Little Feat- Dixie Chicken 50th- Bill Payne, the late Paul Barrere
The golden anniversary of Little Feat’s breakthrough third album, Dixie Chicken, falls conveniently within weeks of the forty-fifth anniversary of Little Feat’s most popular seller, the double live album Waiting for Columbus. January 1973’s Dixie Chicken was the last Little Feat album on which Lowell George, the talented but enigmatic singer, songwriter, and slide guitarist, was the dominant force in the band. He produced Dixie Chicken and again wrote most of the songs. If there’s a demarcation point in the evolution of Little Feat, the Dixie Chicken album is probably it.
If only the world’s most acclaimed rock musicians voted for election into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Little Feat would have been inducted on the first ballot twenty-five years ago. The list of famous Little Feat fans included the Rolling Stones’ Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, Bob Seger, Bonnie Raitt, Robert Palmer, and Robert Plant just for starters. Led originally by the late talented, enigmatic slide guitarist/ singer/ songwriter Lowell George, my guests ace pianist Bill Payne and singer/songwriter/guitarist Paul Barrere (who passed away in October 2019), the critics loved Little Feat just as much as the superstars did. But as you will hear in this classic rock interview, for most of the Seventies they didn’t sell many albums.