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R.I.P. Richie Hayward

Jahfin

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in Other Bands / Music

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Jahfin

Jahfin

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From the West Coast Music blog

Richie Hayward passed away (drummer of the band Little Feat)

Richie Hayward passed away. According to the official LITTLE FEAT Facebook fanpage, Richie Hayward (from the band LITTLE FEAT) passed away August 12,2010.

2 messages have been posted reporting this:

One from the member of the family, Amanda Condry-Krizan : "RIP Uncle Richie, we love u so very much!!!"

The other one from Little Feat: "Respected by many as a musician, loved by more as a person. R.I.P. Richie."

A Facebook tribute page has just been created: We love you Richie Hayward and we always will.

Richie Hayward was the drummer of the band LITTLE FEAT. On his Wikipedia page, you can find this:

"In August 2009, Richie Hayward announced that he had recently been diagnosed with liver cancer and would not be at work indefinitely. A benefit concert was organized and a website created where fans unable to attend could donate towards his treatment costs. Hayward lived in Canada, outside of his native USA, and did not have health insurance. Little Feat have announced that their drum technician Ford will take his place. He died from liver cancer on August 12, 2010."

At this hour, no Press Agency Newspaper has confirmed this.

RIP Richie Hayward.

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Jahfin

Jahfin

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Sadly, Richie's influence (as well as that of Little Feat themselves) had much more of an impact on music than the rock intelligentsia is willing to admit. Perhaps it's a good thing that they're not in the Rock n' Roll Hall of Fame. They're too good to be in that shithole.

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SteveAJones

SteveAJones

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Obituaries

Richie Hayward: Highly rated Little Feat drummer who also backed Bob Dylan and Robert Plant

By Pierre Perrone

The Independent (UK)

Monday, 16 August 2010

A founder member of the American group Little Feat, Richie Hayward was a drummer's drummer, much admired by fans and fellow musicians for his playing ability and the way he drove this fine band, best known for "Willin", the trucker song written by their original leader, the singer and guitarist Lowell George.

Little Feat mixed blues, jazz, country, soul and funk into a potent gumbo and owed much of their popularity to the way the members interacted and improvised and the seamless way they would segue from "Cold Cold Cold" into "Triple Face Boogie" on the 1974 cult album Feats Don't Fail Me Now or from "Skin It Back" into "Fatman In The Bathtub" during their appearances on The Warner Brothers Music Show at the beginning of 1975. "Back in the '70s, before there was that term 'jam band', we used to jam all the time," Hayward said.

Staged over two nights in nine European cities, the Warners Bros package tour also featured Bonaroo, Graham Central Station, Montrose and Tower of Power but proved most memorable for the fact that Little Feat blew nominal headliners the Doobie Brothers off stage on more than one occasion, including at the Rainbow Theatre in London. Rave reviews followed and the group also appeared on The Old Grey Whistle Test, performing blistering versions "Rock'n'Roll Doctor" and "Fat Man In The Bathtub" despite the recording taking place at 9am.

When they came back to the UK the following year, Little Feat were special guests of The Who at Charlton Athletic's ground The Valley and headlined Hammersmith Odeon. In 1977, Time Loves A Hero, their sixth studio album, made the Top Ten in Britain, while the double live set Waiting For Columbus also charted on both sides of the Atlantic in 1978.

George died of a heart attack in June 1979 and Little Feat disbanded after completing the album Down On The Farm. Having contributed to such '70s classics as John Cale's Paris 1919 as well as Pressure Drop, Some People Can Do What They Like and Double Fun by Robert Palmer with his bandmates, Hayward was an in-demand session and touring player and subsequently worked with Joan Armatrading, Peter Frampton, Nils Lofgren, Warren Zevon, Carly Simon, Kim Carnes, Robert Plant, Eric Clapton and Bob Dylan. Little Feat reformed in 1988 and have remained active since. Hayward retired from live work last year after being diagnosed with liver cancer, though he guested with the band on their recent appeances in Canada.

Born in Clear Lake, Iowa, in 1946, Hayward grew up in the Midwest. "There wasn't a lot going on musically," he recalled. "There was one guy to learn drums from. I took lessons from him for just three months and then passed them up. In junior high, I was in the school band and they taught me nineteen rudiments but I quit. I didn't march well. The rest of it is all self-taught. My dad had these Dixieland records and I would hear things that I liked and try to emulate them and it would come out just a little bit different, I guess," he said of his unique drumming style that seemed to bypass the snare. "I didn't start out thinking, 'how can I be weird?' It wasn't like that. I don't know why or exactly how it's different."

Hayward moved to Southern California and met George when he joined his group, the Factory, after their original drummer ran off to join the Moonies. Herb Cohen, who already managed Frank Zappa, secured the band an unlikely appearance as the Bedbugs on the anachronistic post-civil war sitcom, F Troop, in 1967, but their sole album flopped. George left but Hayward soldiered on with the psychedelic blues quintet The Fraternity of Man, whose personnel included another Zappa associate, the guitarist Elliot Ingber. They made two albums and contributed the country-rock flavoured "Don't Bogart That Joint" – credited as "Don't Bogart Me" for obvious reasons – to the soundtrack of the epochal road movie Easy Rider. Hayward admitted that The Fraternity of Man were as wild as the characters portrayed by Dennis Hopper and Peter Fonda in the film. "I spent most of my time bailing them out of jail!" he observed.

By 1969, he had rejoined George and the bassist Roy Estrada – who'd both had stints with Zappa's Mothers Of Invention – and the keyboard-player Bill Payne to form Little Feat. Named after Mothers drummer Jimmy Carl Black's comment about George's little feet – the misspelling a tribute to the Beatles – the original line-up recorded two critically-acclaimed albums – Little Feat and Sailin' Shoes – without making much headway. They split up for a while, and Hayward worked with Ella Fitzgerald, Goldie Hawn and Ike Turner, who fired him. "I was too pale for them," he remarked.

In 1973, Little Feat reunited with Kenny Gradney replacing Estrada on bass and the addition of guitarist Paul Barrere and percussionist Sam Clayton. The influence of New Orleans funk became more prominent on the Dixie Chicken album and the subsequent Feats Don't Fail Me Now, and the group built quite a live following. George even mixed a couple of legendary bootlegs which helped enhance their reputation further. Hayward also played on Thanks I'll Eat It Here, George's solo album issued just before his death, and had a bit part in the film version of The Buddy Holly Story.

However, the drummer hit a low point in the mid-'80s until Plant called. "I was at home in Los Angeles, thinking I'd never work again, I was behind in the rent and everything," he said. "Then I get this call and it's Robert in person. It just blew my mind. He said, 'come over and play a little bit'. I was on the plane the next day and didn't come home for two and a half years. That was a fun record to do," he said of the Shaken 'n' Stirred album which was recorded at Rockfield studios in Wales in 1984. "We'd all just get together and play and something would happen and we'd just go an elaborate on that, groove on it, and it turned out on this album. Unusual stuff. Robert wanted a modern album, he didn't want it Zeppy."

In 1988, the five surviving members of Little Feat's classic line-up came back and, with singer and guitarist Craig Fuller and guitarist Fred Tackett, recorded the Let It Roll album which made the US Top 40. Shaun Murphy replaced Fuller in 1993 but left in 2009, after the release of the Join The Band album which featured guest vocalists such as Bob Seger and Emmylou Harris. Drum technician Gabe Ford took over from Hayward last year. Little Feat are currently on a tour of the UK.

Robert Plant paid the following tribute to Hayward. "I'd been a real admirer of his work with Lowell George back in those days, so it was a real thrill to end up working alongside him, with him bringing his gift to my songs. He was a man of amazing dexterity and superb feel. He was one of the most colourful, humorous, self-effacing guys I have ever come across."

Richard Hayward, drummer, singer, songwriter: born Clear Lake, Iowa, 6 February 1946; married; died Victoria, British Columbia 12 August 2010.

http://www.independe...nt-2053371.html

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SteveAJones

SteveAJones

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Obituary News | Posted: 2010-08-14

Richie Hayward: February 6, 1946 - August 12, 2010

By C. Michael Bailey

AllAboutJazz.com

Drummer and Little Feat founder Richie Hayward passed away Thursday, August 12, 2010, in his current home of Victoria, British Columbia. He was 64 years old. Originally Hailing from Clear Lake, Iowa, Hayward would be instrumental in the percussion on scores of recordings by Robert Plant, Robert Palmer, Bob Dylan, Eric Clapton, Joan Armatrading, Ry Cooder, Warren Zevon, Taj Mahal, Buddy Guy, and many others, during his lengthy career. Hayward had been suffering from liver cancer and succumbed to pneumonia.

Hayward was preceded in death by Little Feat co-founder Lowell George, who passed away from recreational drug misadventure on June 29, 1979. In 1969, George was asked, by then-employer Frank Zappa, to leave the Mothers of Invention because George had composed a song referencing drug use called “Willin.'" George absconded, with bassist Roy Estrada, and added drummer Richie Hayward from his band The Factory, forming Little Feat. The rest is American music history.

In his incendiary I Hate New Music: The Classic Rock Manifesto, Brit Dave Thompson opines that “The Day the Music Died" was not February 3, 1959, when a plane crash claimed the lives of Buddy Holly, Richie Valens, and JP Richardson, Jr. (The Big Bopper) but was:

...somewhere within the ten-month span [of 1978] during which the following albums fell off the new-releases rack.

Infinity
by Journey

You Can Tuna a Piano but You Can't Tuna Fish
by REO Speedwagon

Don't Look Back
by Boston

The Cars
by The Cars

Double Vision
by Foreigner

Toto
by Toto

Pieces of Eight
by Styx

Hemispheres
by Rush

Eight classic albums...eight classic rockers...and eight slabs of such overproduced, overwrought, and overindulgent awkwardness that even the “urgent" songs procrastinated furiously while the slowed-down ballads simply sank without trace.

In contrast to this, I offer my own day the music died. That day was one Tuesday morning in March, 1978 when Little Feat released the finest live rock album recorded, Waiting for Columbus (Warner Brothers). The listener need hear only the first full track of the album, George's “Fat Man in the Bathtub," from Little Feat's Dixie Chicken (Warner Brothers, 1972). In the studio, this recording was almost folksy, extending the acoustic experiment both The Rolling Stones and Led Zeppelin were employing in their recordings. But live, the song was a nuclear shuffle, propelled solely by the power of Hayward behind his kit. He poured a dozen traditions into an Erlenmeyer flask, gas on high.

I had the occasion to meet Hayward and have dinner with him after Little Feat appeared at The Wildwood Park for Performing Arts in Little Rock, Arkansas, in 2003. Little Rock native Fred Tackett (Hall High School classmate of former presidential candidate Retired Gen. Wesley Clark) had come home, bringing his band for a local fundraiser. Hayward was an unpretentious gentleman, ready with a quick smile and a quicker warm handshake when I posed him as a greater drummer than Rush's Neil Peart. He didn't need me to tell him that.

Hayward's sound was unmistakable; a New Orleans shuffle informed by the Great Midwest and Left Coast. His co-founder in Little Feat, Lowell George, was thinking of him when he penned:

He's got two degrees in bebop

A PhD in swing

He's the master of rhythm

He's a Rock and Roll king

All Honor Richie Hayward.

http://www.allaboutjazz.com/php/news.php?id=63052

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SteveAJones

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Richie Hayward saved his best feat for his last performance

Tom Hawthorn

Globe and Mail

Published on Sunday, Aug. 15, 2010 8:52PM EDT

Richie Hayward wore a red fleece sweater with a hood. Sitting just offstage, he shivered beneath a blanket.He huddled near a sound board, as though the heat it generated was a camp fire.

It was summer, but the sun had gone down and a wind had come up.

Mr. Hayward was sick. He had been diagnosed with liver cancer almost exactly a year earlier. He had played a final show in Montana with Little Feat, the band for which he had been the drummer for four decades, before leaving the tour to recuperate at home in Courtenay.

A year before the diagnosis, he had married Shauna Drayson, a Comox Valley woman who can be found on weekends serving food to the homeless. Her business involves providing companion services for seniors. Now, her compassion and her skills were needed at home.

She stood beside her husband as Little Feat performed as the final, headlining act at Vancouver Island MusicFest last month.

The plan was for the drummer to join in for a few songs.

No one was certain if he would have the strength.

Little Feat is one of those bands musicians appreciate, whose songs appear on lists of best-driving tunes, whose fans wax rhapsodically about a never-ending rock, soul, blues, funk groove.

Critics love 'em and the English hail them as original American geniuses.

Mr. Hayward was born in 1946 in Clear Lake, Iowa, a resort town later to be infamous for a plane wreck. The great Buddy Holly, as well as Ritchie Valens and deejay the Big Bopper, died after performing at the Surf Ballroom, as their plane crashed into a snowy cornfield three days before Hayward's 13th birthday.

In 1966, Mr. Hayward answered an advertisement in a Los Angeles underground newspaper: "Drummer wanted must be freaky." He eventually formed a band with Lowell George that came to be Little Feat, an outfit that took all the musical ingredients America had to offer before mixing it through a New Orleans blender. Mr. Hayward's rhythm became a Little Feat signature.

The band split up after Mr. George died of a heart attack in 1979, before re-forming several years later. Meanwhile, the drummer became a much-in-demand session player, as well as performer. His credits read like a who's-who list from the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame from Bob Dylan to Warren Zevon, including the likes of Eric Clapton, Ry Cooder, Robert Plant, Tom Waits, Buddy Guy, and James Cotton.

If you've listened to rock music some time in the past 40 years, you've likely tapped your toe and bobbed your head to Richie Hayward.

More recently, you could find him attending jam sessions at Comox Valley pubs, grooving to the music and, on occasion, taking a turn on the drum stool. He hung out with Pacific Disturbance, a local five-piece rocking blues band.

It was his misfortune to be an American without health insurance, and, though married to a Canadian and living in Canada, not yet qualified for our system.

His musician friends held a fundraiser in Courtenay last September that raised $53,439.63 for his medical bills.

Others made contributions through the Sweet Relief Musicians Fund.

Friends who called themselves the North Pole Allstars recorded a "funky labour of love" called Santa Gotta Get Some, proceeds from the exclusive download going to his fund.

When the drummer's wife let it be known that his children and stepchildren had not seen him perform, Little Feat were enlisted for a concert on Vancouver Island.

They had performed the night before at a beer festival at Chico, Calif. They drove several hours to San Francisco airport, flew to Vancouver, then boarded a charter flight to Comox Valley Airport. It was a long haul and a quick turnaround in 24 hours and not all their equipment made the trip.

No one was certain if he would have the strength to perform.

At last, he joined the band onstage to sing along to Don't Bogart That Joint (the Jamaican national anthem, his wife quipped online) before settling behind the drum kit onto a stool that bore his name.

"He went from freezing on the side of the stage and looking very fragile before turning into this monster drummer," said Doug Cox, the festival's artistic director.

He played three songs Spanish Moon, Skin it Back and Fat Man in the Bathtub.

Said Mr. Cox: "It was a naked, beautiful, private performance moment that was shared between guys who had made music together for 40 years and an audience of 8,000 people."

The moment was recorded by producer Derek Bird of CBC Radio. The corporation's staff has a special connection to MusicFest, where one of the stages is named for the late David Grierson, an on-air host and festival emcee who died suddenly six years ago.

After his performance, Mr. Hayward exited stage left.

A cellphone photograph captured the moment as Mr. Hayward reached for his wife. Mr. Hayward's eyes were closed, his mouth open in a smile. The look on his face can only be described as joyous.

"Richie was beaming," his wife later wrote.

It was his final performance.

The drummer died of complications from pneumonia on Thursday morning at a hospital in Victoria. His wife held him as he passed. He was 64.

Special to The Globe and Mail

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/british-columbia/tom-hawthorn/richie-hayward-saved-his-best-feat-for-his-last-performance/article1673800/?cmpid=rss1

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Zepaholic

Zepaholic

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Richie Hayward saved his best feat for his last performance

Tom Hawthorn

Globe and Mail

Published on Sunday, Aug. 15, 2010 8:52PM EDT

Richie Hayward wore a red fleece sweater with a hood. Sitting just offstage, he shivered beneath a blanket.He huddled near a sound board, as though the heat it generated was a camp fire.

It was summer, but the sun had gone down and a wind had come up.

Mr. Hayward was sick. He had been diagnosed with liver cancer almost exactly a year earlier. He had played a final show in Montana with Little Feat, the band for which he had been the drummer for four decades, before leaving the tour to recuperate at home in Courtenay.

A year before the diagnosis, he had married Shauna Drayson, a Comox Valley woman who can be found on weekends serving food to the homeless. Her business involves providing companion services for seniors. Now, her compassion and her skills were needed at home.

She stood beside her husband as Little Feat performed as the final, headlining act at Vancouver Island MusicFest last month.

The plan was for the drummer to join in for a few songs.

No one was certain if he would have the strength.

Little Feat is one of those bands musicians appreciate, whose songs appear on lists of best-driving tunes, whose fans wax rhapsodically about a never-ending rock, soul, blues, funk groove.

Critics love 'em and the English hail them as original American geniuses.

Mr. Hayward was born in 1946 in Clear Lake, Iowa, a resort town later to be infamous for a plane wreck. The great Buddy Holly, as well as Ritchie Valens and deejay the Big Bopper, died after performing at the Surf Ballroom, as their plane crashed into a snowy cornfield three days before Hayward's 13th birthday.

In 1966, Mr. Hayward answered an advertisement in a Los Angeles underground newspaper: "Drummer wanted must be freaky." He eventually formed a band with Lowell George that came to be Little Feat, an outfit that took all the musical ingredients America had to offer before mixing it through a New Orleans blender. Mr. Hayward's rhythm became a Little Feat signature.

The band split up after Mr. George died of a heart attack in 1979, before re-forming several years later. Meanwhile, the drummer became a much-in-demand session player, as well as performer. His credits read like a who's-who list from the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame from Bob Dylan to Warren Zevon, including the likes of Eric Clapton, Ry Cooder, Robert Plant, Tom Waits, Buddy Guy, and James Cotton.

If you've listened to rock music some time in the past 40 years, you've likely tapped your toe and bobbed your head to Richie Hayward.

More recently, you could find him attending jam sessions at Comox Valley pubs, grooving to the music and, on occasion, taking a turn on the drum stool. He hung out with Pacific Disturbance, a local five-piece rocking blues band.

It was his misfortune to be an American without health insurance, and, though married to a Canadian and living in Canada, not yet qualified for our system.

His musician friends held a fundraiser in Courtenay last September that raised $53,439.63 for his medical bills.

Others made contributions through the Sweet Relief Musicians Fund.

Friends who called themselves the North Pole Allstars recorded a "funky labour of love" called Santa Gotta Get Some, proceeds from the exclusive download going to his fund.

When the drummer's wife let it be known that his children and stepchildren had not seen him perform, Little Feat were enlisted for a concert on Vancouver Island.

They had performed the night before at a beer festival at Chico, Calif. They drove several hours to San Francisco airport, flew to Vancouver, then boarded a charter flight to Comox Valley Airport. It was a long haul and a quick turnaround in 24 hours and not all their equipment made the trip.

No one was certain if he would have the strength to perform.

At last, he joined the band onstage to sing along to Don't Bogart That Joint (the Jamaican national anthem, his wife quipped online) before settling behind the drum kit onto a stool that bore his name.

"He went from freezing on the side of the stage and looking very fragile before turning into this monster drummer," said Doug Cox, the festival's artistic director.

He played three songs Spanish Moon, Skin it Back and Fat Man in the Bathtub.

Said Mr. Cox: "It was a naked, beautiful, private performance moment that was shared between guys who had made music together for 40 years and an audience of 8,000 people."

The moment was recorded by producer Derek Bird of CBC Radio. The corporation's staff has a special connection to MusicFest, where one of the stages is named for the late David Grierson, an on-air host and festival emcee who died suddenly six years ago.

After his performance, Mr. Hayward exited stage left.

A cellphone photograph captured the moment as Mr. Hayward reached for his wife. Mr. Hayward's eyes were closed, his mouth open in a smile. The look on his face can only be described as joyous.

"Richie was beaming," his wife later wrote.

It was his final performance.

The drummer died of complications from pneumonia on Thursday morning at a hospital in Victoria. His wife held him as he passed. He was 64.

Special to The Globe and Mail

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/british-columbia/tom-hawthorn/richie-hayward-saved-his-best-feat-for-his-last-performance/article1673800/?cmpid=rss1

Fantastic article, thx for posting.

:boohoo:

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DavidZoso

DavidZoso

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Have been a Little Feat fan for a long time and saw them in concert in 2002 and I also saw Robert Plant in 1985 with Richie Hayward on drums- I have played drums for about 32 years and Richie Hayward is in my top ten as a influence. He will be missed for sure.

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