For 30 years, Sammy Campbell was a prime mover on Plainfield, N.J.'s flourishing R&B scene, recording crystalline doo-wop in the late ‘50s with his group The Del-Larks and hard-hitting funk in the following decades. Campbell was a savvy promoter of the Plainfield scene, stoking audience interest by sparking friendly rivalries with other local acts (most notably the fledgling doo-wop outfit George Clinton & The Parliaments). But while Clinton split town for Detroit in the mid-'60s, Campbell stayed in Plainfield and, after assembling a crack backing group, began recording and gigging the East Coast soul circuit as Tyrone Ashley’s Funky Music Machine. Though the group recorded extensively, it would release only one single: the breathtakingly beautiful “Let Me Be Your Man.” In recent years, the folks at Soul Fire Records contacted Campbell and discovered he was in possession of a trove of previously unreleased recordings from the Funky Music Machine’s early-‘70s heyday. Let Me Be Your Man collects 12 of these cuts. They're all of exceptional quality, from the slinky swamp-pop groove of “Just a Little While Longer” to the JB’s-derived shuffle of “Gotta Clean Up the World.”