Ah, Little Feat live in the seventies. Making the world safe for overalls, one Midnight Special at a time.

No, really. Overalls were a thing back then. Or painter’s pants. That was big, too. The girls wore duster jackets and overalls, too sometimes. Tube top, overalls, duster jackets, round tinted sunglasses, straight hair, and a pack of cigarettes was peak ’77 girl fashion.

That’s a lot of firepower on the stage there. Then again, everybody loved Lowell. Teddy bear of a guy. He had quite a trip through the musical world on his way to Little Feat on the Midnight Special. He appeared on Ted Mack’s Original Amateur Hour playing the harmonica when he was only six years old. At one time or another, he learned to play the flute, the guitar, the sitar, the saxophone, and various other instruments. When he was around 20-years-old, he was in a band called The Factory. They made a record or two, and almost got their head above water in the entertainment biz. Not exactly how you’d expect, though:

Mmm. Melody Patterson. Back in the day, when you tired of the Ginger/Mary Ann contretemps, you could fire up the Wrangler Jane/Ellie Mae druthers thought experiment. Anyway, people trying to get famous don’t turn down offers to appear on TV, even if they do change your name in the script to The Bedbugs. I’ll spare you their appearance on Gomer Pyle, USMC.

After that, Lowell started playing with The Standells. I was in a cover band in Massachusetts for a bunch of years, along with assorted lovers, muggers, and thieves, so I’ll bet I’ve played Dirty Water more than Lowell George did. He probably didn’t like it any more than I did, either.

Then Lowell joined Frank Zappa’s Mothers of Invention, of all things. Frank didn’t approve of drugs and Lowell did, which could be forgiven after watching that F Troop episode. They parted ways, but remained friendly. Lowell started Little Feat, and Zappa convinced Warner Brothers Records to put out their first album. It wasn’t a big success. It wasn’t until their third album, Dixie Chicken, that they had any mass appeal, if you can call it that. It’s a kind of Rosetta Stone of proto-swamp rock, funk, and Nooawlins rhythm and blues. Lowell’s slide guitar stuff was his calling card. He got an original sound with audio compression and a Sears Craftsman spark plug socket from a wrench set.

His time in the limelight was limited, though. The drugs caught up to him, and his heart gave out when he was only 34 years old. He had a wife and three kids, so his friends threw a benefit for him: The rest of Little Feat, Jackson Browne, Nicolette Larson, Linda Ronstadt, Emmylou, Bonnie Raitt, Michael McDonald, and the Tower of Power horn section all performed.

Speaking of the Mississippi, the lyrics to Dixie Chicken have a hint of Twain about them, don’t they? A sly little story, with a crusher of a punch line at the end.

Many years since she ran away
Guess that guitar player sure could play
She always liked to sing along
She’s always handy with a song
But then one night in the lobby, yea, of the Commodore Hotel
I chanced to meet a bartender who said he knew her well
And as he handed me a drink he began to hum a song
And all the boys there, at the bar, began to sing along

We’re still singing along, Lowell.