Doug Sahm was the Texan ‘cosmic cowboy’ who set a trail from psychedelia to country to blues to rock and roll. He started out as a guitar prodigy as a child in Texas and played at the Grand Ole Opry on the same stage as Hank Williams in 1952. Destined for some sort of greatness, Doug finished junior high school before continuing down the road that was calling his name.
Doug set up the Sir Douglas Quintet in 1965 with long time friend and keyboard player Augie Meyers and had one top 20 hit, She’s About A Mover. But the band split up(something about some weed!) and Doug headed out to San Francisco where the years as a cosmic cowboy certainly took off.
His records were filled with some sort of spacey south of the border music that never really caught on with the masses. I re-call finding many of his records in the cut-out bin at my local record shop as a teen and really digging them. I can’t say all my friends were as moved.
This release is nothing new, but it is Doug in his hay day of his Atlantic Years from a gig on Austin City Limits. Joined by Augie Meyers (and others) Doug romps through some of his best known tracks like Mendocino, Dynamite Woman, She’s About A Mover and Nuevo Laredo. Add in T-Bone Walker’s Papa Ain’t Salty and Stormy Monday and it sounds like you are in a honky tonk somewhere in Texas. Great pedal steel and fiddle and the 12 tracks go by very quickly, I guess they had to fit them into the telvevision show format.
Doug Sahm was the voice of Texas music and his band the Texas Tornados with Freddy Fender, Flaco Jimenez and Augie was the Tex-Mex super group. One of Doug’s big fans really summed it up back in the 60’s: “Look” he said, “for me right now there are three groups: Butterfield, The Byrds and the Sir Douglas Quintet.”
That was Mr. Bob Dylan’s praise for Doug back then and later on in the 70’s Doug got him to record with him on a great Atlantic release, Doug Sahm and Band.
Doug left us in 1999, rather too early, but I can still hear him up there either getting the crowd up to boogie or yelling at a television screen about something happening in a baseball game. We miss you Douglas, but your spirit will always be with us.
Get Doug Sahm-Live From Austin Texas at Austin City Limits out on New West Records and distributed by Shock in Australia for a great live romp!
