50 years ago the band Little Feat came to Baltimore to record the album Feats Don’t Fail Me Now. The band was critically acclaimed but their first three records didn’t sell and they were on the verge of splitting up.
But a combination of luck, happenstance, raw talent and Charm City gave the rock and blues band what it needed to launch a successful run that continues to this day.
This story ends with a recording studio sinking into Baltimore’s inner harbor. But let’s start at the beginning.
Little Feat had been recording in Los Angeles, but it wasn’t working out and in 1974 they needed a change. Journalist Tony Moss interviewed the widow of the band’s leader, Lowell George about that.
Moss said, “Elizabeth, Lowell’s widow, said to me that it was good for them to get out of L.A., that L.A. had become not a great influence on the band for reasons which you can probably surmise.”
Moss was the first to go deep on how Little Feat ended up in Baltimore in an article for Baltimore Magazine.
“There are so many crazy coincidences in this story,” Moss said.
Like Steve Boone being in Baltimore in ‘74. You may not know his name but you likely know his work.
Boone was the bass player for the Lovin’ Spoonful and co-wrote their hit Summer in the City. He had spent three years living on his sailboat in the Caribbean after the Spoonful broke up. He befriended a band that was playing in St. Thomas. After Boone sold his boat, he decided to hang out with the band in Hunt Valley where they were recording.
“And so I went to that studio that night and I was like holy cow I’ve never seen anything this high tech,” Boone said.
It had been built by George Massenburg, a local guy who had graduated from Baltimore Polytechnic Institute.
Here is where the coincidences start to pile up.
Steve Boone was asked if he might want to lease the studio. He called the Lovin’ Spoonful’s old manager Bob Cavallo to see if he might be able to send any bands his way. Cavallo was managing a band called Little Feat. Boone had never heard of them.
“He said ‘well these guys are really good and they know about the studio you’re managing because they know George Massenburg who built the studio and they want to record there,’” Boone said.
Lowell George had met George Massenburg before and they hit it off. Little Feat said they would come to Baltimore but only if Massenburg was there. But by 1974, Massenburg was in Paris.
“Massenburg had no plans to return so he was lured back for the Little Feat sessions,” Moss said.
Bill Payne, the keyboardist and a founding member of Little Feat, recently told WTMD’s Alex Cortright that the band quickly went from wondering whether Lowell George was still a member, to heading east to Hunt Valley to make a record.
“Emmylou Harris was coming out to the studio with Fran Tate who I married later and I’ve known Emmy for that long,” Payne said. “We were rejuvenated by Maryland and Washington D.C., that area.”
The band settled in. Payne lived in an apartment in Towson.
“It was a great introduction,” Payne said. “An introduction to people who lived in and around the area for one thing. Also the introduction to the delicacies of food. Crab, crab cakes.”
Lowell George and his wife had a place in Cockeysville. Their daughter Inara was born at GBMC on July 4th, 1974. Guitarist Paul Barrere met a Towson girl who he later married.
Steve Boone said the band had a three month contract to work in the studio and what he heard was magic, talented musicians freed up from the L.A. pressure cooker.
“I think they really enjoyed working in a pretty free atmosphere of no criticism, no competition with other people that are recording,” Boone said.
Moss said, “I think as we’ve seen in other music tales, the sense of desperation that you talk about where it was maybe their last chance after three albums that didn’t chart had a sort of inspiring effect as well.”
A number of the songs on the album became staples of live shows for decades to come, such as Oh Atlanta, Rock and Roll Doctor, Spanish Moon, Skin it Back and Tripe Face Boogie.
Alex Cortright describes what Little Feat recorded in Hunt Valley as an incredible synthesis of sound, a mix of Southern California rock, New Orleans jazz and country blues.
“In the end the results speak for themselves,” Cortright said. “The album went gold. They toured Europe and it really elevated their profile, in America and indeed around the world. People were finally starting to take notice. And the Baltimore and D.C area were really close to their heart from that point forward.”
After they finished recording Feats Don’t Fail Me Now, the band kept Baltimore as a base for a while as they toured the east coast. WYPR producer Bob White, who has spent 50 years in Baltimore radio, remembers when they wandered into a disco bar called Dimples where he was a DJ. With a snicker, they asked him if he played any of their songs.
“My reply, not really,” White said. “But ironically I had their ‘Feats Don’t Fail Me Now’ album and much to the displeasure of some diehard disco fans, I played Oh Atlanta and some people danced.”
“They gave me a quick ‘thanks’ and headed out the door,” White said.
Now, back to the story about the recording studio sinking into the inner harbor. In 1975, Steve Boone’s landlord kicked him out of the Hunt Valley building.
“They didn’t like the idea of hippies using their studio and putting a mattress on the floor so people could catch some sleep between sessions,” Boone said.
He relocated the studio, aptly called Blue Seas, remember he was a sailor, on a barge at Pier 4, which today is home for the Hard Rock Cafe.
It took months to get it ready, soundproofing and all. Boone said they recorded some great music there.
“I loved it,” Boone said. “I had just bought a house in Fells Point and I was just in love with Baltimore. I wanted to do anything I could to make our studio successful in the inner harbor. I could see what was coming. This was the cutting edge of future downtown development.”
But on Christmas in 1977 Boone got a call that the studio was taking on water. It was done in by a faulty bilge pump and Boone didn’t have the cash to rebuild.
Tony Moss said there is a myth that Little Feat recorded there and some of their music went down with the barge. A 50th anniversary re-release of the album by Rhino plays up that story but Moss is throwing a flag on that.
“That’s a myth because it was Hunt Valley where the album was recorded,” Moss said. “It wasn’t relocated to the harbor until months after Little Feat was gone. And there would not have been any of the recording reels from those sessions in the boat.”
In June, Little Feat played just steps away from where the barge sank, when they performed at Pier 6 Pavilion, marking the 50th anniversary of Feats Don’t Fail Me Now.
