Considering the rumors flying about friction within Little Feat around the time of its original issue, it seems all the more miraculous Feats Don’t Fail Me Now was even completed fifty years ago, much less in such a unified and stylish fashion.
While this fourth Feats is not the fully realized likes of its predecessor, Dixie Chicken–one of the outstanding LPs of its Seventies era and beyond–it is a potent consolidation of the strengths of the six-man ensemble that had only coalesced two years prior. Still, in the wake of the original quartet’s split in the wake of poor response to its first two records (and yet another dissolution in 1973), its reforming to make this album took a herculean effort.
According to keyboardist Bill Payne—co-founder of the group and still a linchpin of its current lineup—Little Feat recorded the bulk of the sessions at Blue Seas Recording Studio in Hunt Valley, Maryland, owned and operated by chief engineer George Massenburg. It was a valiant attempt to get away from the pressures of their hometown LA environment, and it worked effectively as a means to gain solace from their collective disarray.
Perhaps it’s not so surprising then that the eight tracks boast an impressive consistency of style. Co-founder and titular leader Lowell produced seven cuts, with his kindred spirit in eccentricity, Van Dyke Parks, overseeing “Spanish Moon;” featuring the Tower of Power horn section, the latter is now one of Little Feat’s signature songs.
As included in the 2024 expanded package of Feats Don’t Fail Me Now, the remaster of the original album is only slightly less tantalizing than the rare and/or unreleased material accompanying it. Dan Hersch and Bill Inglot’s engineering expertise reveals an almost granular level of detail, the likes of which befits the nuances of the music.
On this title song, among others, the minutiae of the mix highlights Payne’s uncanny ability to fill holes in the sound–and not just on his own modified blues composition “Oh Atlanta.” Equally subtle is the way Paul Barrere and Lowell George’s guitars snake in, out, and around the other instruments during, for instance, “Skin It Back.” The rhythm section of drummer Richie Hayward, percussionist Sam Clayton, and bassist Kenny Gradney Jr. is more felt than heard on a cut like “The Fan,” and that’s all to the good.
Eight cuts in the three-to-four-minute range formulate a continuity comparable to the live material included in the aforementioned reissue package. Yet it also enhances how the track sequencing of the studio item accurately captures the dynamics of the sextet, including the odd imagery in the song lyrics: especially in Lowell George material like “Down The Road,” the verbal wordplay piques the curiosity as much as the instrumental interplay.
Unreleased studio content in the expanded edition illuminates how close Little Feat came to equalling or surpassing its previous album with Feats Don’t Fail Me Now. There is another cover of Allen Toussaint’s “Brickyard Blues” that corresponds to “On Your Way Down” from the 1973 album. And there are some well-wrought tracks, such as “All That You Dream” and “Front Page News,” that would rightfully appear on future records (respectively, 1975’s The Last Record Album and Down On The Farm four years later).
Yet such cuts would conceivably only intrude on the flow of this LP as it is structured. As would a gem the likes of which elevated the prior Little Feat release, Lowell’s solo number “Roll Um Easy” that distinguished Dixie Chicken. However, the very absence of such a number within these Hotcakes, Outtakes, Rarities does hint at how the creative axis of this band was shifting.
George was pulling back as a composer, perhaps as a direct result of Payne and Barrere stepping forward as songwriters. And there also appears what is described as an ‘unfinished outtake’ of an instrumental credited to all members of the band except Lowell: the jazz-fusion leanings of “Day At The Dog Races” would prompt the latter to leave the concert stage when it was subsequently performed live.
The tune would eventually appear on 1977’s Time Loves A Hero, at which point the charmingly eccentric personality of this band was ebbing away. With the live Waiting For Columbus the next year, the group would retrieve some of its original cachet and indeed extend its audience as Fail‘s successors also managed to do. But the absence of the well-honed improvisational instincts of the collective seems egregious in their absence.
Still, the abundance of live material released coincidentally with the Feats Don’t Fail Me Now re-release is as revelatory in its own way (albeit slightly inferior to) the rarity that is Electrif Lycanthrope: Live at Ultra-Sonic Studios, 1974. Comparison of the latter with Live at the L’Olympia, Paris, France (2/01/75) and Live At The Rainbow ’75 (January 19, 1975) reaffirms a perception of ever-so-slight but tangible decline, further clarified by a half-century of hindsight.
Accordingly, artist Neon Park’s outlandish and ominous cover artwork for this particular lineup’s second long-player is perfectly apropos. It was then (and is now) a thought-provoking yet unsettling combination of humor and cultural commentary that deserves its prominence on the front of the LP as much as the cartoonish absurdity that adorns the sophomore Little Feat effort, Sailin’ Shoes.
The surrealism in the drawing becomes an all the more fitting perspective on this (at its best) lovably eccentric unit, especially in relation to the now five-decade-old title. Lowell George passed away a mere five and a half years after Feats Don’t Fail Me Now came out.
