Little Feat is indeed an American rock band founded in 1969 in Los Angeles by singer-songwriter, lead vocalist, and guitarist Lowell George and keyboardist Bill Payne. Shortly before his death in 1979, George split the band owing to artistic disputes. Little Feat was re-formed in 1987 by the surviving members, and the band has remained active to this day.
Rock and roll, blues, country, R&B, as well as jazz are all included in the band’s repertoire.
In a 1975 Rolling Stone interview, guitarist Jimmy Page revealed that Little Feat was his favourite American band.
When Lowell George was a member of Frank Zappa’s Mothers of Invention, he met Bill Payne.
Payne had tried out for the Mothers but had not been accepted. They founded Little Feat featuring Roy Estrada, a former Mothers bassist, as well as Richie Hayward, a drummer from George’s previous band, The Factory. Hayward was also a member of such Fraternity of Man, whose song “Don’t Bogart That Joint” was featured on the million-selling Easy Rider movie soundtrack. The band’s name was inspired by Mothers drummer Jimmy Carl Black’s remark about Lowell’s “tiny feet.” The spelling of the word “feat” was inspired by the Beatles.
The origins of Little Feat are told in three different ways. According to legend, George presented Zappa his song “Willin’,” and Zappa sacked him from the Mothers of Invention because he thought George was too good to just be a member of his band and advised him to establish his own band. Inside the second rendition, Zappa fires him after a 15-minute guitar solo while his amplifier is turned off. According to the third version, Zappa sacked him because “Willin'” contains references to drugs (“weed, whites and wine”). George frequently cited the song as the reason for his dismissal from the band.
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