From My Shelves – Little Feat "Ain't Had Enough Fun"

(From My Shelves is an occasional series of posts that takes a look at some of my personal favorites in my collections of music, movies and books.)

Little Feat – “Ain’t Had Enough Fun” (1995) – Is Little Feat the best band to never have a hit single?  Certainly an arguable point.  If you talk to a lot of musicians going back to the ’70s they will tell just how good this band has been.  Formed in L.A. in 1969 by keyboardist Bill Payne and singer/songwriter/guitarist Lowell George they have cranked out great music through decades and changes in the lineup.

The history of the band takes many twists and turns.  It begins with George being fired from Frank Zappa’s Mothers of Invention.  Why he was fired is open to a certain amount of discussion.  Musically the band has wandered through rock, funk, country, blues, R&B, jazz fusion and more.  The result is one of the more individual sounds over the years.  The band’s name is supposed to be a tribute to George’s small feet.  The spelling is a tribute to the Beatles.

This album is from the post-Lowell George era (George died in 1979) and is the first album where Shaun Murphy as a lead singer.  She had done some singing with the band on several previous albums and had been a member of the touring group with Bob Seger and the Silver Bullet Band.  After five albums she would leave the band in 2009.

This was one of the hundreds of CDs that rolled across my desk as Music Director at my last radio station.  Most of those discs ended up in the trash (I’d salvage the jewel cases because we were constantly breaking them), a small number would go to the library because we had played them on some kind of regular basis.  There was an even smaller universe of music that was wrong for the station but too good to throw out.  This was one I snagged because I enjoyed it so much.  Years later it continues to be a regular favorite record to just jam to as I was working around the house.

Little Feat still plays the occasional gig (they show some shows in Jamaica in March) but several members of the band are working steadily.  This includes founding member Bill Payne, who now plays with Leftover Salmon and guitarists Paul Berrere and Fred Tackett just played (as the Paul and Fred Acoustic Duo) with 10,000 Maniacs, January 24!