SACD Little Feat – Sailin’ Shoes

Sailin’ Shoes as a hybrid SACD from the Analogue Productions Acoustic Sounds 40 Series: Matthew Lutthans at The Mastering Lab mastered Little Feat’s 1972 album to DSD from the original master tape. All eleven songs play in one sequence – from “Easy to Slip” to “Texas Rose Cafe”.

A song finds its band

A second recording can tell you more about a group than any interview. “Willin’” had already appeared on Little Feat’s debut; on Sailin’ Shoes, released in 1972, it returns in a new band arrangement, letting its traveller’s story unfold at an unhurried pace. Revisiting the song makes perfect sense here: these four musicians are developing a shared language in which country, blues and rock flow easily into one another.

Lowell George, Bill Payne, Roy Estrada and Richie Hayward still form the original quartet: George on voice and guitar, Payne on keyboards, with Estrada’s bass and Hayward’s drums connecting the changing patterns. The six-piece band and the stronger New Orleans funk of Dixie Chicken came later – Sailin’ Shoes catches the moment just before, a smaller line-up with a remarkably broad musical vocabulary.

Boogie and the open road

“Easy to Slip” makes an immediate opening statement. “Tripe Face Boogie”, written by Payne and Hayward, puts the band’s rhythmic machinery in the foreground, while “Trouble” and “Willin’” give their melodies more room. These shifts turn the eleven songs into a sequence of different perspectives – the album needs no long running time to build a world of its own.

“Willin’” especially rewards attention to the instruments around the voice. Sneaky Pete Kleinow’s pedal steel is one of the album’s extra colours, and he plays on “Texas Rose Cafe” too. Its sliding transitions and Payne’s keyboards bring a movement quite different from a continuous guitar riff – listen for how a brief instrumental answer between vocal lines carries the story onward.

Names on the label, pictures in the mind

The “Fred Martin” credited as co-writer of “Easy to Slip” is Martin Kibbee, an associate of George’s from The Factory – and the George/Martin credit returns later on “Dixie Chicken”, a thread running through the band’s changes. Payne contributes songs of his own, including “Got No Shadow” and “Cat Fever”: George gives the record its strong personality while leaving room for ideas from across the band.

Something lasting begins with the artwork too: Sailin’ Shoes introduces Neon Park as Little Feat’s cover artist, whose absurd images sit perfectly beside songs that place everyday life next to unusual characters. Ted Templeman produced the album; afterwards George took on that role himself. The second Little Feat album stands at two turning points – the band has found its visual language, and its next line-up is still ahead.

The hybrid SACD from the Acoustic Sounds 40 Series

CAPR 015 SA is a hybrid SACD from the Analogue Productions Acoustic Sounds 40 Series. According to the publisher, Matthew Lutthans at The Mastering Lab mastered it to DSD from the original master tape. The SACD layer plays on SACD-capable players, the CD layer on any conventional CD player. The disc contains the eleven songs of the original album.

You order from Michael 45 in Germany. We arrange the US import and ship from Hilden.

More from the series: Acoustic Sounds 40th Anniversary Series

Also in another edition: Sailin’ Shoes

More SACDs by Little Feat: Dixie Chicken

Customer question: Buying Analogue Productions records in Europe

Musicians

Documented selection of participating musicians. Personnel may vary by track; this list does not claim to be complete.