from the LP Little Feat, Warner Bros Records, 1971By some accounts, most notably of band founder Lowell George himself, this is the song that got him kicked out of the Mothers of Invention, leading to the formation of Little Feat and everything which came after; Zappa, of course, always refuted this version and insisted that he was totally encouraging of George to record due to the high quality of the tracks he’d played for him---considering the drug references herein (Zappa was a notorious teetotaler, excepting for coffee & cigarettes) and the simplistic, country-based demeanor of the song, I’d take George’s version as closer to probable fact. Whatever the truth about Little Feat’s genesis may be, one thing is for certain: throngs of stoners and music lovers the world over are sure as hell happy that George and other former-Mothers Roy Estrada and Richie Hayward made the split, gracing us with some of the rootsiest, organic rock music ever put to wax! This first album of theirs rides a little heavy on the over-the-road trucking theme, but I suppose touring musicians had some idea of what that lifestyle was like, so, “…if you give me weed, whites & wine, and you show me a sign, I’ll be willin’, to keep movin’…” This song remains an absolute classic, covered by too many artists to name here, the next great step for country-rock following behind legends like Gram Parsons and the New Riders.
