Dixie Chicken

On the third Little Feat album, Lowell George had solidified himself as the band’s frontman, producer, and main creator of the ideas and songs. The band had already mastered their own brand of shambolic rock and bluesy truck-stop polish, but here the songs are more like an American travelogue (listen to the lulling stoner sadness of “Roll Um Easy” and the faraway hum of “Lafayette Railroad”). The journey takes major stops down South, of course. That's heard beautifully on the hip-swinging rumble of “Walkin’ All Night,” the bubbly cover of Allen Toussaint’s “On Your Way Down,” and with the hard-drinking humor (and sadness) of the title song, which became Little Feat’s signature tune. More, the lovers' triangle in “Two Trains” matches in intensity the eyebrow-raising sexual subtext of “Fat Man in the Bathtub” and the Southern gothic glow of “Kiss It Off.” Dixie Chicken is indeed the bedrock of Little Feat’s legacy, blending Laurel Canyon folk and New Orleans sass with dirty R&B and Stones-y rock ’n’ roll. It even features Bonnie Raitt, Bonnie Bramlett, and Motown’s Gloria Jones on backup vocals.