RIP Richie Hayward

[HarveyDarkey]

Rock'n'roll drummer and founder member of the Californian band Little Feat




Richie Hayward obituary

Rock'n'roll drummer and founder member of the Californian band Little Feat

The drummer Richie Hayward, who has died aged 64 after treatment for liver cancer, will be remembered for his 40 years of service with the renowned Californian band Little Feat, of which he was a founding member, as well as for his work with a gilt-edged roster of rock'n'roll greats. Hayward's powerful combination of swing, funkiness and formidable rock'n'roll muscle was widely admired by fans and fellow musicians.

He was born in Clear Lake, Iowa, and used to claim that his earliest memory was of running away on his first day of kindergarten. His early enthusiasm for school work lasted until the day he saw Count Basie's band on television and was overwhelmed by the abilities of Basie's drummer, Sonny Payne. Hayward took his first halting steps into the world of percussion by banging out rhythms on an orange crate. By the time he was 10, he was developing his own style, and soaking up the music of jazz and R&B artists such as Miles Davis, Ray Charles, Sonny Rollins and Dave Brubeck.

Having acquired a set of real drums, he played his first gig at the Moose Lodge in Nevada, Iowa, on New Year's Eve 1959. Recognising that in his home town, Ames, "there was no place for a drummer except the Ramada Inn lounge", Hayward scraped together the cash for a plane ticket to Los Angeles. After a stint with the Rebels, he answered an advertisement in the LA Free Press in 1966 which read "Drummer Wanted, Must Be Freaky", and was recruited into the Factory, an offshoot from Frank Zappa's Mothers of Invention. Despite Zappa producing some tracks for them, the Factory fizzled out, though not before making an appearance in the TV sitcom F Troop, billed as the Bed Bugs. However, the Factory's guiding light, the singer, songwriter and guitarist Lowell George, had ambitions to build a new band, and set about forming what would become Little Feat. Hayward, after a brief stint with the Fraternity of Man, was summoned to the drum stool, and the lineup was completed by the pianist Bill Payne and bassist Roy Estrada, another Zappa alumnus.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2010/aug/13/richie-hayward-obituary

[byeya]

1. Very sad news. Little Feat was a great innovative band.