Friday's news that Little Feat drummer Richie Hayward had passed away was not entirely unexpected or shocking, but still very sad to hear, and the end of an era. Hayward was 64, and had been struggling with health problems for a while, at least as long as a year ago, when he stepped down from touring with the band in 2009 for the first time in 40 years, although he played with them one last time in July. He's the first member of Little Feat to pass away since founder Lowell George's untimely 1979 death, but he now leaves keyboardist Bill Payne as the only one from the original lineup that recorded the first 2 albums still playing with the band. Feat's already been touring for the past year with Hayward's drum tech sitting in, now as I guess a permanent replacement, and I imagine they'll continue going for as long as anyone from the band's '70s glory days is still around to carry the torch.

I grew up on Little Feat, and they were the first band I ever saw in concert at the age of 9. I took my dad to see them at the 9:30 Club in 2008, and it turned out to be my last chance to see Hayward play with the band. It's hard to think of him or his legacy in terms outside the band, but as a drummer and as a Little Feat fan I've probably gotten more out of his playing than I ever realized. The band covered so much musical terrain and so many different types of rhythms and genres that it's kind of mind-boggling to realize it was always the same guy behind the set; the funkier fusion-y stuff on the late '70s albums yielded probably my favorite Hayward moments, although you really just cannot beat the perfect thump of early tracks like "Hamburger Midnight" and "Cold Cold Cold"; to say you envy another man's kick drum is the kind of odd thing only drummers say, but man I covet his sound on those records.

Little Feat aren't a terribly well known band, and if you're not familiar with them you probably think you've never heard Hayward's work, but I can almost guarantee you have. Sure, he also played with Clapton, Waits, Zevon, dozens of others, but I'm really referring to his unheralded role as the father of a ubiquitous breakbeat. The simple shuffling snare/kick/hi-hat at the beginning of "Fool Yourself" was sampled on a ton of hip hop records in the early to mid '90s -- first (I think) on A Tribe Called Quest's "Bonita Applebaum" and most famously on the Fugees "Kiling Me Softly." You know the beat I'm talking about. In the last call for pitches for the 33 1/3 series, I thought about proposing a book about a Little Feat album, but never got around to it, partly because I knew it wouldn't get picked, partly because I couldn't decide between Sailin' Shoes or Dixie Chicken. And I always fantasized about doing the latter, and dedicating a chapter to the long unlikely life of the "Fool Yourself" break, and maybe interviewing Hayward and finding out how aware he was of its many uses and what he thought of it all. I guess I'll never get to do that now.

This entry was posted on Saturday, August 14, 2010 at 5:45 PM. You can skip to the end and leave a response.