Sailin' Shoes (1972)

Personnel:

Lowell George: vocals, guitars, harmonica; baritone saxophone and rhythm box on 'Cold, Cold, Cold'

Richie Hayward: drums, percussion, vocals

Bill Payne: piano, Wurlitzer electric piano, Hammond organ, accordion, vocals; lead vocal on 'Cat Fever'

Roy Estrada: bass guitar, vocals

Additional personnel:

Ron Elliott: rhythm guitar on 'A Apolitical Blues'

Milt Holland: percussion on 'Easy To Slip' and 'Trouble'

'Sneaky' Pete Kleinow: pedal steel on 'Willin'' and 'Texas Rose Café'

Debbie Lindsey: backing vocals on 'Cold, Cold, Cold' and 'Sailin' Shoes'

Recorded at Sunwest Recording Studios, Hollywood, 7-14 April 1971; Amigo Studios, North Hollywood; Sunset Sound Recorders and TTG Studios, Hollywood, 8 December 1971-6 February 1972

Producer: Ted Templeman

Release date: US: February 1972

Peak position: US: -

Running time: 37:44

With only 11,000 copies sold, Little Feat hadn't set the charts on fire, yet critics (at least those who noticed) adored the band. Luckily for them, so did Warner Bros. - or, more specifically, Van Dyke Parks, who went into bat for the band when the label refused to finance a follow-up. Parks had known George since the recording sessions for Fraternity of Man's second album, ultimately finding a kindred spirit in him. The two men worked together infrequently afterwards - Parks helping George out by including the newly-written 'Sailin' Shoes' (their first co-write) on his second album Discover America. Not that George wasn't trying for himself - desperate for another shot, he wrote 'Easy To Slip' with Martin Kibbee: a deliberate attempt at a hit single. (Warner Bros. was so impressed with it, they pitched it along with 'Texas Rose Café' to The Doobie Brothers, who opted against recording the songs.)

In the end, Warner Bros. re-signed the band. Little Feat had friends in high places, and with other out-there labelmates like Captain Beefheart and Frank Zappa - not to mention Parks himself - the band were in no danger of being dropped. After their first North American tour concluded in September, they went back into the studio, this time at Warner's Amigo Studios in North Hollywood. With the friendship of George and the first album's producer Russ Titelman now nonexistent, Ted Templeman was recruited as producer, with Donn Landee as engineer.

George dominated this album's songwriting, with seven of his own and one with Kibbee. Payne wrote the other three: two on his own (George arranging 'Cat Fever') and one with Hayward.

For George, the desire to experiment was great, and he used the studio as a canvas. With Templeman a willing participant, the two created an aural landscape that was just a little left-field. Templeman told Ben Fong-Torres: 'I was lucky to have an inventive group ... Lowell was great because we had a personal relationship, and he would ask my opinion all the time.' Not only did George have a particular sound in mind for 'Cold, Cold, Cold,' he also wanted to use part of his original demo on the finished recording. Templeman later told Bud Scoppa:

The drum sound was something we came up with over at Sunset Sound using a little weird room that used to be a meat storage locker. It was Lowell's idea to use that stupid little drum machine of his, the Donca Matic. That way, when the drums came in with all that compression, it obliterated them.

A small group of guest musicians added some sparkle to the basic tracks, but Sailin' Shoes was a largely band-driven affair, and was more in line with George's initial vision of Little Feat than the debut had been. Released in February 1972 - mere weeks after the sessions wrapped up - Sailin' Shoes introduced to the fold another Little Feat auxiliary member. Neon Park - born Martin Muller - was an artist and comic illustrator who'd designed Frank Zappa's Weasels Ripped My Flesh album cover (which was how George and Park met). Park's style appealed to what Van Dyke Parks later called 'cartoon consciousness.' He later told Bud Scoppa:

The guy would bifurcate just about everything so that you could listen to things on two different levels. I think he had the audacity of a schizophrenic, which I associate with great work ... I think Lowell had a madness in his work that he wanted to explore, and he had the integrity to do it.

George recognized his visual artist friend's sense of humor immediately in the cover for Sailin' Shoes - an attractively decorated anthropomorphized cake, swings on a swing, kicking off one red heel. She has a slice cut out of her - a not-so-subtle entendre - while a snail watches her from the front, and Mick Jagger peers over from behind, the beautifully manicured grounds blending into sky. On the back cover, the songs are listed in an alternate running order, though they're correct on the vinyl and the interior. The gatefold sleeve contains a series of band photos, the lyrics, and liner notes from George: all written in lowercase, in a rambling style that would come to define subsequent Little Feat albums. Titelman was given an arch credit - 'May he remain calm.,' and a crew of groupies known as the Houston Reception Committee were given a sly nod: in addition to inspiring 'Tripe Face Boogie' and 'Texas Rose Café.'

Once again, the album faltered, despite Scoppa's solid Rolling Stone write-up:

Rather than telling stories in a literal sense, Little Feat's songs flash a myriad of fleeting, haunting images, appearing with all the vivid suddenness of floodlit roadside billboards zooming past an open car window.

With Sailin' Shoes selling a mere 13,000 copies, the band's future was again in doubt: Warner Bros. had given them a second chance, but they weren't likely to give them a third. For the time being, it didn't matter - the album release coincided with another tour, and with this one being a more positive experience all 'round, it provided George with an opportunity to further expand his vision for Little Feat.

'Easy To Slip' (Lowell George, Martin Kibbee)

US A-side (WB-7553), 5 January 1972; US A-side (WBS-49801), 5 August 1981

Sailin' Shoes' most commercial song has an introduction reminiscent of the stark acoustic guitar/drums combination of The Rolling Stones' 'Street Fighting Man.' (An earlier February 1971 demo for the Doobie Brothers (known as 'Easy To Fall') was even more Stones-esque.) From the chiming guitars to the vague backing vocal twang, 'Easy To Slip' was seemingly custom-made for radio among the burgeoning country rock genre, yet its lack of a chorus combined with a tendency to ramble, didn't help its chances on the hit parade. (Producer Ted Templeman later admitted to Ben Fong-Torres: 'I think I put too much limiting on the guitars ... in retrospect, it kind of wandered around a little bit.')

Essentially forgotten almost immediately after its release (The song wasn't known to be performed live until 1992), 'Easy To Slip' was one of two early Little Feat songs ('Strawberry Flats' the other) included on the 1981 Hoy-Hoy! compilation. Warner Bros. once again issued the song as a single (this time backed with the original recording of Payne's 'Front Page News'), but again it went nowhere.

'Cold, Cold, Cold' (Lowell George)

With 'Easy To Slip' ostensibly serving as an album taster (a unique blend of rock and country with just a little California weirdness thrown in for good measure), any pretense to a collection of commercial radio-friendly songs with chart potential are destroyed after twelve seconds of a faint, mechanical drum pattern (provided by George's trusty Donca Matic rhythm machine), which Hayward rudely interrupts with a thunderous drum fill, clattering around his kit before settling into the syncopated rhythm. George practically howls the lyrics, actually doing so on his third introductory 'cold', his intense desperation and longing raw and primal; his future wife Liz, whom he was courting at this time despite being married to Hayward's sister-in-law Patte, later told Ben Fong-Torres in Willin' that she believed 'Cold, Cold, Cold' was one of three songs on the album ('Trouble' and the title track the other two) written with her in mind.

George told ZigZag in 1976 that his original demo, recorded in Hayward's living room and running over 15 minutes, served as the backing track before being transferred to the multitrack and overdubbed onto: Hayward's drums were recorded in a former meat locker at Sunset Sound Recorders, while George's harmonica (distorted to sound like a baritone sax), and, later, voice were fed to an amp placed and mic'ed in a tiled bathroom, providing its distinctive frosty sound.

The song became one of Little Feat's most popular early tracks and was a live favorite, often as a medley with 'Dixie Chicken' and 'Tripe Face Boogie.' Confirming George's...