Percussionist Sam Clayton debuted with Little Feat on their third album, 1973’s Dixie Chicken. He is still with them today as th group releases their 17th studio album, Strike Up The Band, out now, via Hot Tomato. You can listen and order it here. We discussed his career with Feat, working with Duane Allman and King Curtis in Delaney & Bonnie, his years with Jimmy Buffet and much more, including his sister Merry Clayton, the wonderful singer best known for her work on the Rolling Stones’ “Gimme Shelter.”
Release of the Feat album was accompanied by the below video for “Bluegrass Pines,” which features Molly Tuttle on guitar and Larry Campbell & Teresa Williams on backing vocals and was co-written by pianist Bill Payne and Grateful Dead lyricist Robert Hunter. Little Feat now includes founding member Payne and Clayton along with fellow long timers Fred Tackett on guitars/vocals and Kenny Gradney on bass and younger members Scott Sharrard on guitar and vocals and Tony Leone on drums.
The paperback edition of my fourth book, Brothers and Sisters: the Allman Brothers Band and The Album That Defined The 70s, was recently released by St. Martin’s Press. It was the third consecutive one to debut in the New York Times Non-Fiction Hardcover Bestsellers List, following Texas Flood: The Inside Story of Stevie Ray Vaughan and One Way Out: The Inside History of the Allman Brothers Band. My first book, Big in China: My Unlikely Adventures Raising a Family, Playing the Blues and Becoming a Star in Beijing, about my experiences raising a family in Beijing and touring China with a popular original blues band, was optioned for a movie by Ivan Reitman’s Montecito Productions. I am also a guitarist and singer with two bands, Big in China and Friends of the Brothers, the premier celebration of the Allman Brothers Band.
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