A British Guy From Texas, Okay- The Music of Doug Sahm-CD Review

Happy Birthday To You-

By Lester Lannon

I am devoted to a local folk station WUMB which is run out of the campus of U/Mass-Boston over near Boston Harbor. At one time this station was an independent one based in Cambridge but went under when their significant demographic base deserted or just passed on once the remnant of the folk minute really did sink below the horizon.

So much for radio folk history except to say that the DJs on many of the programs go out of their ways to commemorate or celebrate the birthdays of many folk, rock, blues and related genre artists. So many and so often that I have had a hard time keeping up with noting those occurrences in this space which after all is dedicated to such happening along the historical continuum.

To “solve” this problem I have decided to send birthday to that grouping of musicians on an arbitrary basis as I come across their names in other contents or as someone here has written about them and we have them in the archives. This may not be the best way to acknowledge them, but it does do so in a respectful manner.   

Click on the headline to link to a YouTube film clip of Doug Sahm performing back in the day, his British invasion day.

CD Review

Dough Sahm: Juke Box Music, Doug Sahm, Antone’s Records, 1988

A British guy from Texas? Oh, ya, that. See one Doug Sahm, a mad monk, a Texas-bred mad monk, of musical talent wanted to ride the wave, the 1960s British invasion wave led by the Beatles that changed the face of rock and roll more than somewhat. Just like Elvis, Chuck and Jerry Lee did a generation before, a rock generation that is, and , strangely, brought blues, big heartland, butcher to the world, industrial city hard life electric blues via Chicago and Memphis and country harder life acoustic blues via the Delta cotton field broiling sun sweats and Saturday night no electricity jukes, mainly, back to America. So ride the wave, take the ride and pay for the ticket, to paraphrase the late gonzo journalist, Doctor Hunter S. Thompson a kindred, here comes none other than the Sir Douglas Quintet no less high and hard in the 1960s American post-invasion hip-hop night.

Well that bluesy rock minute passed but Doug Sahm’s attachment to music, to roots music, apparently never vanished as this CD testifies to in a big way. So back in Texas he made something of a legend for himself in the emerging Austin musical scene. And while I don’t know the all the particulars of the late Brother Sahm’s later career I know two things, well, actually three things. When Bob Dylan wanted to taste, musically taste, all things Texan, particularly that Tex-Mex roots sound that permeated some of his music during his “western outlaw” period (hey, maybe his whole career, at least in his mind) he slip-shot himself by Brother Sahm and they became fast friends.

And Dough Sahm was instrumental in preserving that Tex-Mex sound as it got preserved in old Antone’s, a blue club very closely associated with the blues in Texas and, well, that big heartland, butcher to the world, industrial city hard life electric blues Chicago too, as that storied (and chronicled, on film chronicled) barroom locale provided a final home for many of the Windy City blues greats as they fell on Maxwell Street hard times. And lastly, well lastly Brother Sahm KNEW, knew in his bones and deep in his musical soul, just like Dylan, the American songbook, the generation of ’68 section that he is paying tribute to on this album. Feast on.

Searching For The Old American West In Song - The Music Of Tom Russell

Click on the headline to link to a "YouTube" film clip of Tom Russell performing "Tonight We Ride."

CD Review

Borderland, Tom Russell, Hightone Records, 2001

The last time that I reviewed a CD by the singer/songwriter Tom Russell was his album, about the Irish disapora- “The Man From God Knows Where”. Hey, wait a minute- how can you go from the Irish diaspora to searching for the Old American West like that? Well, that answer is easy- not all the Irish stayed in the Eastern cities after heading out of the old country over the past 150 years or so. Some, like members of other ethnic groups, headed west when things dried up or got too “hot” in the East.

That is the common design for Russell’s drive to find the key to the old West, and to sing of it, to sing of it like Walt Whitman did in his poetry that sang of America. Although the unabashed promise that Whitman sang of has turned somewhat rancid and wearisome in the last hundred years or so that is where the meat of Russell’s work lies.

Take the song “Touch Of Evil” (title and subject from the classic Orson Welles film), for example, Russell captures the mean streets of the borders, between countries, cultures, and personal circumstances and exposes their hard edges. In short, my kind of songwriter. “Hills Of Old Juarez” and “Where The Dream Begins” are other outstanding examples of that same idea. If you too are searching for the meaning of the Old West, the real Old West, in song and the New West, as well, listen up here.

Touch Of Evil
Tom Russell

G C G C/G
The night my baby left me I crossed the bridge to Juarez avenue
C G C
Like that movie "Touch of evil" I got the Orson Wells, Marlene Dietrich
G
blues
C G
Where Orson walks in to the whore house and
C G C/G
Marlene says "Man, you look like hel l"
G
And Orson's chewing on a chocolate bar
C/G
as the l ights go on in the old Blue Star hotel
C Bm
"Read my future" says old Orson, "down inside the tea leaves of your cup"
Am
And she says " You ain't got no future, Hank,
C D G
I believe your f uture's all used up"

C G
Why don't you touch me anymore? Why don't you touch me anymore?
D G G7
Why do you run away and hide? You know it hurts me deep inside
C G
Why do you close the bedroom door? This is a brutal little war
D C G
What good is all this fightin' for if you don't touch me any more?

G C/G
(Chords like 1st verse, until notice)
G C G C/G
They shot "A touch of evil" in a Venice, California colo ny
C G
And I grew near those dead canals
C G
where they filmed the longest pan shot ever made
C G C G C/G
Now I'm thinking a bout the movie, the bar I'm in, the bridge, the Rio Grande
G C/G
Now I'm t hinking about my baby and the borderline 'tween a woman and a man
C Bm
I was d runk as Orson Wells the night I crawled backwards out the door

Am C D G
I was screaming "Baby, baby how come you touch me any more?"

CHORUS:

G C/G x3

(Chords like 2nd verse)
G C G C/G
Oh, some one rolled the credits on twenty years of love turned dark and raw
C G C G
Not a technicolor l ove film, it's a brutal document, it's film noir
C G C G C/G
And it's all played out on a borderline and the actors are tragically miscast
G C/G
Like a Mexican bur lesk show where the characters are wearing comic masks
C Bm
Oh, it's love and love alone I cry to the barmen in this Juarez water hole
Am C D G
As we raise a glass to Orson and "A touch of evil" livin' our souls

CHORUS:

*From The Austin City Outer Limits- The Music Of Doug Sahm

Click On Title To Link To YouTube’s Film Clip Of Doug Sahm On "Live From Austin City Limits"

CD Review

Doug Sahm & Friends: The Best Of The Atlantic Sessions, Doug Sahm, Bob Dylan, Dr. John and other artists, Atlanta Records, 1992

One of the things that keeps occurring when one is, as I am, tracing in my own eclectic way, some of the roots music of the `American Songbook' is that once familiar names from the distant past keep cropping up in odd ways. Take the artist under review, Doug Sahm, as an example. I knew of his name from 1960's British invasion rock group Sir Douglas Quintet (Go figure, for a Texas boy, but that is the way things went in those helter-skelter days) and, later, from the edges of the Texas-driven "country outlaws" movement of the likes of Townes Van Zandt, Willie Nelson, Guy Clark and the like.

However the impetus for this review of Sahm' music is due to a recent interview of Professor Douglas Brinkley (now at Rice University, I believe). Brinkley was talking about the nuts and bolts of his interview of the legendary Bob Dylan for "Rolling Stone" magazine on a National Public Radio talk show. In the course of that interview Professor Brinkley mentioned that the reclusive Dylan missed the companionship of his old time friend, the late Doug Sahm. That set off one alarm. Additionally, Professor Brinkley is well known to this reviewer as a long time friend of the late "Gonzo journalist", Hunter S. Thompson. That combination was enough to get me to this CD.

Like many others, when one is looking for the work of an older artist the best place to start is with some "greatest hits" compilation and that, in effect, is what is being reviewed here. Over the long haul Sahm was associated, broadly, with the Tex-Mex and Texas blues music that came roaring out of his state over the past few decades, particularly out of Austin. That sound, and the seemingly obligatory nod to the free-wheeling 1960's hard rock styles, dominates this well-produced album originally issued by well-regarded Atlantic Records in 1973. There is a virtual who's who of Tex-Mex and Texas blues musicians backing Sahms up (and the great New Orleans bluesman, Dr. John). Plus, as a bonus, Dylan doing his "Wallflower" with Sahm. Additionally, there is a nice booklet of liner notes showing the cast of characters on this CD in sunnier times. After listening to this CD one can now understand why Dylan missed his old friend.

*******

Doug Sahm Is Anybody Going To San Antone by Dave Kirby
Glen Martin

Doug Sahm vocals/guitar/fiddle
Bob Dylan background vocals
Charlie Owens steel guitar
Flaco Jimenez accordion
George Raines drums
Jack Barber bass
Augie Meyers keyboards
Ken Kosek fiddle


A D E7 A A D E7 A

A D E7 A
Rain dripping off the brim of my hat it sure looks cold today
D E7 A
Here I am walkin down Sixty Six wish she hadn't done me this way
D E7 A
Sleeping under a table in a roadside park a man could wake up dead
A D E7 A
But it sure seems warmer than it did sleeping in our king size bed
A D E7 A
Is anybody going to San Antone or Phoenix Arizona
D E7 A
Any place is all right as long as I can forget I've ever known her

A D E7 A A D E7 A

A D E A
Wind whippin down the neck of my shirt like I aint got nothin on
A D E7 A
But I'd rather fight the wind and rain than what I was fightin at home
A D E7 A
Is anybody going to San Antone or Phoenix Arizona
D E7 A
Any place is all right as long as I can forget I've ever known her.


SOLO


A D E7 A
Yonder comes a truck with the U.S. mail people writin letters back
home
A D E7 A
Well Tommorrow she'll want me back again and I'll be just as gone
A D E7 A
Is anybody going to San Antone or Phoenix Arizona
D E7 A
Any place is all right as long as I can forget I've ever known her

*From The Austin City Outer Limits- An Encore-The Music Of Doug Sahm

Click On Title To Link To YouTube’s Film Clip Of Doug Sahm On "Live From Austin City Limits"

DVD Review

Doug Sahm: Live From Austin, Tx, Doug Sahm (1975), New West Productions, 2007

Most of the following is from a review of a CD, "Doug Sahm and Friends". Except for a list of the song selections the points made there apply here to this DVD as well.

"One of the things that keeps occurring when one is, as I am, tracing in my own eclectic way, some of the roots music of the `American Songbook' is that once familiar names from the distant past keep cropping up in odd ways. Take the artist under review, Doug Sahm, as an example. I knew of his name from 1960's British invasion rock group Sir Douglas Quintet (Go figure, for a Texas boy, but that is the way things went in those helter-skelter days) and, later, from the edges of the Texas-driven "country outlaws" movement of the likes of Townes Van Zandt, Willie Nelson, Guy Clark and the like.

However the impetus for this review of Sahm' music is due to a recent interview of Professor Douglas Brinkley (now at Rice University, I believe). Brinkley was talking about the nuts and bolts of his interview of the legendary Bob Dylan for "Rolling Stone" magazine on a National Public Radio talk show. In the course of that interview Professor Brinkley mentioned that the reclusive Dylan missed the companionship of his old time friend, the late Doug Sahm. That set off one alarm. Additionally, Professor Brinkley is well known to this reviewer as a long time friend of the late "Gonzo journalist", Hunter S. Thompson. That combination was enough to get me to this CD.

Like many others, when one is looking for the work of an older artist the best place to start is with some "greatest hits" compilation and that, in effect, is what is being reviewed here. Over the long haul Sahm was associated, broadly, with the Tex-Mex and Texas blues music that came roaring out of his state over the past few decades, particularly out of Austin. That sound, and the seemingly obligatory nod to the free-wheeling 1960's hard rock styles, dominates this well-produced album originally issued by well-regarded Atlantic Records in 1973. There is a virtual who's who of Tex-Mex and Texas blues musicians backing Sahm up (and the great New Orleans bluesman, Dr. John). Plus, as a bonus, Dylan doing his "Wallflower" with Sahm. Additionally, there is a nice booklet of liner notes showing the cast of characters on this CD in sunnier times. After listening to this CD one can now understand why Dylan missed his old friend".

And off of this DVD you can understand why Dylan would have been attracted to Sahm's gravelly-voiced, rough-hewed song style as seen in the "Mendocino" and "She's A Mover" set. Also a nice version of "Stormy Monday", a song that fits his style very well. Here is the kicker though. A lot of times when I am 'watching' music DVDs I am on the computer, or something. I was doing the same here when all of a sudden Doug started doing a version of Elvis Presley's "One Night With You". I jumped up to watch that. Wow. Yes, indeed, I can very definitely understand Dylan's sense of loss.


*******

Doug Sahm Is Anybody Going To San Antone by Dave Kirby
Glen Martin

Doug Sahm vocals/guitar/fiddle
Bob Dylan background vocals
Charlie Owens steel guitar
Flaco Jimenez accordion
George Raines drums
Jack Barber bass
Augie Meyers keyboards
Ken Kosek fiddle


A D E7 A A D E7 A

A D E7 A
Rain dripping off the brim of my hat it sure looks cold today
D E7 A
Here I am walkin down Sixty Six wish she hadn't done me this way
D E7 A
Sleeping under a table in a roadside park a man could wake up dead
A D E7 A
But it sure seems warmer than it did sleeping in our king size bed
A D E7 A
Is anybody going to San Antone or Phoenix Arizona
D E7 A
Any place is all right as long as I can forget I've ever known her

A D E7 A A D E7 A

A D E A
Wind whippin down the neck of my shirt like I aint got nothin on
A D E7 A
But I'd rather fight the wind and rain than what I was fightin at home
A D E7 A
Is anybody going to San Antone or Phoenix Arizona
D E7 A
Any place is all right as long as I can forget I've ever known her.


SOLO


A D E7 A
Yonder comes a truck with the U.S. mail people writin letters back
home
A D E7 A
Well Tommorrow she'll want me back again and I'll be just as gone
A D E7 A
Is anybody going to San Antone or Phoenix Arizona
D E7 A
Any place is all right as long as I can forget I've ever known her