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| Little Feat’s Lowell George |
I can’t believe I forgot to highlight Little Feat during my Southern rock review series! That theme is over but I can’t help but share with y’all one of the greatest odes to truck drivin’ or just driving in general. “Willin’” from 1971’s Little Feat album has perhaps one of the best distilled reasons that we all need to go somewhere to have a good time: as long as we have weed, whites, and wine…and some kind of sign, we’d be willing to move on down.
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| Sailin’ Shoes album cover. |
Sung and created by the inimitable diminutive Lowell George, this dixie-fried countryish ode to doing some quasi-legal things to keep on truckin’ was a brilliant send off to actual rig trucking life. Half-light hearted and half-serious, one quite can’t understand why Frank Zappa fired Lowell for trying to introduce it into the Mother’s arsenal. No matter, Lowell was way too talented for Zappa anyway. His laid-back slide guitar sound had some kind of wonderful plebeian melodic easiness to it. One you hear in this song very succinctly…and one that made him a sought after session musician for other disparate artists from John Cale, Bonnie Raitt, and Harry Nilsson, all the way to funk artists like the Meters and Robert Palmer.
Lowell was another great, highly intelligent pseudo-Southern rock artist who if you take the time to discover, or listen to a bit more, shines more light into the great way American Southern music can easily blend in with every style as long as the other person is willin’ to give them a chance…
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Listen to Willin’ through Spotify.
Bonus track, John Cale’s “Andalucia” which features the magnificent acoustic and slide guitar work of Lowell…
//www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/r7iLFuapeY8?rel=0
Listen to Andalucia through Spotify.