Jesse Daniel and Cedrich Rutledge trade energized beats and freaks, before the synth-washed slowdown of “One of a Kind.” Side Two features Riley’s two textbook funk cuts and album-ender “Just Don’t Love You”—a mysterious tack-on of the Carbon Copies’ Git Down Inc.-issued 45, plus a heaving “Distant Lover” that sexes Marvin Gaye’s original into softcore porn territory.