Carnival Ghosts - by Bill Payne (Hardcover)

Book Synopsis

Carnival Ghosts is the long-awaited memoir by keyboard legend and Little Feat co-founder Bill Payne, a musician's musician whose extraordinary career spans six decades and counting.

A grade school piano prodigy who would grow up to become one of the greatest rock and roll keyboardists in history, Bill Payne has seen it all and has played with just about everyone in his more than six decades in the music business. In Carnival Ghosts, Payne shares the details of his life story with refreshing candor and with an intoxicating style that is as entertaining as it is literary.

From his early days as an impossibly youthful church organist, to his teenage surfer years and his first band experiences, to his co-founding of the iconic, genre-defying Little Feat and the group's rise, fall and renaissance, to his prolific work as a much-sought-after session player, Payne takes the reader on an intimate, free-wheeling tour of a world populated by geniuses, colossal egos, and unforgettable characters. Pulling back the curtain on a critical period in the development of modern popular music as well as on the inner workings of the collaborative phenomenon that was and remains Little Feat, Carnival Ghosts is a compellingly readable, real life tale of professional and personal triumph, tragedy, and redemption.

About the Author

Bill Payne is one of the legendary keyboard players in the history of rock 'n' roll. Along with Lowell George, Payne co-founded Little Feat, for whom he has written many of their most enduring hits, including "Oh, Atlanta," "Time Loves A Hero," "Tripe Face Boogie," and "Let It Roll." He has also collaborated with Grateful Dead lyricist Robert Hunter, Blackberry Smoke's, Charlie Starr, Poet Paul Muldoon, and Leftover Salmon's Vince Herman.

As a studio musician, he has contributed mightily to classic albums by The Doobie Brothers, James Taylor, Bob Seger, Bonnie Raitt, Jimmy Buffett, and B.B. King, among others.

His archetypal piano lines have helped make Little Feat one of rock's iconic groups, and despite the loss of several essential players along the way, the band is still going strong after more than half a century.

In addition to his accomplishments as a musician, Payne is a superb photographer. He is also a gifted storyteller, as readers will discover in 2027 with the release of the long-awaited Carnival Ghosts / A Memoir of Life, Loss and Rebirth with Little Feat from Regalo Press.