After the 1960's folk rock made it's biggest impact on the U.S. charts, a new sound was developing from it: the singer-songwriter movement. Things got slower, less political and much more personal. But not all of it was a middle-of-the-road mainstream snoozefest. Children of the Revolution, please allow me to introduce Little Feat. #littlefeat #socal #lowellgeorge #countryrock #jamband #swamprock #rockandroll

It would be very easy to paint all music coming out of the first half of the 1970's as dull and boring, especially if you saw what the biggest-selling records were at the time.

Cover of Dixie Chicken, 1973, Little Feat's third album. Illustration by Neon Park, whose work became synonymous with the band. Courtesy of Warner Brothers.

Many of the artists of this new movement primarily were centered around two places, which were Woodstock in New York and in Southern California, around the Laurel Canyon area; the latter was close in proximity to Hollywood, which made it attractive to those in the entertainment business.

The scene became mainstream, which something that metal heads, rockers and punks equally called the death of Rock and Roll, until those groups somehow came along and "saved" it. The sound even was adopted by others outside of the locality, such as Elton John. The Eagles were a prime example of this music, and due to their massive success, a prime target.

Little Feat, 1975. Top row: Lowell George, Kenny Gradney, Paul Barre. Bottom row: Bill Payne, Sam Clayton, Richie Heyward. Photographer unknown, courtesy of Warner Brothers.

But not every artist in the Southern California scene was all about singing about a place you can check of out and and never leave from. Little Feat, a band still recording and touring to this day, arose from this era and place, and from one of the Laurel Canyon residents, who oddly was not about soft rock, Frank Zappa.

Lowell George, along with Hispanic bassist Ray Estrada, were once in the Mothers of Invention, and left to form Little Feat in 1971. They were signed to Warner Brothers, and their first two LP's flopped. They broke up briefly, but then quickly reformed with a new line-up: George, along with Paul Berre, Kenny Gradney, and Bill Payne, along with musicians of color, Richie Heyward and Sam Clayton, something only the Doobie Brothers could claim at the time.

Cover of Feats Don't Fail Me Now, part of a series of LP's that cemented Little Feat's classic status. Illustration by Neon Park, courtesy of Warner Brothers.

Little Feat would start a winning streak with this new line-up, which changed their sound dramatically: Folk, country, R&B, jazz-fusion, swamp rock, boogie rock, ballads and even blue-eyed soul. Live, they were considered a type of jam band like the Grateful Dead, but much more funky. They were so well loved that their songs ended up on best-selling albums by Linda Ronstandt, and the group themselves were session players on numerous releases, including several early important LP's by Robert Palmer.

Interestingly, the band also became associated with another person from their Zappa Days, illustrator Neon Park. This was the era of the classic album cover, and Park (born Martin Muller) rose so much to the occasion that his work became as associated with the band as the design team of Hipgnosis was with Pink Floyd. Park's anamorphic animals and food images also were all done with a sense of sly humor, not unlike many of the songs by the group, which stood in contrast to the seriousness of Little Feat's contemporaries.

Posthumous release from 1981, Down On the Farm, which was also Little Feat's last album of material for almost a decade. Illustration by Neon Park,