It was broadcast on Channel 4 in the UK in 1988 but is unavailable commercially.
It features Ry Cooder and a band which includes Van Dyke Parks, Jim Keltner and Flaco Jiménez playing at the Catalyst in Santa Cruz, California, on March 25th, 1987. "Let’s Have A Ball" is an excellent 90-minute Ry Cooder concert filmed by Les Blank. So, apart from the official releases (which you really should own), here are a handful of excellent officially unreleased video and audio recordings which show off why the two bands were such highly regarded live acts.
The band have also, and most generously, made a whole library of concerts spanning their entire career available on the Live Music Archive for free download. Little Feat put out the double live LP Waiting For Columbus in 1977 which has since been expanded into a double CD. 'Bout an Automobile and Dark End of the Street. 1977's Showtime and this year's excellent Ry Cooder And Corridos Famosos Live In San Francisco which features versions of classic live 70s material like Crazy He also worked with John Hiatt and Nick Lowe in the band Little Village, and helped bring Cuban music to the mainstream with the Buena Vista Social Club film and albums.Īmazingly, Cooder has only ever released two live albums. Little Feat temporarily split after Lowell George’s untimely death in 1979 and Cooder went off into score film soundtracks, most successfully on Paris Texas. Revered in Europe and almost unknown in the US they had pretty much given up the ghost by the mid 80s.
Throughout the 70s both bands put out a whole series of superb, critically praised albums that were commercial flops. The Feat used latin themes as lyrical inspiration in songs like Spanish Moon and Down Below The Borderline. Cooder incorporated the Tex-Mex style and featured Texan accordion player Flaco Jiménez in his band. Both bands also had a fixation on all things “ south of the border”. Cooder actually played slide on parts of the the first Little Feat album after Lowell George sustained a hand injury and couldn’t play on the sessions. Ry Cooder and the Feat's Lowell George were two of the best slide guitar players of their generation.
When it came to rootsy rock’n’roll with the emphasis on the “roll” or relaxed funk with a touch of shuffle, both the Cooder band and Little Feat pretty much had it nailed.Ĭooder and the Feat had a lot in common apart from their live prowess. Back in the 70s two of the hottest live bands around were the Ry Cooder band and Little Feat.