SAN DIEGO — Is Little Feat the most influential American rock band that never achieved mainstream success, in large part because its music was simply too diverse and good to make major commercial inroads?

“I think there’s a lot of truth in that,” said keyboardist and singer Bill Payne, who co-founded Little Feat in 1969 with guitarist/singer Lowell George after Payne’s failed attempt to join Frank Zappa’s Mothers of Invention. “We were everybody’s secret surfing spot.”

A secret to the general public, perhaps, apart from an intensely loyal cult following. But not to the many artists who cherish the band’s superior musicianship, first-rate songwriting and admirable ability to mix blues, rock, country, funk, jazz, boogie-woogie, R&B, intensely syncopated New Orleans second-line music rhythms, and more into a zesty aural gumbo that sounded unmistakably and uniquely like Little Feat.

That admiration is borne out by how many of the band’s best songs have been lovingly covered by everyone from Bonnie Raitt, Garth Brooks, the Byrds, Bob Dylan and Jackson Browne to Linda Ronstadt, Van Halen, Carly Simon and the late Gregg Allman and Tom Petty.

At a memorable 2010 concert, the jam band Phish reverently performed all but one of the 17 songs from Little Feat’s acclaimed 1977 live double-album, “Waiting for Columbus.” At least 10 of those same songs are still showcased nightly by Little Feat currently.

In its heyday in the mid-1970s, Little Feat was declared the best rock band in America by both Led Zeppelin guitarist Jimmy Page and Mick Jagger of the Rolling Stones. Not coincidentally, the Stones’ 1976 album, “Black and Blue,” featured two songs heavily inspired by Little Feat — “Hey Negrita” and “Hot Stuff.”

“It was flattering. It meant we must be doing something right!” Little Feat percussionist Sam Clayton, a Fallbrook resident, recalled in a 2019 San Diego Union-Tribune interview.

“There’s an enormous sense of pride in being held in high esteem by so many musicians,” Little Feat guitarist/singer Paul Barrere said in a 2018 Union-Tribune interview. “It was always a nice merit badge.”

Barrere, who died in 2019, joined Little Feat in 1972. That was the same year Clayton and bassist Kenny Gradney became members. Both are still on board today, alongside Payne and guitarist Fred Tackett, who began recording with the group in 1973 and became a member in 1988.

Guitarist/singer Scott Sherrard joined in 2019 to replace Barrere. Drummer Tony Leone became a member in 2020, a decade after the death of the band’s original drummer, Richie Hayward. Leone was born in 1969, the same year Little Feat was launched — and 10 years before group co-founder George died at the age of 34 from a drug-fueled heart attack.

An unusually broad impact

George’s passing saw this pioneering Americana-music-and-beyond band go on a nine-year hiatus before regrouping in 1988 with the addition of former Pure Prairie League singer Craig Fuller. Today, 47 years after George’s death, Little Feat’s impact continues to be felt in — and well beyond — rock.

Its sinewy 1973 song, “Fool Yourself,” has been sampled by such varied artists as Sade, Alicia Keys, A Tribe Called Quest, Shakira, Janet Jackson, Kirk Franklin, Mary J. Blige, Lloyd Banks, Wu-Tang Clan members RZA and Ghostface Killah, and more than 130 others.

Little Feat’s 2008 album, the aptly titled “Join the Band,” featured the group performing some of its most beloved songs with such high-profile admirers as Emmylou Harris (“Sailin’ Shoes”), Dave Matthews (“Fat Man in the Bathtub”), Jimmy Buffett (“Time Loves a Hero”), Vince Gill (“Dixie Chicken”), Black Crowes’ singer Chris Robinson (“Oh Atlanta”) and Brooks & Dunn (“Willin’).

In February, “Little Feat: The Documentary,” debuted at the 23-year-old Big Sky Documentary Film Festival in Montana. Narrated by Oscar-winning actor Jeff Bridges, a longtime fan, the 2-hour,15-minute film includes fond words about the band from such devotees as Raitt, Browne, Lyle Lovett, Elvis Costello, Neon Park and members of the Grateful Dead, Phish and the Doobie Brothers.

“I love Little Feat!” said English synth-pop pioneer Howard Jones, who is not in the film. His 1992 album, “In The Running,” includes two songs featuring former Little Feat drummer Hayward.

“I grew up listening to a lot of their music and I love Bill Payne’s playing, although I know a lot of people wouldn’t think I did,” Jones said. “But it’s such great music, and great music is great music.”

Little Feat’s 1975 gem, “All That You Dream,” is the second-to-last song heard in the final episode of the TV series “The Sopranos.” The band’s songs have also been showcased in at least 30 other films and TV series, from “New Girl” and “This Is Us” to “X-Men: Days of Future Past” and the Cameron Crowe-directed “Almost Famous.”

In addition, Little Feat’s legacy has been saluted by tribute bands on both coasts, including Sailin’ Shoes and Feat Prints, and — in Japan — by Little Cheat. In 1989, the title of Little Feat’s superb 1973 album, “Dixie Chicken,” inspired the name of a then-new Texas country-music group called the Dixie Chicks.

More recently, Little Feat’s music has been embraced and performed by a new generation of artists that includes Sierra Ferrell, Marcus King, Molly Tuttle and Shakey Graves. Several generations of jam bands cite Little Feat as foundational, although almost none has come close to matching the group’s seamless stylistic range and command of percolating grooves and noodling-free improvisations.

“I think the fact that we couldn’t be easily categorized gave us our longevity, which has been a blessing and a curse, but I think more a blessing,” Payne said, speaking from his home in southwestern Montana, where he has lived full time since 2009.

“We weren’t locked into any particular kind of sound, but the reality was we did have a sound, we had a voice. I’ve often said that you’d have to be in 10 different bands to play the width of and breadth of music that Little Feat has played over the years! But it always sounds like Little Feat, no matter what we do, which is a pretty good trick. So, if we play ‘Happy Birthday,’ it’s gonna sound like Little Feat.”

‘Carnival Ghosts: A Memoir’

Payne is now completing his memoir, “Carnival Ghosts: A Memoir of Life, Loss, and Rebirth with Little Feat,” which will be published in February by the Simon & Schuster imprint Regalo Press.

The 365-page book, which includes a foreword from author and presidential historian Douglas Brinkley, is written in both prose and poem form. It chronicles Payne’s life from his days as a California teen surfer and church organist to the keyboardist who has been featured on hundreds of albums.

“It’s a long book because I’ve led a long life,” said Payne, 77, who also took many of the photos that appear in his memoir.

Part of the book focuses on his extremely prolific work as a recording and touring artist outside of Little Feat. Payne’s voluminous recording credits range from Ronstadt, Raitt, Lovett, John Lee Hooker, Kinky Friedman, Pink Floyd and B.B. King to Donna Summer, Buddy Guy, Stevie Nicks, Cher, Bob Seger, and at least four former San Diegans — Stephen Bishop, Rita Coolidge, JJ Cale and A.J. Croce.

“First and foremost, I view music for what it is, a language,” Payne said. “So, if musicians are having a conversation on stage or in the studio, in order to have that conversation, you have to know the language. What is the vocabulary that you’re digging into? What can you contribute to that vocabulary?

“I didn’t have to audition like I did for my first band. As time went on, people knew who I was. And I figured: ‘Well, if they’re calling me to play on the record, they must want me to do what I do’.”

Payne is happy to be back on the road, at least for now. But he admits the billing of Little Feat’s current concert trek as “The Last Concert Tour” is a bit misleading, which is something of a Little Feat tradition.

The band’s fifth album, 1975’s “The Last Record Album,” was soon followed by three more: “Time Loves a Hero” in 1977; the epic live double-album “Waiting For Columbus” in 1978; and “Down on the Farm” in 1979, which was released barely half a year after the death of doomed Little Feat mastermind George.

“What we’re calling ‘The Last Farewell’ is going to take about two-and-a-half-years to wind down,” Payne said. “And when the ship comes to dock, we can still record if we want to and there might be some concert residencies we want to play or a special festival that pops up.

“So, the options are endless, in terms of playing. But the real reason for doing this farewell tour is to get us off the bus and off the grind of touring, and I think that’s probably a wise reason.”

Payne is all too familiar with the ups and downs of Little Feat, which disbanded and regrouped twice in its first four years of existence alone. The band only toured seven times between 2000 and its 50th anniversary tour in 2019. Barrere, who was diagnosed with liver cancer in 2015 and died four years later, was unable to tour with the group in 2013 and missed the summer leg of its 2019 tour.

Rockin’ down the highway

During Little Feat’s downtime, Payne toured as a member of the Doobie Brothers between 2015 and 2021. He first collaborated with the Doobies on the band’s second album, 1972’s “Toulouse Street.”

“Little Feat were not the Doobie Brothers — we didn’t have hit records,” Payne said. “I love those guys, they’re dear friends and wonderful people. We’re just two different bands.”

The late George is still widely hailed as having been Little Feat’s most visionary member and Payne matter-of-factly refers to him as both a mentor and a genius. But it is as an ensemble of similarly talented and musically omnivorous equals that the band made its biggest impact.

And if Little Feat’s members sometimes had fiery arguments about their music (and they certifiably did), it was a reflection of the band’s devotion to doing the very best it could, on record and on stage.

“Arguments are healthy,” Payne said. “They force you into an area, a territory, called ‘conviction.’ What do you put your conviction behind?”

He chuckled.

“The first time I played my song ‘Oh Atlanta’ for the band,’ he recalled, “you would have thought I gave them something that was not conducive to their thoughts of what constituted a great song, or a good song, even. I just looked at them and said: ‘We’re playing this song, whether you like it or not.’ That happened a few times.

“Bands are wonderful, but it was never ‘Lowell George & Little Feat,’ or ‘Bill Payne & Little Feat.’ It’s Little Feat. Everybody in the band can have a voice in it, and a lot of interesting things happen because of that.”

The rollicking “Oh Atlanta” has been a highlight of Little Feat’s concerts for more than 50 years. Payne laughed when asked if his band mates eventually agreed he was right to insist the group add the song to its repertoire.

“No,” he said, “but they did like it. We were fortunate with Little Feat to have the songs that we had at our disposal. A lot of listeners didn’t know who wrote what. They didn’t even know who sang what. People thought that Lowell George wrote ‘Oh, Atlanta,’ not me. Some people thought I wrote ‘All That You Dream.’ No, Paul Barrere wrote most of it, I wrote some of it, and Lowell sang it. It was a group.”

Payne is now completing his second solo album, which he expects to be released by the end of the year. While he hopes to keep making music indefinitely, he believes Little Feat’s plan to record and do select concerts — but not go on the road — is a sound one.

“When the idea was to stop touring was thrown at me, I was in the later stages of being 76,” he said. “Now, at 77, I kind of look at it and say: ‘I know Bob Dylan and Mick Jagger are still out there in their 80s, and I feel relatively good at 77. But I’m not sure what I’m going to feel like three years from now, or two-and-a-half years from now.’

“So, I like the idea of winding it down a little bit. And I’m working more now than I’ve ever worked in my life, which is kind of the way these things happen, I guess. But I love doing this and I love being involved.

“I think the key to life — if you can do it — is to be active, be inquisitive and be mindful of the people you surround yourself with. May they all be more interesting, and more intelligent, than I am!”

©2026 The San Diego Union-Tribune. Visit sandiegouniontribune.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.