Little Feat 1st album (1971)
From headheritage.co.uk
I know what you’re thinking LITTLE FEAT! C’mon Dave they’re boring hippie rubbish right? WRONG! at least in 1970 they weren’t. Now I admit Little Feat are responsible for committing some serious crimes against humanity with their awful mid 70’s albums like the truly wretched “Time Loves A Hero”. But listen in 1970 they were the American Rolling Stones and I’m being serious, and their debut album is the most vivid example of Real America since The Band’s “Music From Big Pink”.
Little Feat leader Lowell George had been in a fine garage group called The Factory (no not the “Path Through The Forest” bunch) George had also played with a later lineup of The Mothers Of Invention. After The Mothers split George and Mothers bassist Roy Estrada formed Little Feat with drummer Richie Hayward and a talented songwriter/keyboardist named Bill Payne.
Their debut album was issued in early 1971 and remains one of the 70’s great lost classics. “Little Feat” to me sounds like it could have been both the followup to Captain Beefheart’s “Safe As Milk” and The Rolling Stones’ followup to “Let It Bleed”. The record begins with a wicked rocker called “Snakes On Everything” which lyrically may be describing a bad Peyote trip, this track is a rousing opener which features some lethal bottleneck guitar by George and some great background vocals.
Next up is an absolute killer called “Strawberry Flats” which was issued as a 45 in 1970. This song is one of the most accurate portrayals of post-Manson paranoid America I’ve ever heard, dig these lyrics “knocked on my friend’s door in Moody,Texas and asked if he had a place for me, his hair was cut off and he was wearing a suit and he said “not in my house,not in my house, you look like you’re part of a conspiracy” Brilliant! had this song come out in 1969 it would have been a natural for the “Easy Rider” soundtrack.
“Truck Stop Girl” is next, this song was covered by The Byrds for their “Untitled” album, it’s a sad desolate song that really makes you think of the American southwest. “Brides Of Jesus” is another haunting gospel rock song that is an instant classic, this one reminds me of the first Flying Burrito Brothers album, Bill Payne’s organ is out of sight. “Willin'” is a fantastic truckin’ song that was covered by many in the 70’s and truly murdered by Linda Ronstadt, in fact her version almost ruined this song for me. “Hamburger Midnight” shifts gears back to a high energy Rolling Stones sound this song appeared on the flip to the “Strawberry Flats” 45.
Side Two begins with “Forty-Four Blues/How Many More Years” this one is pure Captain Beefheart circa “Mirror Man” the group really stretch out and blast along the way, George really captures the spirit of Howlin’ Wolf’s vocals almost as well as Beefheart. “Crack In Your Door” is another greasy rocker with some great Jerry Lee Lewis type piano and some more of George’s lightning slide guitar.
“I’ve Been The One” is a pretty, downer sort of ballad that reminds me of The Byrds Clarence White. “Takin’ My Time” is a knockout piano and strings ballad by Bill Payne he sings the beautiful lines “I’m takin’ my time/so please don’t push me/I gotta sort out some things I didn’t know existed” Superb!.The record ends with a short good timer called “Crazy Captain Gunboat Willie” that rounds up the record nicely.
I’m still amazed this great record has not recieved more attention over the years, to my ears this group did this style of music as well as The Stones, in fact to me Little Feat sound much more authentic, you really get the impression these guys are traveling the US highways in a beat up station wagon while Mick Jagger is attending some wine and cheese gallery opening in Paris.
Little Feat Hotcakes & Outtakes: 30 Years of Little Feat (2000)
From theguardian.com
The late, great Lowell George is making his comeback. By Adam Sweeting
The Eagles sold more records and Steely Dan went down better with intellectuals, but the best American band of the 1970s was Little Feat, led by Lowell George until a year before his death in 1979. A songwriter, studio innovator, bluesman, crooner and slide guitar ace, George was one of rock’s most brilliant stars. He always surpassed the supposed limitations of rock music; Jackson Browne described him as “the Orson Welles of rock”.
Now George is getting a memorial of sorts, in the form of a four-disc box set on Rhino records, Hotcakes & Outtakes: 30 Years of Little Feat. The package is not an unmixed blessing. An entire disc is devoted to the band’s mediocre post-George output, and the compilers should be lowered into boiling oil for some of the glaring omissions from the Feat’s first four Warner Brothers albums. But at least the collection is a valuable reminder of George’s oblique genius, with a disc of outtakes, demos and alternative versions that throw new light on George and his working methods.
Featophiles will also be intrigued by the anecdote-crammed essay by former Rolling Stone writer Bud Scoppa. However, Scoppa strikes a bum note when he seeks to equate the present-day Feat with the original article. Today’s band is “a tribe, a touchstone, a system, a sanctuary, an ongoing act of affirmation,” he blathers tearfully, when he must know it is only a sorry pastiche of its former glories.
Lowell George welded a penetrating intelligence to a deadpan humour. An absurdist’s view of the world is a running theme through his songs, from the dazed freaks-against-the-world saga of Strawberry Flats (from the debut album) to Rocket in My Pocket (from 1977’s Time Loves a Hero). He could Lowellise other people’s songs too, for example with his droll rendition of the Leiber & Stoller tune Framed, or the previously unheard take of Allen Toussaint’s Brickyard Blues, which is one of the great discoveries on the Rhino box.
Writer and arranger Van Dyke Parks first met George when he was an employee at Warner Brothers and Little Feat came looking for a record deal. “I think he had the audacity of a schizophrenic, which I associate with great work, whether it’s Van Gogh or Ravel,” Parks observes. “I think Lowell had a madness in his work that he wanted to explore, and he had the integrity to do it.” Parks singles out the song Fat Man in the Bathtub. “You see the physical comedy in Lowell George that you get from Buster Keaton. It’s the tragicomedy of man in crisis – that’s what Lowell did for me.”
George’s colourful background appears to have given him the confidence to pursue his particular vision, oblivious to the incomprehension of onlookers. He was steeped in Hollywood history and folklore, as anyone might be if their family home was just up the hill from Grauman’s Chinese Theater. His father was a furrier who numbered many of the movieland aristocracy among his clientele, and went duck-shooting with Tinseltown veterans such as Wallace Beery and WC Fields. Although prone to weight problems, Lowell, sputtering around the Hollywood hills in a battered Morgan sports car, projected a magnetic charm that worked equally well on record companies, women and equipment suppliers.
While his brother Hampton joined the paratroopers and went to Vietnam, Lowell studied martial arts and a variety of instruments, including the shakuhachi (a Japanese flute) and the saxophone. Another of the early rarities exhumed by Rhino is a rare and frankly dismal piece called Jazz Thing in 10, in which George tries to be Archie Shepp on sax.
The point, however, is that behind the skewed vision of Little Feat’s songs lay some unusually advanced musicianship. George served for a time with Frank Zappa’s Mothers of Invention. The first version of Little Feat – almost named Lyle Gleep – included Mothers bassist Roy Estrada alongside classically trained pianist Bill Payne, with whom George had briefly played in the Brotherhood of Man, the same place he found the Feat’s long-serving drummer, Richie Hayward. The Mark 2 Little Feat, who debuted on 1973’s Dixie Chicken, saw the arrival of guitarist Barrere, grandson of a famous flautist who taught at the Juilliard School in New York, plus bassist Kenny Gradney and percussionist Sam Clayton, a pair of seasoned R’n’B veterans.
George’s infuriating stubbornness was as great as his talent. His made his fellow musicians bristle by adopting Frank Zappa’s autocratic bandleading style; his eccentric methods of writing and recording, meanwhile, were time-consuming and calamitously costly. The results, at least, were worth it. Rock and Roll Doctor, the opening track from 1974’s Feats Don’t Fail Me Now, took an age to complete because the band had to build it from a crude demo George had assembled by splicing together chunks of several different cassette tapes. George’s objective was to create a song with as many awkward chord changes and rhythmic eccentricities as possible, what he liked to call the “cracked mosaic”. Its crowning glory is George’s slide guitar solo, a screaming miracle of sonic architecture.
George’s approach to his work often seemed to have more in common with jazz or classical composition: he would spend years reworking the same material, edging his way towards some imagined ideal result. The process was already evident in Little Feat’s existing catalogue. The Rhino box offers several more specimens, with very early versions of The Fan, Easy to Fall (which became Easy to Slip on Sailin’ Shoes), Texas Rose Cafe and a raw demo of Two Trains, featuring just George and his crude Donca Matic drum machine. It’s a testament to their commercial unworldliness that the band left so many excellent tracks off their original albums. Versions of High Roller and All That You Dream from the new collection are decisively superior to the previously issued takes. Lowell’s widow Elizabeth discovered the tapes of Lonesome Whistle, issued on the 1981 Hoy-Hoy! compilation, at the back of their garage in a brown paper bag.
George was at his creative peak at a time when rock bands were still allowed to make outrageous records, and in Warner Brothers Little Feat found a label that gave its artists more creative rope than most. He also fell foul of the post-psychedelic lifestyle considered desirable in the 1970s, when etiquette dictated that one should be permanently blasted. His fondness for cocaine-and-heroin “speedballs” was notorious, his appetite for junk food and liquor unassuagable. An Australian journalist told me how he had interviewed Lowell over lunch in Sydney, during which George put away a bottle of Courvoisier. When he died in June 1979, aged 34, he had ballooned to an Elvis-like 22 stone and was a medical emergency waiting to happen. His attitude towards the brain-dead, body-beautiful record business of the 21st century would not be hard to imagine.
Little Feat: How Many More Years – Little Feat at 50
From rockandrollglobe.com
A half century in, the freaky Heartland perseverance of the band’s eponymous debut still has us Willin’ to keep movin’
Is there another countercultural anthem that cuts to the indefatigable spirit of American perseverance quite like Little Feat’s “Willin’”?
Though the tune became a standard after being covered on Linda Ronstadt’s solo album, Heart Like a Wheel, in ‘74, it was written many years earlier by Little Feat founder and frontman Lowell George.
George was still running around California with Frank Zappa and The Mothers of Invention back then. The way he tells it, “Willin’” actually played a role in Zappa amicably encouraging his departure from The Mothers, encouraging George to start a new band that would become Little Feat.
By gathering some of his best creative collaborators from the past — along with a piano prodigy who would become the band’s longest running member and eventual leader— George set Little Feat on a journey that would continue to define the group’s melding of disparate American musical styles, cementing its status as an absolutely dynamite jam band throughout the ‘70s.
The genesis of Little Feat’s first record, Little Feat, is also a snapshot of the Topanga Canyon creative scene at the end of the ‘60s. But, like any classic American story, truth can often be obscured by conflicting accounts and foggy memories. Every detail in the story of Little Feat’s formation out there seems to read just a little bit differently, contradicted by various band members and people in their orbit during various interviews throughout the years.
The best parser of these anecdotes, tall tales and half truths is author Ben Fong-Torres, whose 2013 biography, Willin’: The Story of Little Feat presents conflicting accounts alongside fresh interviews and conjecture to more closely examine the discrepancies between fact and legend.
“From the research I’ve conducted for this book, I would resist calling Lowell George a fabricator of stories,” Fong-Torres writes early in Willin’. “But he contradicted himself on numerous occasions, sometimes giving two or three accounts of a single event. This may be because of memory loss, it may be because of drugs or alcohol, or he may have been having fun with a reporter.”
George grew up as a kid in the old Hollywood of the ‘40s. His dad, Willard, was known as the “furrier to the stars,” and as Lowell’s brother boasted, “Every movie from 1915 to ’57, he provided the furs.” Willard was also reportedly hunting buddies with W.C. Fields.
“The Georges lived just above Grauman’s Chinese Theater in the Santa Monica Mountains on Mulholland Drive between Laurel Canyon and Woodrow Wilson Drive,” Fong-Torres writes. “Although these are all familiar reference points to Angelenos now, back then they were nowhere, so the Georges were pioneers.”
Hence, Lowell George and his family were embedded in Laurel Canyon well before any folk rock scene ever existed, and George was exposed to all that was happening.
In ‘65, George put together a garage band called The Factory, which included drummer Richie Hayward, who would go on to join the founding Little Feat lineup. After some time gigging on the Hollywood club circuit, The Factory caught the attention of Herb Cohen, a talent manager who was working with Frank Zappa. The band cut a few songs as a de facto audition for Cohen and Zappa, and while it didn’t result in a record deal, Cohen agreed to manage them. Zappa agreed to produce two of their songs, and thus began his relationship with George.
“By the latter part of 1967, according to most accounts, The Factory was no more,” writes Fong-Torres. The band’s rhythm section would go on to join the band Fraternity of Man and record, “Don’t Bogart Me,” which would become well known for its appearance on the Easy Rider soundtrack. Little Feat would later cover the tune and label it by its more common name, “Don’t Bogart That Joint” on their incredible 1978 live record, Waiting for Columbus.
In ‘68, George briefly took over for a stint as the lead vocalist in Boston’s The Standells, best known for their hit “(Love That) Dirty Water”. But it didn’t last long, and he didn’t make any recordings with the band.
The departure of vocalist Ray Collins from The Mothers of Invention in ‘68 created an opening, and Zappa thought of George, remembering George from his time producing The Factory. During a radio interview, George recalled the chaotic, confoundingly confrontational energy that The Mothers could conjure up among fans, remembering one particular incident that went down while playing at a Zappa show back at a girls colleague in Massachusetts:
“One guy stood up and said, ‘Fuck you, Frank Zappa’, and some other guy jumped up from across the hall and went, ‘You can’t say “fuck you, Frank Zappa!” . . . You can’t do that.’ And somebody else jumped up and said, ‘You wanna bet? He can say “fuck you” to anybody he wants to!’ There were . . . maybe three thousand people in this hall, and pretty soon the whole place was rocking with people saying ‘You can’t say “fuck you” . . . ’ And Frank turned around to me and said, ‘What do we do now? The show’s over. We did it already. This is what I was aiming at! This is what I wanted to happen!’”
While this interaction typified Zappa’s love of confrontational performance, it also summed up how much of a blur George’s time playing in The Mothers was. His work showed up randomly on three Mothers albums, most prominently on “Didja Get Any Onya?” from Weasels Ripped My Flesh, when George pretended to be a German border guard interviewing travelers crossing the border. Roy Estrada, The Mothers bassist who would eventually join Little Feat, also appeared prominently on that track.
Eventually, Lowell’s freewheeling, indulgent lifestyle seemed too far apart from Zappa’s well-documented demands of sobriety and insistence that no one in his band get high, a ruling George attributed to Zappa being arrested early on in the history of The Mothers on suspicion of starting a riot.
“George, born and raised in and around Laurel Canyon, was pretty comfortable with the evolving culture of sex, drugs, and rock ‘n’ roll,” explains Fong-Torres. “He began to chafe under Zappa’s autocratic, demanding ways, and his distant demeanor. By May 1969, just about half a year after he’d signed on, he was on his way out.”
That exit is inexorably tied to the birth of Little Feat, and “Willin’” in particular. George’s tribute to the truckin’ lifestyle, “Willin’” and its signature chorus stuck out with George’s professing of being just fine with “weed, whites and wine.” And though Geroge intentionally avoided playing “Willin’” for Zappa, Zappa eventually heard it, too. “I was always smart enough not to submit it,” said Geroge. “But he did hear it once, and a few days later I was offered to start my own band, which was a nice way of firing me, I think.”
George and Zappa’s friendship didn’t stop there, though — in fact, Zappa asked George to help produce some tracks for the GTOs (Girls Together Outrageously), a performance project made up of groupies who he signed to one of the two labels Zappa formed with Warner Bros. GTO were part of Zappa’s ‘Bizarre’ label, and the other was ‘Straight’. Once George eventually wrangled together Hayward (who he played with in The Factory), Estrada (who he knew from his time in The Mothers), and an up-and-coming keyboardist named Bill Payne, Little Feat was born.
Depending on who you believe, there are multiple accounts of how Little Feat got their name.
The coolest story, which appeared in Warner Bros. press release for Little Feat, told that the name came from The Mothers’ drummer Jimmy Carl Black, who was backstage at a rehearsal with Geroge one night and joked with George, “You sure got little feet.” The way someone else tells it, the full line was, “you got really ugly little feet.”
“Rick Harper, the late road manager, said it happened at the Shrine Auditorium, at the end of a Mothers concert, when Black pointed to George’s feet and uttered, ‘Little Feet,’” writes Fong-Torres. “Harper took credit for spelling it F-E-A-T.”
George’s first wife, Patte Stahlbaum, remembered the origin differently:
“The band was over at Lowell’s and my house, and they didn’t have a name yet . . . and they were rehearsing and talking about stuff, and one of everybody’s good friends, because she was also the marijuana dealer, her name was Leslie Krasnow. And she looked at all of the guys at the time, and she said, ‘Wow, you guys all have such little feet.’ And Lowell said . . . ‘Little Feet. And we should spell it Little Feat.’”
While Zappa wanted Little Feat for his ‘Straight’ label, but Warner Bros. eventually signed the band to the general label, and Little Feat bagan recording its self-titled debut at United-Western Recorders on Sunset Boulevard. It was produced by Russ Titleman, who had never produced a record before. Estrada said that Titleman’s production was mainly moot, claiming “We produced it on our own. Russ was there with us . . . he never produced us.” Still, four of Titleman’s demos that he cut with George wound up being fleshed out into full tracks on Little Feat — “Truck Stop Girl,” “I’ve Been the One,” and “Crazy Captain Gunboat Willie,” and the legendary first studio version of “Willin’” with Ry Cooder on bottleneck slide guitar.
“Ry Cooder, who could play more than a little slide guitar and had by now worked with the Stones, Randy Newman, Arlo Guthrie, and others, was at Western,” explains Fong-Torres. “He was recording his own debut album for Warners, with Van Dyke Parks on keyboards and Richie Hayward doing some session work. Cooder agreed to help out.”
“So we’re doing ‘How Many More Years’ and ‘44 Blues,’” recalled Payne, “Ry’s out there, and Lowell says, ‘Fuck this, I’m gonna go out there and play.’ So he does, and he’s bleeding all over his guitar, but it was wonderful. It sounded great, and it was actually one of the high points of the record.”
Payne described the tension between Cooder’s slide chops and George’s slide chops as a bit of a Mexican standoff that gave the recordings a competitive edge. By the time the band was recording together for the first time, George had been playing slide for a few years. “Instead of the usual devices—the neck of a wine bottle, a length of tubing, or a medicine bottle—he used a spark plug puller,” writes Fong-Torres.
Payne also confessed that he wasn’t confident in the record Little Feat was recording at the time.
“I was so new to it, I wasn’t really sure, I thought because of all the mental turmoil that was going on, I thought, Oh my God, this is so chaotic,” he told Fong-Torres. “Russ and Lowell are at each other’s throats. There’s the Vietnam War going on, there are riots, Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr. were murdered. Those kind of things affect everyone, but they especially affect artists, because what do we share with people? What we’re going through, what are we writing about—so our music was all over the map for a lot of reasons because there was so much chaos in the air.”
You can hear the chaos seeming to manifest in the breakneck earnestness of the album’s production, when sharp lead lines often come in so hot that they threaten to derail the groove at any moment. There’s a seeming spontaneity to the mix, an adventurousness not wholly adjunct from Zappa’s production style. Because George considered Zappa a mentor, Fong-Torres suggests, he was also learning and absorbing how Zappa worked in the studio, then applying some of those skills and processes to the recording of Little Feat. The production choices give the Americana energy of Little Feat a decidedly weird, freaky coat of paint.
Titleman, by contrast, wanted Little Feat to sound like the work of The Band, who were his favorite group at the time. Because Titleman wanted things to sound straighter and safer, he and the band often butted heads. Splitting the difference, the tunes on Little Feat unfurl with a certain gonzo heartland spirit that’s not wholly unsimilar to The Band’s many sonic hallmarks, but nonetheless much stranger, much more surreal, and much more out of left field.
While Little Feat sold abysmally upon release in January ‘71, it was loved by heads and critics alike. The astounding level variety and fully-developed songcraft on display also let us roll on down the highway with the album’s other fantastic road songs besides “Willin’”, like “Truck Stop Girl” and the album’s lead single “Hamburger Midnight.” We hear George’s pathos haunting the band’s Howlin’ Wolf medley, “Forty-Four Blues / How Many More Years” with a genuine delivery of sorrow and weariness to which you can toe tap.
The words floating above those lush orchestrations on psych-gospel ballad “Brides of Jesus,” meanwhile, seem to tell the story of Saint Matthew the Evangelist lusting after nuns (or maybe the story of his martyrdom, when an Ethiopian King who resented Matthew had Matthew executed for rebuking him upon learning the king lusted after his daughter, who was a nun). If the latter is true, “Brides of Jesus” may just be a gritty American equivalent to the Italian Baroque master Caravaggio’s “The Martyrdom of Saint Matthew.”
While there are other Little Feat albums that get more love than the debut — especially ‘72’s Sailin’ Shoes and ‘73’s Dixie Chicken — it’s the self-titled debut that proves Little Feat were truly at the center of a Topanga Canyon rock scene in the throes of revolutionary transformation, reckoning with its past life of ‘60s psych and garage while diving headfirst into the coke-fueled, southern rock-heavy ‘70s. Little Feat documents this transition with a groovy, spark plug-fried set of songs.that carries over more than a few trace elements of absurdist magic from George and Estrada’s time in The Mothers.
Moving into a fuller rock sound on Sailin’ Shoes, and a NOLA-inspired funk/R&B groove on Dixie Chicken, Little Feat rolled each stylistic evolution together to become a truly beloved live band throughout the ‘70s.
Listening to the evolution of “Willin’” — from the sparse duet between George and Cooder that appears on Little Feat to the slightly lusher and more produced version on ‘72’s Sailin’ Shoes and the live cut on ‘78’s Waiting for Columbus — provides a good compass for charting the evolution of the band’s sound throughout the years. While the live rendition from that ‘78 release more closely resembles the Sailin’ Shoes’ studio cut, with its harmonies and slow down before the iconic “weed, whites and wine” line, the extra flourishes, breath and improvisations that each player adds also showcase how tight of a band Little Feat had become over the decade, eight members strong (not including the five-member Tower of Power horn section).
George died of a heart attack brought on by his coke habit in June ‘79, less than a year after Columbus’ release, instantly turning the already incredible performances on that record into the sounds of legend. Little Feat would break up, then reform again in 1987 under various incarnations, with Payne acting as the band’s lone constant member and north star.
Payne has been a faithful steward of the Little Feat legacy, a powerhouse member when George was around who tastefully stepped into the limelight when they decided to reunite in ‘87 (amid the Dead’s first peak commercial period). These days, the modern jam band scene has embraced Little Feat and kept them going — jam band scion Pete Shapiro’s Fans store exclusively sells their merch, fans showed up for the bands annual frequent Jamaican fan excursions, and Phish covered Waiting for Columbus in full during one of their Halloween 2010 sets.
Though it was released half a century ago, I’ve been listening to “Willin’” often these days, inspired at its evocation of simple desires of an American traveler whose story is seldom told, the kind of trooper who carries the load of others on their back and remains content to get by with simple things in life, be they simple relationships or simple substances.
There’s a lesson there that seems particularly potent right now.
Little Feat’s Lowell George: Drinker and Genius (2008)
From loudersound.com
He was a drinker, a drug user, a terrible leader – and a genius. In 2008 Classic Rock talked to Little Feat about their fallen singer Lowell George
It’s June 1977 and Lowell George, the self-styled leading light in Los Angeles band Little Feat – and “the Orson Welles of rock”, according to Jackson Browne – is sitting in the Soho offices of Warner Brothers Records, ostensibly to promote his group’s sixth studio album, Time Loves A Hero. Although the record will go Top 10 in Britain and win a gold disc, Lowell is aware that advance murmurings suggest that this is not Feat’s finest hour. It is an opinion with which he readily concurs. Featuring only one out-and-out George composition – Rocket In My Pocket – Time Loves A Hero smacks of an enforced democracy, and seems to have sidelined the bulky man slouched in front of me wearing his customary soft street urchin cap and dungarees.
If Little Feat are not quite tip-top at present, Lowell is positively under the weather. While it’s only midday he sports the air of a fellow who hasn’t been to bed at an appropriate time. On the table in front of him is a half-drunk bottle of Courvoisier brandy (a second will be summoned before the hour is out), and one of those plastic beakers which usually house a pencil sharpener. Except this receptacle is filled to the brim with cocaine – and so is Lowell.
Friendly enough, but far from lucid, he explains the state of play in between tipping out ever larger amounts of white powder and nipping at his liquid luncheon. Given that he is suffering from hepatitis and his skin is sallow yellow, Lowell isn’t looking after himself. Already weighing in at around 18 stone he moves and breathes with difficulty.
“To be truthful, I’m not even sure if I’m still in the band, which is fine if that’s what they want, except it’s still my group,” he says in a rare moment of animation. “I’ve heard they wanted to sack me, but how can they? I can sack them. I’m the one with the solo Warners deal.”
And so the conversation goes, in ever decreasing circles. Lowell is dismissive of keyboard player Bill Payne’s central piece, the moog laden Day At The Dog Races. “He wants us to sound like Weather Report because he’s on a Joe Zawinul trip and the others are too lazy to care. I couldn’t play on that song. I wouldn’t even do it live. Richie [Hayward, the Feats drummer since 1970] won’t say anything. So now it’s Bill’s band? I don’t think so.”
Almost eight months later I meet Hayward in the same place, and we conduct a fraught interview sitting on either side of a disused recording console in the basement. By now Little Feat are set to release their double live album Waiting For Columbus. Once again diehard followers have demurred, citing the superiority of certain bootleg discs – Electrif Lycanthrope, Rampant Syncopation, and If You Got It A Truck Brought It. Increasingly exasperated by my line of questioning regarding George’s status, Hayward eventually snaps. A man with an infamously short fuse and a propensity for mood swinging, Hayward leans across the desk and grabs me by the throat. “How many more times do I have to say…” he splutters. “This ain’t just Lowell’s group and we ain’t his backing band. Yeah, we’ve sacked him and yeah, he’s come back. Happens all the time.” He releases my neck and is suddenly calm. “Anyhow, they’ll probably sack me when I get home,” he mutters darkly. “That’s how this group operates.”https://www.youtube.com/embed/S1AWV3F8muI
Thirty years on, Lowell George has been dead for most of them. He succumbed to a massive heart attack in 1979 at the Twin Bridges Marriott Hotel in Arlington, Virginia, after a final show playing material from his highly regarded solo album Thanks I’ll Eat It Here. However, Little Feat are still with us, thanks to their new album, Join The Band, which majors in classic Lowell songs like Sailin’ Shoes, Willin’, Dixie Chicken and the autobiographical Fat Man In The Bathtub.
Since the recordings feature guest friends as vocalists – Dave Matthews, the Black Crowes’ Chris Robinson, country smoothies Brooks and Dunn, Vince Gill and George’s daughter Inara (who he can barely have known), old ghosts have been awoken with New York Times acerbic rock critic Jon Pareles questioning the validity of the project.
Speaking from his home in Montana keyboards player Bill Payne sounds like a man who has had time to ruminate on both sides of the story. A founding member with Hayward of the pre-Feats group The Factory (an offshoot of George’s brief stint in Frank Zappa & The Mothers Of Invention), Payne has dealt with the painful issues of what he calls “the elephant in the room”.
During their initial eight year career Payne and George were frequently at loggerheads. “It’s not entirely wrong to say Lowell was the leader, but then one has to lead,” says Payne. “He was fine for a while, but he didn’t have the capacity or the sense of responsibility. He’d do silly things like lose master tapes [George famously left some vital Allen Toussaint horn charts and mixes, destined for the album Feats Don’t Fail Me Now, on a train between New Orleans and LA] and he took too many drugs. He was like Jerry Garcia. He’d disappear for weeks at a time on some binge and then come back in reasonable shape. ‘Oh, you’re back! Great!’.
“He was my mentor in The Factory and Little Feat, a hero to me, like our original bassist Roy Estrada, because they’d been in the Mothers. I went to LA to join the Mothers, so I thank Lowell for taking me on. But, man, he screwed up bad.”
Given George’s evident charisma (“He was a charmer, made people think they were his best friend, especially when he took them to party,” says Payne), there was a romantic notion that he was the innocent victim of a plot in which the rest of the band were cast as villainous chancers. Payne laughs. “I’ve resolved that issue. Finally. Took a long time. I used to be sensitive to that allegation. Lowell was a part of the family and I can’t discount that. I mean, I fell for him too, because he was the best of what there was, a phenomenal singer and a brilliant slide player. Sure he was good and in the beginning he was in charge, but eventually we were dragging him along.”
Mindful of negativity, one assumes the 59-year-old Payne is merely telling the truth. “There was always conflict and then also a lot of camaraderie. He played a huge part, the main part, but he couldn’t manoeuvre the business on his own. We became handcuffed, like in a dysfunctional marriage.”
The first time Payne met George he’d been summoned for an informal audition to the singer’s home on Ben Lomond in Los Felix, half a mile down the road from the Charles Manson Family’s starting point in the dune buggy LaBianca/Sharon Tate murders. “I got there as requested and he wasn’t around. Big surprise. There was a beautiful blonde who let me in and said, ‘Make yourself at home, he’ll be back in four hours’. So I looked at his record collection and his books – the Smithsonian Blues album which included Join The Band, Muddy Waters, John Coltrane, Lenny Bruce, and tomes by Carl Sandberg, Allen Ginsberg’s Howl, [Hubert Selby Jr’s] Last Exit To Brooklyn… I knew I was going to like him even though he had a nasty looking Samurai sword on the wall [George was a brown belt in the martial art Okinawake] and I was a hick from Waco, Texas.”
The last time Payne had a conversation with George he told him what he thought of him. How he’d had it and blown it, and messed the group up in the process. For once George was mortified and contrite. “He was crying when he left, but I was justifiably mad. Everything was in limbo. We’d let him come back to produce the live album and what became the posthumous Down On The Farm, but he still wasn’t in full control. I respected him for letting me say my piece – saying that I loved him, but I hated him as a human being and for his inability to keep it together. He was so bad at handling pressure, and he wouldn’t delegate unless it was clandestinely done, to others outside the band. He was just too fucked up. That’s why he died on tour.
“The last time I saw him was a bit later. He came to my house on his motorcycle and he opened his mouth and he was so gone he couldn’t speak a word. He was standing in my front yard with tears in his eyes. It was very painful. I thanked him for what he’d taught me and said, ‘Look when you come back from your solo tour, try and relax and produce us properly’. I know he’d enjoyed producing the Grateful Dead’s album Shakedown Street so I told him to be honest for once and get Little Feat back together – but do it properly. For himself. I didn’t want to be the leader, I wanted the best for him. And that was it. He got back on his bike and left. I was extremely angry. He dropped the ball and I knew he was asking for help, like Richie often was. Me? I was tired of it all.”https://www.youtube.com/embed/x4tJiyU_gjY
When he heard that George died after playing a gig at the Lisner Auditorium, Washington – the Feats’ most fervent fan base, where much of the Waiting For Columbus set was captured – the post mortem showing signs of a drug overdose, coupled with liver degeneration, Payne was furious. “I wasn’t surprised. He didn’t set his affairs in order, there was no finance for his wife and children. We did a benefit concert at the Forum in Los Angeles and raised $250,000. It was the only practical way to deal with his death.”
Little Feat guitarist Paul Barrere joined the group in 1972 before their classic third album, Dixie Chicken, with fellow newcomers, Louisiana musicians Kenny Gradney and Sam Clayton. This was the line-up that came to British attention in 1975 during the Warner Brothers Music Show, a package involving the Doobie Brothers, Tower Of Power, Montrose and Graham Central Station. Little Feat’s incendiary rock funk blew all else out the water and they became overnight heroes in Europe, fêted by Eric Clapton, Led Zeppelin, mutual hedonist Robert Palmer, and the Rolling Stones (whose Keith Richards told them, “You’re a part of the family”).
Barrere remembers it well. “We were a freight train comin atcha – kickin’ ass. We were always opening slots and blowing people off. That tour got sticky because of our reaction. Thing was… Little Feat weren’t showmen; we didn’t have a catalogue of hits. We just played. We had a jazz combo sensibility à la Miles Davis, plus a black R&B thing, down to Kenny’s bass and Sam’s percussion. Lowell was phenomenal – he made his slide, which he played with an old spark plug, conjure up Hawaiian melodies or pedal steel. It was so eclectic that we could be out of our skulls and still function. It was nirvana on stage, and it was funny. We were tongue-in-cheek with our stage props. We didn’t think: this is serious art.”
They didn’t; maybe Lowell – who called his songs “cracked mosaics” – did. Son of a wealthy Hollywood furrier, George was steeped in classical LA tradition. He attended Hollywood High and grew up in a house on Mulholland Drive. His family owned a ranch outside Las Vegas, later sold to Howard Hughes. Because of his daddy’s business the George home was filled with the cream of Californian society, movie stars, crooners, and mink wearing glamour girls.
Lowell’s oldest school friend and sometime collaborator Martin Kibbee also grew up next to megastars like WC Fields, Sandra Dee and Bobby Darin. He maintains that Lowell’s upbringing instilled a starry adventure from an early age. “He was born under a bad sign – the Hollywood sign,” says Kibbee, pointing out that Little Feat misspelt their name to echo The Beatles. He and Lowell published their songs as George/Martin, for Fab related reasons.
The day after his birthday, on the eve of his final tour and two months before his death, George gave his local paper the Topanga Messenger a rare interview. Asked about the group’s latest split he replied, “I don’t know what’s happening. I’m not really worried about it. Groups break up and get back together again all the time. It’s no big deal. Nothing is permanent. Even in the music business.”
Pushed on his recent alleged reclusive nature he replied that was “cosmic bullshit” but admitted he had lost his competitive edge. Asked about his values he suddenly bridled. “You don’t want to hear that. My values speak for themselves. To try and keep a sense of humour amongst a lot of bullshit is really nice to do, and just recently I’ve been able to capture that. Nothing is really that important.”
Little Feat have left a substantial footprint on West Coast rock – with and without the charismatic and troubled George. Their first four albums have attained classic status, while Lowell’s solo Thanks I’ll Eat It Here is a brilliant solo disc, albeit abetted by some of the team players. Often criticised for daring to carry on after his death – what else were they supposed to do? – Little Feat struggled initially to fill Lowell’s role, utilising singers like Craig Fuller who were on a hiding to nothing. But in their defence they’ve regrouped and kept going, building a career that has lasted longer than their original golden period, always playing George’s material and paying homage – rather than lip service – to the man who set the Feats in motion.
When Lowell George died, his ashes were thrown into the Pacific Ocean by his wife Elizabeth. The fat man in the bathtub would have seen the blackly comic side of that.
Little Feat Feats Don’t Fail Me Now (1974)
From thevinyldistrict.com
Little Feat was one of America’s foremost pre-punk-era bands, perhaps even its best. Little Feat boasted musicians with mad skills, the best of them the brilliant vocalist, guitarist, and songwriter Lowell George. And like a great junkball pitcher, they could throw all manner of bedazzling shit your way. They played fastball rock, curveball boogie, knuckleball blues, and a dangerous forkball funk, and with a runner of third and one out they might even send some screwball country past you, and make you look like a fool, boy. No wonder none other than Jimmy Page hailed them as his favorite American band.
In short, Little Feat cooked. But lots of bands can cook—all you need is a frying pan and some grease. What truly separated Little Feat from the pack was its brilliant songwriting. The band bequeathed us a whole shitload of timeless songs—including “Easy to Slip,” “Willin’,” “Spanish Moon,” “Hamburger Midnight,” “Dixie Chicken,” and plenty more besides—not one of which I have ever heard played on my car radio. There is no justice in this world, boyo.
In addition to being a great band, Little Feat remains an enduring medical enigma. To wit: When did Little Feat, or Patient X as the band is referred to in the copious medical literature on the subject, actually die? Some would argue that Little Feat is very much alive, and it’s true that a band by that name continues to make the rounds of the concert circuit. But I would argue that said band is little more than an animated corpse, dragging its desiccated carcass and reek of putrefaction from town to town and playing by means of jolts of electricity carefully administered by technicians hiding backstage.
Still others would pronounce the time of death as June 1979, when George died of a heart attack in a hotel room in Arlington, Virginia at age 34. But in my expert medical opinion, and I will go into this in more detail later, Little Feat expired well before that, in 1975 to be precise, a victim of Lowell’s diminishing role in the band and a creeping case of Steely Dan Disease.
Little Feat was founded in Los Angeles in 1969 by George (a former Mother of Invention) and keyboardist and songwriter Bill Payne. Roy Estrada, another former Mother, played bass, while Richie Hayward (formerly of George’s first band, The Factory) played drums. By 1974’s Feats Don’t Fail Me Now Estrada had departed, and been replaced by Kenny Gradney. Little Feat had also filled out its sound by adding Paul Barrere on guitar and vocals on Sam Clayton on percussion and vocals.
Feats Don’t Fail Me Now is the band’s swan song, and its best album in my opinion, if only because it doesn’t peter out towards the end in a couple of songs that amount to little more than filler. There isn’t a single weak cut on Feats Don’t Fail Me Now, and I love everything about it except the title of the great opening cut “Rock’n’Roll Doctor,” which never fails to lead my mind through an increasingly irksome chain of dismal associations, from Humble Pie’s loathsome “I Don’t Need No Doctor” to the atrocious “Bad Case of Loving You (Doctor Doctor)” to the truly hideous “Rocking Pneumonia and Boogie Woogie Flu,” by which time I’m so nauseous I really do need a doctor.
But title aside, “Rock’n’Roll Doctor” is one very funky number that highlights George’s talents as both a vocalist and slide guitar master. George lisps, drools, throws in lots of little “oohs” and “mmms,” and even tosses in some bebop nonsense, and in general puts on a bravura performance that is only improved by the backing vocalist, whose voice is as deep as a trench. As for the slide guitar, George bends notes, plays needle-sharp riffs, and produces a giant echo that reverberates as much as it sings. If “Rock’n’Roll Doctor” is a showcase for George’s slide guitar skills the rollicking “Oh Atlanta” is all about Payne’s frenetic piano, which makes you think of dim honky tonks where beer bottles crash into the chicken wire strung in front of the stage for just that purpose. At least three guys sing in tandem, and they sound great, especially on the chorus where they get really fancy. And Payne follows a great singing slide guitar solo by George with a wild and wooly piano solo that’ll have you crying, “Feats don’t fail me now!”
“Skin It Back” is one irresistibly slinky and sinuous funk number with fantastic drumming by Hayward and some percolating conga by Clayton, but is dominated by one very cool keyboard riff by Payne and a long instrumental featuring some intricate interplay between Payne’s keyboards and George’s slide guitar. Meanwhile George’s vocals are smoky as he sings prophetically, “I can’t find a soul who’ll take on this mess/It’s those rock and roll hours, early graves without flowers.” And then takes the song out repeating, “Skin it back/Tell it to you.”
“Down the Road” is a slow-simmering dish of Dixie funk, and opens with some fantastic slide guitar by George, who throws everything he has into such lines as, “I guess I better meet you down the road/Down the roooaaad, mmm!” Meanwhile Payne throws in lots of spicy piano, while Clayton’s congas and Hayward’s drums provide a bottom that’ll have you asking whether fries come with that shake. I love it when George sings what sounds like “She can take my teeth,” but unfortunately the lyric sheet says something different, and that’s too bad. “She can take my teeth” is one wonderful line.
“Spanish Moon” is the album standout, an impossibly funky number that opens with a big bass, congas, and one very heavy drumbeat. George, who is magnificent, sings, “There was hookers and hustlers/They filled up the room/I heard about this place they call the Spanish Moon,” and, “One false step, you get done in/It’s a cold situation/If that—that don’t—kill you soon/The women will down at the Spanish Moon.” Meanwhile the Tower of Power horns burst in to play big brass blasts and George wails and shouts before the song—whose only fault is it’s too short—goes out on a funky instrumental note dominated by Payne’s organ.
Almost as good is title track “Feats Don’t Fail Me Now,” an up-tempo piano and slide-guitar-driven rocker about a female trucker who’s got “the biggest—hmmm—the biggest truck in town.” The chorus is great, as is the moment when George and another vocalist sing, “Roll right through the night/Rooolll/Roll right through the night/I said rooollll!” Only to be followed by one high-stepping piano solo, over which George plays some tremendous slide guitar. This is the perfect song to break the speed limit to, and I highly suggest you do so as soon as possible.
The title of “The Fan” refers to both a groupie and the shit hitting the fan, and the song opens with a prog-like organ riff that continues throughout. Meanwhile George, who shares lead vocal duties with I don’t know who, opens the song with the great couplet, “Heard you got an infection/Just before your lewd rejection.” And together they sing, “You were a sweet girl/When you were a cheerleader/But I think you’re much better now” before the band goes into a long jam featuring one feedback-drenched guitar playing lead while another punctuates it with single notes, before segueing into a lengthy synthesizer solo by Payne. The whole thing is great, and closes down with George singing, “Bought a few reds from your neighborhood dealer/And you passed out in the back of a car/You were too messed up to climb out/What if your old man had found out?”
LP closer “Cold Cold Cold/Tripe Face Boogie” is an odd conjoining of a blues song and a boogie number, both of which appear separately on previous albums, something George, a perfectionist, had no problem doing. (It took him two stabs at “Willin’” to get it right.) Anyway, “Cold Cold Cold” is a slow blues about both a frigid night in a flea-bitten hotel and the equally frigid woman he encounters there. The tune highlights George’s command of the slide guitar, as well as his ability to sing the blues as well as anybody out there. I love the lines, “It’s been a month since I had a toke/Or a dime to make the call.” And his closing slide guitar is a thing of beauty.
The same goes for the very Faces-like electric piano run by Payne that leads straight into George’s tour de force vocals on “Tripe Face Boogie”: “Buffaloed in Buffalo/And I was entertained in Houston/New York, Yew Nork, you got to choose one/Cause it’s a tripe face boogie/Going to boogie my sneakers away.” I have no idea where he got that Yew Nork, or what a tripe face boogie might be in the first place, but I love the way he screams, “Tripe boogie! Tripe Boogie! TRIPE BOOGIE!/All night looooonnng!” while Payne hammers away at the piano. This is immediately followed by a strange and slow interlude in which Payne plays some very dissonant piano and overlays it with an equally dissonant synthesizer, before George’s slide guitar knocks the song back onto track with a galloping solo backed by some frantic drums and percussion. Then George cries, “I said look out!” before ripping off a frantic series of notes, and does this twice more before the song ends in a caterwaul.
Anyway, back to my expert medical diagnosis of Little Feat’s time of death. By 1975’s The Last Record Album, the band had begun moving towards a glossy, air brushed, and synthesizer-dominated sound—an endemic problem in El Lay at that time. Moreover, as George’s health deteriorated, the quality of the band’s songwriting fell off precipitously. Worst of all, Bill Payne—who grabbed the helms from a Lowell George who was both in ailing health and disgusted by the band’s slick new sound—led Little Feat into the dark realms of jazz-fusion, a move that caused faithful fans like yours truly to regretfully write the band off the same way we had an increasingly bland Steely Dan.
Still, Little Feat’s first four albums are all remarkable, which isn’t bad when you think about it. Hell, even The Band only had two great studio LPs in ‘em. Had George not lived so close to the edge—and just as importantly, had he not opted to run the band as a democracy—Little Feat might have become America’s Rolling Stones. Yes, they were that good. In fact, give me weed, whites, and wine, and I’ll be willin’ to say they had an Exile on Main Street in them. Make the wine Thunderbird, and I’ll throw in a Sticky Fingers to boot.
Little Feat from the vault: – “Little Feat” (1971)
From psychedelicbabymag.com
With Little Feat being the brainchild of Lowell George, who was politely dismissed from Frank Zappa’s band by Zappa suggesting that perhaps it was time for Lowell to form his own group. Nevertheless, once formed, Little Feat would eventually slide out of Lowell’s hands, taking on a sound quality that would again lead Mr. George to form his solo project during the Little Feat recording of Time Loves A Hero.
It was the song “Willin’,” a number laced with drug references that put Zappa off, though that being said, Frank knew a good song when he heard one, and it was that single track that set the pace for Little Feat. On this original album, George wrote or co-wrote eight of the eleven tracks, and this included the first, though not the last version of “Willin’,” a song that seemed to morph and grow over the years. The Feat’s production and musical vision was relentless, based on an ambling easy going sound defined by syncopated rhythms, capped with Payne’s boogie-woogie barrelhouse piano, a sound that was matched by Lowell’s effortless and distinctive slide guitar emancipations, which earned them great praise as a ‘musician’s band’, though that moniker didn’t translate into heavy sales or even radio airplay, despite “Willin’” being featured as the single.
George had learned much from his nine months with Frank Zappa, what he hadn’t learned was that he, like Frank, needed to be the band leader, setting the pace and direction, rather than attempting to fuse an organic aggregate equality, saying, “Everybody conducts the band at some moment. There are times when everyone has a chance to hold things together. Everybody has a moment when the thread of consciousness of the band is held together by that person.” This notion shifted the spirit and definition from a Lowell George vision, to that of a collective, a collective that would eventually overtake Lowell’s on vision for the Feat.
I’m not going to say that this was an easy album for music fans to latch onto, the sound was so new and unexpected, as were nearly all of the Little Feat albums, albums for which listeners needed to give themselves over to the sound as a whole, rather than being smitten by amazing singles, as say Steely Dan was able to do. Of course this means that listeners needed to drop any preconceived notions about Little Feat’s 1971 debut record (conceived and recorded in 1970) and slip into the loose unique musical quality of this masterpiece, one infused with delightful blues, honky tonk and southern rocker roots. What Little Feat were doing here was lightyears ahead of what the Rolling Stones would lay done with Exile On Main Street or even the Stephen Stills’ band Manassas, and folks sincerely had issues there, though eventually came around with mile wide smiles of satisfaction.
I realize that I might be suggesting that this album is a lot of work to listen to, actually it’s not, especially with the advantage of 20/20 hindsight, where dipping back into these waters with a firm base and knowledge for the music of Little Feat, will allow the record to unfold in a sparkling manner.
*** The Fun Facts: It’s said that Jimmy Carl Black, pointed at George’s size 8 shoes during a rehearsal and scoffed, ”Little feet …” to which George added a Beatles-inspired twist to the spelling.
The album art comes from a mural entitled “Venice In The Snow” and was painted by the L.A. Fine Arts Squad in 1970, though why it was chosen by the band, other than for the sheer joy of seeing winter and wearing heavy cold weather coats on summer all year long Venice Beach, is anyone’s guess.
Little Feat Rooster Rag (2012)
Review by blindedbysound.com
When listening to an album, sometimes sensations hit you as each song plays. Scents like freshly cut lawns and barbecues; sounds like waves hitting the beach, kids laughing while playing in the surf, and the sizzle of food cooking on the grill; sights like bright sunshine and brilliant blue skies; and tastes like a cool beer or lemonade overwhelm the senses. Summer demands music such as this, and Little Feat’s latest album, Rooster Rag, serves this purpose perfectly. Travel to New Orleans and the deep South without leaving your house, or slap this CD on the stereo during your next outdoor party—quite simply, it’s the perfect soundtrack.
On their 16th album, Little Feat hasn’t lost a step as they explore American music’s roots, combining blues, Cajun flavors, and classic rock to create good-time tracks. “Candy Man Blues,” Little Feat’s cover of the Mississippi John Hurt tune, steams forward with scratchy guitar and deep bass blues. The title track emphasizes the band’s country roots, reminiscent of the Grateful Dead; in fact, the lyrics were co-written by Grateful Dead’s lyricist Robert Hunter. Those who prefer slow-grinding blues will love “Church Falling Down,” written by member Fred Tackett. The track demonstrates Little Feat’s versatility and ability to convincingly interpret various musical genres, even a hint of gospel.
Other standouts include “Salome,” which features some incredible guitar solos and pounding, Fats Domino-like piano. Here Little Feat perfectly illustrate how musicians who have played together for numerous years can play in perfect harmony and synchronization, almost anticipating each other’s next moves. The same applies to “One Breath at a Time,” where crunching electric guitars lay down the song’s rhythm as much as the percussion. Singers Tackett, Sam Clayton, and Paul Barrere trade lines like pros, sounding as if they thoroughly enjoy performing together. “Just A Fever” is a fun jam that allows the band to just show off how hard they can rock, and is the perfect accompaniment for a cookout on the deck.
Other than “Rooster Rag” and “Candy Man Blues,” the best candidate for a single remains “Rag Top Down,” which features some interesting chord changes reminiscent of Fleetwood Mac’s bluesier period. Sure, the lyrics do not address any incredibly complicated topic, but a driving song works perfectly for summer trips. Blast this track and revel in Little Feat’s laid-back, good-time vibes. The second-best single candidate, “Jamaica Will Break Your Heart,” injects some soul into the proceedings with horns, gospel piano, and Barrerre’s rhythmic vocals. His precision is impressive on tongue-tripping lines such as “What was now is now the past/ Who was first is now outcast.”
“Way Down Under” does not address Australia, but cloaks some strange images in a sunny, uptempo beat: “Go ahead and take a whirl but/ Don’t step outside the magic circle/ ‘Less you can find your own way back,” they croon. Rooster Rag concludes appropriately with “Mellow Down Easy,” a Willie Dixon cover that brings the listener right back to the good-time party vibes of the beginning of the album. Fabulous Thunderbirds member Kim Wilson contributes searing harmonica to the track, which also benefits from Clayton’s growling lead vocal.
Four words adorn Rooster Rag’s cover: “No Excuses, No Regrets.” Indeed, Little Feat’s confident set demonstrates that this uniquely American band holds few regrets about their obvious goal: to keep the blues and general Americana roots alive. Rooster Rag portrays a band still in their prime, and it provides the perfect soundtrack for a particularly hot summer. Don’t miss one of the best—and most enjoyable—albums of 2012.
Little Feat – Sailin’ Shoes (1972)
From audaud.com
(Lowell George – guitars, harmonica, vocals; Bill Payne – keyboards, accordion, vocals; Richard Hayward – drums, percussion, background vocals; Roy Estrada – bass, background vocals; Sneaky Pete Kleinow – steel guitar; Debbie Lindsey – background vocals; Milt Holland – percussion; Ron Elliott – electric guitar.)
Little Feat is the quintessential “cult” band. Admired by critics, fellow musicians and a zealous fan base, the band seemed destined to catapult into the elite commercial echelon. Started by Lowell George, a multiple instrumentalist, singer and visionary songwriter, a unique landscape of outlaw eclecticism and peculiar observation defined this blend of rock, blues, country and gospel. Aided by the prodigious keyboards of Bill Payne (who brought a distinctly Southern feel), and the rhythm section of Roy Estrada (a fellow member of the Mothers of Invention with George) and Richie Hayward, the quartet reinvented the folk rock music scene of the early 1970’s.
The self-titled debut release, Little Feat, a raw straightforward endeavor, achieved critical acclaim, but not commercial success. Now, with veteran producer Ted Templeman at the helm, Little Feat (the last time the original members played together) focused on the songs, and the result is evident. Expanding on the rootsy, blues influenced template, Sailin’ Shoes is a masterful collage of inventive narrative, resplendent in countercultural irony and romance.
At the core of this transformative work is George’s brilliant songwriting. Opening with an unusually listener-friendly song, “Easy to Slip”, a memorable, if not successful, single materialized. George’s vocals are fearless, and the textured organ lines play nicely against the guitars. A second version of “Willin’” (recorded on the first LP without George on guitar) is as good as it gets. Lyrically brilliant, this tale of a romantic smuggler (perhaps with the greatest rock alliteration…Tucson to Tucumcari, Tehachapi to Tonapah), blends trademark slide guitar with a flourishing piano accompaniment and a deft pedal steel riff (Sneaky Pete). Impeccable arrangement elevates the bizarre title cut, as George stretches out a soulful vocal with a gospel harmony by Debbie Lindsey.
Authenticity permeates the recording, especially on the humorous “Trouble”. The use of accordion blends seamlessly with the clever singing, creating an acoustic ballad that weaves a tale of hilarious misery (“footprints on the ceiling”) into a folk hymn.
Little Feat was a dynamic rock and roll band. Several bluesy opuses inhabit this album. Both “Tripe Face Boogie” and “Cold, Cold, Cold” are gutsy, raw, spontaneous jams that accentuate fresh and ingenious slide guitar, rollicking acoustic and electric piano harmonics, and an underrated rhythm section. There are several improvisational tempo changes and syncopated breaks that transcend archetypal rock interpretations of idiomatic blues. A foray into jazz highlights “Got No Shadow” (one of two Payne compositions), again capturing the mercurial explorations of the group.
The audiophile vinyl reproduction, engineered from the original master, captures the organic pedigree, with clarity and integrity. The intended roughness and gritty acoustics are refined from the original LP, with suppleness, giving the songs a stripped down nuanced immediacy. Little Feat never materialized as mammoth rock stars. However, Sailin’ Shoes captures these musical rebels at their peak. If great music is not enough, the surrealistic high-heeled cake on a swing illustration by Neon Park will more than suffice.
Little Feat Down On The Farm (1979)
From jazzmusicarchives.com
There are just some things that can’t be explained. How the weird stone statues got to Easter Island, why there isn’t an exact number for pi and why “Down On the Farm” is better than the two studio albums that preceded it to name but a few. By all reasoning the disc should be a train wreck because the members of Little Feat were so at odds with each other that they actually announced they were breaking up while they were still recording it and their charismatic front man Lowell George unexpectedly died of a massive heart attack before it was finished. Taking all that into consideration they could certainly have been excused for putting out a disjointed, uninspired collection of songs but this album turned out to be one of their best. Their inner conflicts spurred them to create some of the finest music they’d made in half a decade in spite of themselves. I guess it proves the adage that the hardiest gardens grow out of the smelliest manure. Or something like that.
The album opens with an amusing “slice of life” episode involving an unidentified man and a persistent, croaking toad that lightens the mood immediately. The band then leaps into the title tune written by guitarist Paul Barrere and it turns out to be one of the more exciting tracks they’d laid down in years. It’s a perfect blend of funk and rock that never produces a single dull moment and the humorous lyrics are bound to raise a smile (a variation on the old “how you gonna keep ‘em down on the farm after they’ve seen Paree?” theme.) It immediately became one of my favorite Feat songs the first time I heard it and that lofty ranking has yet to change. Lowell’s “Six Feet of Snow” doesn’t fare as well, though. It’s a Cajun spice-inflected ditty that belies George’s ongoing fascination with the country/folk genre. Guest musician Sneaky Pete performs flawlessly on his pedal steel guitar and it’s probably a treat if you care for that kind of stuff. (Sorry, I don’t.) But the group bounces right back from that dip in the trail with Paul’s “Perfect Imperfection,’ an excellent tune with a slinky west coast R&B feel supporting a jazzy chord progression. Barrere’s short guitar solo is gutsy and penetrating and Bill Payne’s keyboards provide a dense backdrop for Lowell’s emotional singing. Again, to this day I’m astounded at the high level of artistry they were able to collectively conjure up out of themselves while dealing with distracting discord within the ranks.
George’s “Kokomo” follows and, unfortunately, it just never finds a solid groove to travel in. The track sounds forced and it drags down the album’s momentum just when it was regaining its stride. The songs Lowell co-wrote with Bill Payne are much better although the next cut (one he penned with his pal Fred Tackett), “Be One Now,” is the exception. It’s definitely a step up in quality over “Kokomo,” thanks in no small part to having a less predictable structure. Most of all I like how they refrained from unnecessarily trying to enhance George’s voice on this number. His unadorned singing works like magic just as it is. Bill and Lowell’s “Straight From the Heart” sports a light but motivating funk drive that pushes the song forward from the get go. The intertwining guitar work from Barrere and George (on bottleneck slide) is mutually complimentary and very entertaining to pay attention to while the rhythm section of Richard Haywood on drums and Kenny Gradney on bass puts down a firm foundation without ever letting things get too busy. Another Payne & George composition, “Front Page News,” picks up where that one left off and this tune possesses a noteworthy Steely Dan vibe yet it maintains their unique Little Feat atmospherics. Bill’s piano and synthesizer artistry is outstanding and Lowell’s voice is superb in its powerful subtlety. The second half of the tune is so sublime it’s almost transcendent and it shows definitively their affection for and their ability to concoct jazzy auras. When these guys were on their feed they were as good as any band in America.
I may be wrong but I suspect that Payne’s “Wake Up Dreaming” was one of the last tracks recorded (possibly after George had left the sessions) because it’s uncharacteristically poppish. It adopts a sign-of-the-times Fleetwood Mac-like format that isn’t all that offensive yet it effectively pronounces the end of an era for the group because it hardly sounds like them at all. Having said that, they mold it in a presentable fashion and Paul turns in a hot guitar ride along the way. As far as the closer goes, conga man Sam Clayton’s amateurish “Feel The Groove,” my advice is to do yourself a favor and skip it altogether. It’s a weak, reggae beat-soaked ditty that has filler written all over it due to there being no other explanation for it having an existence except to take up 4:48 to complete the vinyl disc. I warn you, it’s a waste of one’s precious listening time that would be well-spent doing most anything else in the world. It’s quite difficult to sit through this one without becoming nauseated and it’s a stain on their resume.
Nevertheless, as bad as the last track is, by ignoring it you’ll find “Down On the Farm” a very worthwhile album to indulge in and a fitting salute to Lowell George’s illustrious career as the leader of Little Feat. (If his uneven solo debut was any indication, he wasn’t about to set the world afire on his own.) It was released in November of ’79, just under five months after his tragic passing and the band disintegrated immediately into the ether. It would be nine long years before the surviving members realized how special their cooperative blend of styles was and wisely re-grouped for another extended run together. I’m glad they didn’t shove 8 of these 9 songs into a locked vault when things went south for them and conceal them from their fans. They were smart to put this one out. Otherwise we fans would’ve missed out on getting to enjoy some of their better material and that would’ve been a travesty.
Little Feat Rooster Rag (2012)
From glidemagazine.com
With the tragic passing of founding member Richie Hayward, Little Feat suffered what is undeniably the band’s greatest loss since the untimely death of its mastermind Lowell George. But the venerable group has enlisted some redoubtable reinforcements for its 16th studio album Rooster Rag.
New drummer Gabe Ford (sideman to Jorma Kaukonen and Ruthie Foster, nephew of guitarist Robben) acquits himself stylishly throughout Rooster Rag, never more so than on the tightly-wound patterns he concocts with bassist Kenny Gradney Jr. and percussionist Sam Clayton during “The Blues Keep Coming.” And the new enlistee’s peripatetic approach on “Salome” contrasts effectively with the slow swooping slide guitar from Paul Barrere.
It’s rare for any band to have lyrics as erudite as their own instrumentals, but that’s exactly what Robert Hunter, long-time wordsmith for the Grateful Dead, supplies on companion pieces “Rag Top Down” and the title song; on the latter, dobro twirls around Larry Campbell’s violin in acoustic sounds not altogether new in the Little Feat canon, but certainly not often prominent in their discography.
The band is in full flight on “Candyman “Blues,” the opening cut displaying as much of the crackling energy of the horn-laden Fred Tackett original “One Breath at a Time.” With Willie Dixon’s “Mellow Down Easy”—which in its high-stepping elemental beat is anything but (see another of Tackett’s tunes, “Tattooed Girl” instead)–this Mississippi John Hurt number bookends the other ten other cuts on an album of expansive production.
Yet Feats’ familiarity with its blues roots supplies a stable point of departure in an otherwise ambitious, not to mention courageous, diversity. Guitarist Tackett, who’s been on board since the group’s reformation in 1988, chips in with four distinctive originals here, and one, “Church Falling Down,” is built on the deep NOLA-derived rhythm at the foundation of the original six-man Little Feat.
On Rooster Rag, Little Feat sound more like themselves, and naturally so, than they have in years. Hopefully this album lays a foundation for similarly courageous projects from this resourceful band.
Most Viewed
Awesome!.... I was there! Back then I was able to bring in a portable cassette recorder and recorded the whole…
I offered up to $50 to anyone for one ticket for any of the six shows at the Garden.....after weeks…
i was there Robert said he next to somebody
[…] speaking to Guitar World, Page believed it was a shadow of what he wanted it to be, saying, “[It was] A…
Classic Rock Review 
Just like Pet Sounds, Sunflower took me a *long* time to warm up to. But when I finely "got it",…