#Little Feat #Lowell George #blues rock #country rock #Southern rock #roots rock #1970s
By 1974, when Little Feat’s Feats Don’t Fail Me Now was released, tensions within the band were starting to surface. The band’s leader Lowell George had begun collaborating with non-band member Martin Kibbee (credited as Fred Martin) and the pair penned the album’s lead cut, “Rock And Roll Doctor.” George and Kibbee, who had attended Hollywood High School in Los Angeles together, had also co-written “Dixie Chicken” for Little Feat’s 1973 album of the same name. After high school, they formed a garage-punk outfit called The Factory, penning goofy songs like “Lightning Rod Man,” equal parts zany-Zappa and fast-and-loose Stones. On “Rock And Roll Doctor,” George and Kibbee employ a similar technique as the trucker anthem “Willin’,” name-dropping cities like Mobile, Moline, Nagodoches and New Orleans in the song’s verse. As to the musical side of the song, in an interview last year with American Songwriter at MerleFest, Little Feat member Paul Barrere discussed how George often used tape splicing in the studio as a compositional tool, a trick he learned from Frank Zappa. “Lowell used to do this thing with cassette tapes where he would take the tape and cut and splice it together, not knowing what was going to happen,” recalled Barrere. “[On ‘Rock And Roll Doctor’] there was like a couple of measures that were 3 1/2 beats instead of 4 beats and he would hand the tape to [keyboardist] Billy [Payne] and say, ‘Normalize this.’ I think within the framework of the verse there’s a 6/4 measure, which is probably why we didn’t get a whole lot of airplay on jukeboxes. If people try to dance to it, it’s like they’re on the wrong foot!” Sadly, arguments over the direction of Little Feat eventually led to the band’s demise in 1978, and George died in 1979. “He was fantastic, an incredible songwriter. A wonderful singer, great player. And, just an enigma of a man,” recalled Barrere. “It was always this sort of love-hate relationship going on, mood swings that I attribute to the times, and what we were doing in those times.” From: https://americansongwriter.com/little-feat-rock-and-roll-doctor/
Though they had all the trappings of a Southern-fried blues band, Little Feat were hardly conventional. Led by songwriter/guitarist Lowell George, Little Feat were a wildly eclectic band, bringing together strains of blues, R&B, country, and rock & roll. The band members were exceptionally gifted technically and their polished professionalism sat well with the slick sounds coming out of Southern California during the '70s. However, Little Feat were hardly slick - they had a surreal sensibility, as evidenced by George's idiosyncratic songwriting, which helped them earn a cult following among critics and musicians. Though the band earned some success on album-oriented radio, the group was derailed after George's death in 1979. Little Feat re-formed in the late '80s, and while they were playing as well as ever, they lacked the skewed sensibility that made them cult favorites. Nevertheless, their albums and tours were successful, especially among American blues-rock fans. From: https://www.allmusic.com/artist/little-feat-mn0000313284/biography
