He's About A Mover: Doug Sahm - a Texan Tornado
- jamesgeraghty
- 9 minutes ago
- 13 min read
There are myriad Texas musicians who have become household names over the last six or seven decades; Buddy Holly, Willie Nelson, ZZ Top, Janis Joplin, Waylon Jennings, Stevie Ray Vaughan, not to mention Kelly Clarkson and Beyonce. But for all those, there are many more who probably deserve much more acknowledgement and credit for their part in music history; there was the much troubled Roky Erickson (13th Floor Elevators), the taken far too soon Selena, and the subject of today's story - Doug Sahm.
I first became aware of Sahm as a credit note on Uncle Tupelo's fantastic final album, Anodyne, for which he joined them on a version of his song, Give Back The Key To My Heart. There is clearly more to him than that though? As it turns out, much, much more...
Who was Doug Sahm?
Here's the synopsis; he was something of a legend in his native Texas but little known elsewhere, Sahm was a childhood steel guitar whizz, a late 60s hit-maker and a resurgent Grammy winning collaborator in the 1990s. So, why is there not more love for him?
That is certainly a question that must have bugged Jay Farrar, co-founder of the aforementioned Alt-Country pioneers Uncle Tupelo, and leader of country blues outfit, Son Volt - and one of those 1990s collaborators with Sahm. In 2023, he and Son Volt pulled together an ultimate tribute record, Day of the Doug, a heartfelt celebration of a man who had an unheralded fifty year career (but more of this later).
Doug Sahm - music in the blood:
Douglas Sahm was born in November 1941, in San Antonio, to a family of German migrants who had moved to the US several decades earlier, initially to Galveston. His grandparents owned a farm near Cibolo, and his grandad played in a polka band, The Sahm Boys. His parents had moved to San Antonio as his father was working at Kelly Field Air Force Base.
He was singing at five and playing steel guitar at six - and in fact, appeared on San Antonio’s KMAC radio station, playing Teardrops In My Heart (by early western singing group, Sons of the Pioneers). He was a gifted guitarist, but despite that, a local teacher wouldn’t take him on as he couldn’t teach him to read music, as he was already doing everything by ear. He then started playing at the bar, The Barn, which was co-owned by his Uncle with country star Charlie Walker.
By eight, he had added fiddle and mandolin to his repertoire and was appearing on the radio show, Louisiana Hayride, as Little Doug. He got to appear with legends like Hank Williams, Faron Young and Hank Thompson. His mother though, refused the offer for him to have a slot at the Grand Ole Opry, as he was only thirteen and she wanted to ensure he finished school.
In 1953, he made a new friend in Augie Meyers, when he bought baseball cards from his mother’s shop. Augie was another music nut who played accordion, piano and guitar, and they talked music, discussed forming a band, but nothing initially came of it as they lived in different parts of town and were already playing in other bands.
Rollin’ out:
1955 saw Sahm’s ( he wasn't even fourteen yet) debut single come out. Charlie Fitch produced A Real American Joe and Rollin’ Rollin’ for Sarg Records, all credited to Little Doug. That same year, he formed The Kings, who were notable for having a performance in school interrupted in 1956 because Sahm started imitating Elvis Presley’s gyrations, which the principal objected to.
Doug Sahm: A Real American Joe (audio only)
Sahm was building a reputation at local San Antonio nightclubs, playing R&B with saxophone player Eracleo Morales, blending in the West Side Sound, a fusion of country, conjunto, polka and rock n roll. He was a busy young man, also playing guitar six days a week with Jimmy Johnson.
The late 50s saw him working no less than three bands; The Pharaohs, The Dell-Kings and The Mar-Kays. More singles followed, with the Little Richard inspired Crazy Daisy in 1959 and Why Why Why in 1960, a local hit on Renner Records. All this and he was only just graduating from high school. He had a string of local singles in the early 60s before eventually being dropped by Renner.
Doug Sahm & The Mar-Kays: Why Why Why (audio only)
He approached Huey P. Meaux (a.k.a. 'The Crazy Cajun'), who owned SugarHill Recording Studios, to see if he would sign him. Before the onset of Beatlemania, Meaux had been having chart successes with some of the songs he had produced (like Barbara Lynn’s 1962 hit You’ll Lose A Good Thing). He felt that The Beatles early songs shared some commonality with two-step Cajun tunes, so he contacted Sahm, asking him to write songs in that style (and grow his hair out). Sahm would later tell the Houston Chronicle, “The Beatles had Brian Epstein, I had Huey,” while Meaux supposedly said to Meyers, “You got long hair, and Doug, you got long hair - you all got to put a band together. Let’s get an English name and go with it.”
Sir Douglas gets his band:
Sahm needed a band for his new songs; he pulled in old friend Meyers on keyboards (he reputedly owned the only Vox Continental organ in Texas at the time), Frank Morin (sax), Harvey Kagan (bass) and Johnny Perez (drums). The first tune leant on The Beatles’ She’s A Woman, fusing that sound with tejano music to create She’s A Body Mover. Meaux bought it from him for $25, but wasn’t keen on the title, so renamed She’s About A Mover.
Sir Douglas Quintet: She's About A Mover (on Hullabaloo)
It saw the light of day in 1965, when it came out on Tribe Records, credited to the Sir Douglas Quintet (Meaux wanted an English sounding name to keep up with the British invasion). Controversially (certainly to modern eyes), band shots were done in silhouette, to mask the fact that Perez and Morin were Latino. The music covered a lot of ground, as Alistair McKay said in Uncut, “he and Meyers chopped their influences into a Texas stew, even when Sahm was pretending to be an English gent.”
It was a hit - reaching 13 on the Billboard chart and 15 in the UK, providing the Quintet with many great opportunities, including tours supporting The Beatles, James Brown and The Beach Boys (in Europe). They also bagged an appearance on NBC's primetime show Hullabaloo with Trini Lopez, where they played the song on a set strewn with castles, hobby horses and a model wearing armour.
Things got awkward though, when in December 1965 Sahm and Morin were arrested in Corpus Christi for possession of marijuana. The band pleaded guilty to ‘receiving and concealing marijuana without paying the required transfer tax’ and were given five years probation. For some reason, Meyers, unlike the others, wasn’t allowed to leave Texas for the duration of the term. Sahm got frustrated at being reduced to small town appearances around Texas though, and moved his family out to California in 1966.
Now in Salinas, he re-gathered the Quintet, sans Meyers (who still couldn’t leave Texas), and they became entwined with the growing hippie scene in San Francisco. Sahm became friends with Jerry Garcia and got his band a gig opening for The Grateful Dead, and later that year for Big Brother and the Holding Company (featuring Janis Joplin).
Mendocino was released in 1969, and Meyers had finally been allowed to rejoin for the recording of that. McKay calls this one the band's “most approachable album”, and the title track got them back in the Billboard Top 30 (#27), although the album only made the lower end of the Top 100. Farrar says of that record, “There is an elusive quality to it that drew me in and never let go. The ease at which Doug moved around and blended styles from Tex-Mex to Texas R&B to psychedelia and country are what kept me a devotee.”
Sir Douglas Quintet: Mendocino (a brief interview with Hef first - then live for his Playboy show in 1969)
Return to Texas:
1971 saw him head back to San Antonio and release the next record, The Return Of Doug Saldaña - with Saldaña being a nickname given to him by Chicano musicians in San Antonio (possibly meaning ‘from the wooded area’). The LP included a cover of Freddy Fender’s Wasted Days and Wasted Nights, which gave the original singer a bit of a boost (he was by now working as an auto mechanic). Michael Corcoran said of his return to his home state, “The groove was back in town! Sahm gave the Austin club scene its soul, with fluency in every style of Texas music.”
Doug Sahm: Wasted Days And Wasted Nights (audio only)
Doug and Freddy:
Freddy Fender (born Baldemar Huerta) had once been known as El Be-Bop Kid in the late 50s, and was someone a young Doug Sahm would follow around. They didn’t meet again until 1974, when Sahm persuaded Fender to play Soap Creek Saloon in West Austin, for a good payday. Fender then linked up with Huey Meaux, Sahm’s old producer. Meaux wanted him to try Before The Next Teardrop Falls, a song that had already been a flop for Duane Dee and Jerry Lee Lewis, although Fender’s initial reaction was not to “sing that gringo shit”. But Meaux persisted and the result was indeed a massive hit, topping the charts, winning CMA Single of the Year and making him Billboard’s male vocalist of 1975.
The following year was packed; he moved to Austin, another place with a burgeoning hippie scene, disbanded the Sir Douglas Quintet and got a cameo appearance in Kris Kristofferson’s movie, Cisco Pike. He also appeared on the song Michoacan from the soundtrack, but that got no airplay because of its marijuana references.
Atlantic Years:
Jerry Wexler signed Sahm to a new ‘progressive country’ division at Atlantic Records in 1972. That October he worked on Doug Sahm and Band, which included some notable guest appearances from the likes of Bob Dylan, Dr John and Flaco Jimenez. His friend Chet Flippo said, “In many ways, Doug and Bob [Dylan] were flip sides of each other’s personalities, which is why they were so musically compatible. Each perhaps secretly envied the other a little bit and hoped that some of that particular magic would rub off.” Reviews of the record were mixed and sales poor. But he did get to work with Willie Nelson and the Grateful Dead, before using some leftover material from those 1972 sessions to create Texas Tornado in 1973. Steve Earle recalls that “Texas Tornado is one of the records that made it hip to play country music in Texas. There used to be a dividing line between musicians that played pop music and the musicians that played country.”
Doug Sahm: Wallflower (audio only - joint vocal with Bob Dylan)
With that Atlantic country division folding so soon, next up was Warner Records and the album Groover’s Paradise, for which he enlisted former CCR men, Doug Clifford and Stu Cook. As he toured behind that record, he got his first ever appearance at Carnegie Hall in New York.
But sales were continuing to fall away and he was rarely seen performing outside of Austin. He did though produce a record for Roky Erickson (former 13th Floor Elevators) who had just come out of psychiatric hospital. For his own next record, he was reunited with Meaux, creating Texas Rock For Country Rollers, a much more well received album that had a mix of originals and covers. It was credited to Doug Sahm and the Texas Tornados, one of whom was his old friend Augie Meyers.
Doug Sahm: Cowboy Payton Place (audio only)
Tornado in Texas:
The 80s broke with another solo effort, Hell Of A Spell in 1980, before a reformed Sir Douglas Quintet put out Border Wave in 1981. They signed a new deal with Swedish label Sonet Records and released Midnight Sun, becoming a minor success in Scandinavian circles. That was followed by Rio Medina and tours in Europe. The mid-80s saw him now living in Vancouver, returning to Austin every year for the South by Southwest festival.
The Texas Mavericks were formed in 1987, with Doug going under the moniker Samm Dogg and the band playing live wearing wrestling masks. The end of the decade was marked with what was perhaps the last of his notable bands - Texas Tornados - with Augie Meyers, Freddy Fender and Flaco Jimenez. They played a blend of rock, country, conjunto and blues and were quickly snapped up by Warner Brothers. Their self-titled debut album made Top 5 on the Billboard Country chart and earned a Grammy too (Best Mexican-American Album). They got to tour Europe and play at Bill Clinton’s first inauguration (with Willie Nelson). Jimenez would say, “Doug was a real versatile guy and soulful, of course. He was a groover - a super groover - and he played a pretty good bajo sexto [a Mexican stringed instrument] too. There’s not many Anglos doing that.”
Texas Tornados: Soy de San Luis (live on Austin City Limits)
The Pyramid Meets The Eye was a 1990 benefits record for his old Texas compadre Roky Erickson, to which he contributed You’re Gonna Miss Me, with his sons Shawn and Shandon (who also later played drums in the Meat Puppets) - it was credited to Doug Sahm & Sons. They would follow that up with Day Dreaming At Midnight a few years later, which they used the Sir Douglas Quintet name for.
Doug Sahm & Sons: You're Gonna Miss Me (audio only)
Anodyne:
Jay Farrar had randomly met Sahm in a hotel in San Francisco while Uncle Tupelo were there on tour. They chatted and moved on, with Sahm probably forgetting the brief encounter. Then, in 1993, Uncle Tupelo’s manager reached out to Doug Sahm while the band were recording their fourth (and turns out) final record, Anodyne, at Cedar Creek Studio in Austin. He came in and recorded his song, Give Back The Key To My Heart with them, with Farrar recalling he was in and out in under two hours. “He just blew in there, took most of the air out and left when the oxygen was gone. He definitely brought a lot of enthusiasm to the session.”
Uncle Tupelo (with Doug Sahm): Give Back The Key To My Heart (audio only)
Farrar told Christopher J Lee about how his relationship with Sahm developed after the Anodyne session. The two would touch base whenever they were in the same town together, and Sahm was a big supporter of Farrar's next band, Son Volt, in the early days (they formed in the wake of Uncle Tupelo’s 1994 split). They talked about writing songs together, but living in different towns meant that was always going to be difficult. Farrar did try once, sending him a cassette of a half finished song, Hanging Blue Side, but nothing came of it (it ended up on Son Volt’s Wide Swing Tremolo, 1998).
Farrar considered Sahm to be a bit of a mentor to him. They were both were well known for experimentation across genres, something Farrar acknowledged was an influence; how he learnt to follow “wherever the inspiration goes, whether it’s not being tied down to one sound or one approach. Doug was definitely a mentor in that way, whether he knew it or not.”
In the end:
In late 1999, Sahm was visiting New Mexico, having stopped off at his son Shawn’s in Boerne, Texas. A few days later, he called Shawn saying he had been stopping a lot on the journey to be sick. After holing up in Taos, he agreed to go to Albuquerque so his girlfriend could meet him and drive him home. But once there, he got worse and despite a suggestion he should attend the emergency room, he never did. On 18 November he was found dead in his hotel room; an autopsy revealed arteriosclerotic cardiovascular disease.
A thousand people turned up for his San Antonio funeral the following week, with condolences sent to his family by Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen and Willie Nelson. Mourners came from all parts of the world and all walks of life to pay their respects; it took an hour and a half for everyone to file past his coffin.
Day of the Doug:
Day Of The Doug is a tribute album of some of Sahm's work, by Son Volt, released on Transmit Sound and Thirty Tigers in 2023.
As Farrar explained to Hobart Rowland in Magnet magazine, there is (or should be) a huge fascination with Sahm, who became a part of the Texan musical fabric, “[jumping] around from Tex-Mex to country to blues to R&B to 60s pop to Cajun fiddle music.” He had something of an obsession with Sahm’s 60s pop output; “I’m a sucker for that, He definitely understood what it took to write a great song.” Son Volt knocked the record out in five days of recording as they went out on a tour in spring 2022.
The record has something of an upbeat feel, partly because of the songs, and partly because they were heading out on tour after the Covid hiatus - “this was a sort of rebound effect from returning to normalcy and touring. There is an energy associated with this recording, I think, because of that.” They took the chosen songs and ended up “just adding different colours and textures” to them.
It’s not just a Farrar thing though, other Son Volt members Andrew DuPlantis and Mark Patterson, hail from Austin, so also understood the attraction of Sahm. In the end though, it was when they discovered The Complete Mercury Masters of Sahm’s work, which had been released in 2005, that the project seems to have crystallised. On that album, they uncovered even more of his pop writing ability, through songs like Sometimes You’ve Got To Stop Chasing Rainbows.
Son Volt: Sometimes You've Gotta Stop Chasing Rainbows (audio only)
There are fourteen Sahm tracks on this homage. Lee noted in Pop Matters that it was a good fit for Farrar to do this, drawing similarities between their careers and the way they both founded pioneering bands and blended multiple genres in their work. Farrar said, “I wanted to shed light on those songs that resonated with me, particularly the ones that had more of a pop sensibility about them.” DuPlantis (bass) chose and sang on two of the tracks, Float Away and Juan Mendoza.
The legacy:
Magnet Magazine summed up his approach to music: “Sahm played American music…. Sahm epitomised the complex tradition of Texas music in a way that Willie Nelson never could. Of course, Nelson was smart. Smart enough to emulate Sahm’s redneck-hippie persona and doubly smart to hook up with Waylon Jennings, another Texas rebel. Still, when it came to Texas, Sahm was the man.”
Another key player on the Alt-Country scene, Brian Henneman of the Bottle Rockets recalled; “From note one, the sound of that record [Mendocino] was cooler than anything I’d been listening to. I wasn’t even wise enough to formulate the reasons why I loved it. I didn’t realise that it was country and blues and Mexican music and psychedelic rock.”
Another of the great Alt-Country pioneers, Steve Earle, grew up in Texas, so he got why Sahm was important: “The Quintet were the local heroes. She’s About A Mover happened while I was in grade school and I was pretty plugged in to it. In those days, there were local teen shows and the Quintet did all that stuff.”
All in all, Alistair McKay notes that Sahm wasn’t necessarily technically the best when it came to his studio performance; “the sound was often ragged. What you get, instead, is the sense of groove.” In this, he is sometimes compared him to another cult musical favourite of the era, Alex Chilton.
“You can teach me lots of lessons/You can bring me a lot of gold/But you just can’t live in Texas/If you don’t have a lot of soul.”
At The Crossroads (1969)
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