Willin'

Little Feat guitarist/singer Lowell George wrote "Willin'" before the group was even formed. The song is about a truck driver in the American southwest who makes some extra cash smuggling cigarettes and transporting illegals across the border from Mexico. If you give him "weed, whites and wine," he's willin' to do the job.

This originally appeared on Little Feat's debut album, but the version that has become famous was recorded for the follow-up, Sailin' Shoes, in 1972. The original version has a faster tempo.

Lowell George and Ry Cooder do some dueling slide guitar on this track. George had injured his left and in a run-in with a model airplane, so he was bandaged up, and according to Little Feat keyboard player Bill Payne, bleeding all over his guitar when he played. Cooder was working on his first album in the same studio where Little Feat was recording theirs: Western Recorders in Los Angeles, so Feat's producer Russ Titelman asked him to come bay and play on some tracks. There was a lot of tension between Cooder and George, but that competitive fire channeled into the song.