Drummer Richie Hayward, one of the co–founders of Little Feat, has died.
He had liver cancer, but that wasn't what killed him, I've been told. His cancer seems to have been under control, but a respiratory ailment with which he struggled for much of his adult life was the actual cause of his death.
It is an occasion for me to remember an album I had when I was in high school, a two–record live set called "Waitin' for Columbus." I never owned any of the group's studio albums — I listened to most of them at one time or another but always found them to be inferior to live performances.
Little Feat really defied definition. At the All Music Guide, Stephen Thomas Erlewine describes Little Feat as "a wildly eclectic band, bringing together strains of blues, R&B, country, and rock & roll." Little Feat was all that and more, but it always seemed to have more energy, more feeling, more soul on live albums than studio ones.
The first incarnation of Little Feat dissolved after the death of frontman Lowell George a year after "Waitin' for Columbus" was released. The band re–formed in the 1980s and seems to have enjoyed a new life as mostly a touring band — and Hayward appears to have been a big part of that.
I can't say I have ever been a devoted follower of Little Feat. "Waitin' for Columbus" is the extent of my Little Feat collection, mainly because it had the best versions of the best songs of the Lowell George era.
But I'm sorry to see Hayward go, just as I was sorry to see George go.
In a business that is loaded with cheap copies, Little Feat has always been a sharp original.
It will be less original without Hayward.
