Little Feat is an American rock band created by singer-songwriter, lead vocalist, and guitarist Lowell George and keyboardist Bill Payne in Los Angeles in 1969. George split the band shortly before his death in 1979 due to aesthetic differences. The surviving members of Little Feat reformed the band in 1987, and it is still performing today.
The band’s repertoire includes rock and roll, blues, country, R&B, and jazz, among other genres. Little Feat was guitarist Jimmy Page’s favorite American band, according to a 1975 Rolling Stone interview. Bill Payne met Lowell George when he was a member of Frank Zappa’s Mothers of Invention.
Payne had auditioned for the Mothers but had been turned down. They formed Little Feat with former Mothers bassist Roy Estrada and drummer Richie Hayward from George’s previous band, The Factory.
Hayward was a member of the Fraternity of Man, whose song “Don’t Bogart That Joint” was on the million-selling Easy Rider soundtrack. Mothers drummer Jimmy Carl Black’s remark about Lowell’s “small feet” inspired the band’s moniker. The Beatles inspired the spelling of the word “feat.”
Little Feat’s origins are told in three different ways. According to folklore, George presented Zappa with his song ‘Willin,’ and Zappa fired him from the Mothers of Invention because he thought George was too talented to be a member of his band and recommended him to form his own. After a 15-minute guitar solo, Zappa fires him and turns off his amplifier in the second iteration.
Zappa fired him, according to the third version, because ‘Willin’ contains references to drugs (‘marijuana, whites, and wine’). The song was commonly cited as the reason for George’s expulsion from the band.
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