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.

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40 Year Itch : Three We Missed

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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.

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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.

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