40 Year Itch : Give Me Missing Persons

Steve Prefontaine, 1975

Little Feat : Long Distance Love

[Purchase]

  Jimmy Page called Little Feat his favorite American group. At their height, they were Elvis Costello's favorite too. He saw them open for The Doobie Brothers in 1975. Jackson Browne called Lowell George "the Orson Welles of Rock".

  But just as all those years on the road were about to pay off and make Little Feat a household name, Lowell George began downplaying his role in the band. Maybe it was the other projects he had going on ( he produced other artists and helped Emmylou Harris and Rickie Lee Jones get Warners contracts), or his head butting with keyboardist Bill Payne. Maybe it was his health. But The Last Record Album sees Payne and guitarist Paul Barrere taking on more of the songwriting responsibility. They were good for one sure-fire classic, "All That You Dream", but for me the highlight is Lowell's soulfully sung "Long Distance Love" and just about anything he played on slide guitar. 

40 Year Itch : Country With A Boogie Beat

[Purchase]

The title was almost literal. If with this record we didn't 'break through the bullshit barrier', in Lowell's terms, then that would be the end of the band. Lowell was not very pleased with record companies and their practices at this point. 

-Paul Barrere, quoted in Rock and Roll Doctor

Little Feat has already broken up a few times before meeting at an inexpensive studio outside Washington D.C. where they could take their time and produce an album that would finally sell in the kind of numbers expected by their label Warner Brothers.

Feats Don't Fail Me Now was party record - have a beer or two and dance...that's the frame of mind we were in for that record

Lowell George, quoted in Willin': The Story of Little Feat

As a band they pushed each other. Lowell George, the lead songwriter, singer, guitarist and producer, bet keyboardist Bill Payne he didn't have the chops to write a hit song.

As Payne would later explains " My idea of a hit record then was  basically something with a chorus coming in at 45 seconds . The result was "Oh Atlanta". It was not a hit record, but it is one of those songs that has stood the test of time.

The fact that Lowell George didn't take all the writing credits led Rolling Stone reviewer Ben Gersen to suggest George had lost control of the band:

George hopes he has finally achieved a measure of stability: He is not quite as dominant as he once was -- he has consciously down-played his own authority -- but this may not be the root of the problem. It is almost as if once he decided to cede responsibility to the others, he also decided to make his writing less reflective of his own slant than of the new, corporate Little Feat, a group that he no longer commands.

   Feats Don't Fail Me now really is a great backyard barbeque party album. Lowell George had played with The Meters and was helping Robert Palmer knock out his solo debut Sneakin' Sally. He found an even funkier side to the band. Even with the band revisiting two Sailin' Shoes songs in "Cold Cold Cold/ Tripe Face Boogie" ( in an experimental ten minute trip of a tune) , it's a worthwhile album and it proved to be the hit Warner Brothers demanded. Initial sales of 150,000 exceeded the first three albums combined. Not really because it's any better than Sailin' Shoes or Dixie Chicken. Little Feat toured up and down the East Coast all of 1974 and built up a huge, record-buying following. 

40 Year Itch : Eloquent Profanity

[Purchase]

After Sailin' Shoes failed to hit , Little Feat broke up. Bass player Roy Estrada went into computer programming and was replaced by two New Orleans musicians, New Orleans native Kenny Gradney and Merry Clayton's percussionist brother Sam. New Orleans music fan Paul Barrere, a Hollywood High classmate of Lowell George's, also joined the band. The new line-up changed the sound of Little Feat as Paul Barrerre recently told Offbeat.com :

  

Little Feat before myself and Sam (Clayton) and Kenny (Gradney) were very cerebral. If you listen to the first two records there’s some incredibly diverse music on there. But the one thing that they didn’t do really, really well… I hate to bust ‘em on this, but they didn’t boogie. When you listen to the original “Tripe Face Boogie” it sounds pretty stiff. I think what happened when Sam and Kenny and I joined was we brought in some funk. It just got a little more soulful, and I think they all appreciated that.

Dixie Chicken is the album that helped Little Feat find its audience. It's where they introduced their trademark lazy, grooving second line shuffle on songs like "Dixie Chicken, "Two Trains" and "Fat Man in the Bathtub"--all concert favorites. Lowell George's slide guitar never sounded better. But if the album is full of good vibes, it didn't necessarily feel that way to George as he revealed to an Australian broadcaster:

 Dixie Chicken had a very thick sound because there was a lot of overdubbing done. As a matter of fact the song Dixie Chicken had nothing except the original conga part on it from the original session. And drums were overdubbed, and nobody does that. I mean you do, but you regret it later. I had a very good engineer at that point, Richie Moore, who got a very good drum sound on that particular tune. And so I just plodded right through as best I could. And it was fun. That whole album took a great toll emotionally and physically. I collapsed for two weeks after it was over.



While the band sounds like they finally got it together, the label didn't see it that way. Warner Brothers wouldn't invest in promoting an album by a band that looked like it would break up any minute. And they were right. Little Feat were always breaking up, getting back together, recording and touring.

For a listen on their live sounds check out this 1974 concert at the Bottom Line


 They would get close, especially on the 1978  live album Waiting For Columbus, but they would never top Dixie Chicken. In 1979, in the middle of a solo tour, Lowell George collapsed and died of an apparent heart attack. He was 34.

.

40 Year Itch : Three We Missed

[Purchase]

This is the end of the month round-up of albums I didn't get to for one reason or another.

Radio has such a short memory. When Dave Edmunds released "I Hear You Knockin" in 1971, there wasn't anything else like it getting played. The music of Chuck Berry, Fats Domino and Smiley Lewis couldn't be heard anymore.

For his debut album, Rockpile, Edmunds recorded the music of his idols, a few originals and some surprising covers: Neil Young's "Dance Dance Dance", Ron Davies's "It Ain't Easy" (which would also show up on David Bowie's Ziggy Stardust a month later) and "Down, Down, Down" from The Move's Trevor Burton. Everything great thing Dave Edmunds has ever done can be heard in these three glorious minutes.

[Purchase]

No sophomore slump for Los Angeles slacker boogie artists Little Feat. The critically acclaimed Sailin' Shoes features a second version of Lowell George's classic "Willin'" which I don't think I'll ever get tired of listening to. I managed to grow up without hearing a lot of Little Feat. Even when I bought Dixie Chicken I didn't listen to it much.

 In college I had The Neville Brothers and Radiators delivering the same kind of dazed funk --the air on campus smelling like ripe magnolias and sweet weed. In New Orleans "Sailin' Shoes" meant the Robert Palmer cover version recorded with The Meters. It's still taking some time for me to get into this one. Where am I going wrong?

[Purchase]

1972 was a great year for Italian progressive rock. We got the first two albums from  Premiata Forneria Marconi (the name means Award-Winning Macaroni Bakery) and the first two albums from Banco Del Mutuo Soccorso ("Tour the Mutual Aid"?) as well as Le Orme 's Uomo di Pezza..

Founded by brothers Vittorio and Gianni Nocenzi, Banco specialized in complex, symphonic prog rock a la Emerson Lake and Palmer or Gentle Giant. Frankly, it's not the kind of stuff I listen to for pleasure. The follow-up Darwin!, released later in the year, is said to be their masterpiece.

Six Degrees of Separation: The Merseybeats to The Mothers

[Buy The Very Best Of The Merseybeats]



  In 1964 Beatles contemporaries The Merseybeats release "Really Mystified", a B side to the UK #13 hit "Don't Turn Around", from their self-titled album. Elvis Costello and The Attractions record a cover which appears on Imperial Bedroom reissues.

[Get Happy!!]




 Two years earlier, EC and the Attractions drop Get Happy!!, a R and B influenced album Costello with twenty peppy tracks like "Beaten To The Punch". Costello wrote all but two of the tracks. "I Stand Accused" was another Merseybeats cover.

[Get Her Very Best]



The other Get Happy!! cover was the Van McCoy written "Getting Might Crowded", a Top 30 UK hit in 1965  for Betty Everett . Although she recorded the original version of "You're No Good" ( which Linda Ronstadt took to Number One in 1975), her greatest hit was "The Shoop Shoop Song ( It's In His Kiss)"

[Get Merry]




Merry Clayton, best known for her vocals on The Rolling Stones song "Gimme Shelter" but who also sings on Joe Cocker's "Feelin' Alright", Neil Young's first album  and Lynyrd Skynrd's "Sweet Home Alabama", was the first to record "The Shoop Shoop Song". In 1971 she released two albums. Merry Clayton has this Neil Young cover.

5.Little Feat "Dixie Chicken"






[Get It]

Merry's brother, Sam Clayton has been  a percussionist and vocalist with Little Feat since their third album, 1973's Dixie Chicken. The album cover was designed by Neon Park aka Martin Muller.

6.The Mothers: The Orange County Lumber Truck





[Buy The Album]

Neon Park is best known for the Weasels Ripped My Flesh album cover for The Mothers Of Invention. Park combined the cover of a Man's Life magazine with an advertisement for an electric shaver. Incidentally, future Little Feat  founder Lowell George played guitar on this album.