Texas Tornados – "(Hey Baby) Que Paso" (1990)

Hey baby, que paso?

Thought I was your only vato

The late Doug Sahm – one of my very favorite musicians – was a musical prodigy who debuted on a San Antonio radio station when he was just six years old.  He appeared on stage with Hank Williams when he was only 12, and shortly thereafter was offered a gig with the Grand Ole Opry.  (His mother wouldn’t let him accept the Opry’s offer, which would have meant a move to Nashville – she insisted that he finish junior high school first.)

Sahm released several singles that became local hits in the late fifties and early sixties.  In 1964, when he was 22 years old, he asked record producer Huey “The Crazy Cajun” Meaux to give him a recording contract.  Meaux said no at first, but later made Sahm the frontman of a faux British Invasion-type band in hopes of capitalizing on the popularity of the Beatles.

Sahm was the face and the voice of the Sir Douglas Quintet, but what gave the band its distinctive sound was the Vox Continental organ of Sahm’s childhood pal, Augie Meyers.

In 2002, Meyers told an interviewer how the Sir Douglas Quintet came to be:

I had my band and he had his band until we were in our twenties . . . . I opened a show for the Dave Clark Five, and Doug’s band came on afterward.  Huey Meaux was there, trying to see what all the commotion was about with those English bands.  Huey said, “Man, 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.”  So that’s what we did, but it was really hard to pull off because we had three Mexican guys in the band.

The band’s first single flopped, but they hit it big with “She’s About a Mover,” a record that shows off Augie Meyers’s mastery of the Vox Continental.

A few years later, the group had another hit with “Mendocino” – once again, it was Meyers’s organ playing that made that record truly special.

I found the Sir Douglas Quintet’s Mendocino album a couple of years after its 1969 release in the cutout bin at Grandpa’s, a very low-budget discount store in Joplin, Missouri.  As I recall, the cutout LPs there were priced at three for a dollar.  The other two albums I bought that day were the Status Quo’s Pictures of Matchstick Men and the eponymous Dr. K’s Blues Band album.  

(How do I remember stuff like this 50-odd years later?  God only knows.)

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I saw Doug Sahm perform live in Houston  – where I went to college – a year or two after buying the Mendocino  album.  He was absolutely fabulous.

I later picked up Doug Sahm and Band, Texas Tornado, and Groover’s Paradise – the first three albums Sahm released after the Sir Douglas Quintet broke up.  Augie Meyers was a big part of the first two of those LPs.

In 1989, Sahm and Meyers joined up with Tex-Mex music legends Freddy Fender and Flaco Jimenez to form the Grammy-winning Texas Tornados.

The decades of collaboration between the two childhood friends came to an end in 1999, when Sahm died of a heart attack.  He was 58 years old.

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In addition to his work with Sahm, Augie Meyers released over a dozen solo albums.  He also recorded with many other musicians – Willie Nelson, Tom Jones, Tom Waits, and Bob Dylan, among others. 

Dylan had this to say about Meyers, who played on two of his albums:

Augie’s my man, he’s like an intellectual who goes fishing using bookworms.  Seriously though he’s the shining example of a musician, Vox player or otherwise, who can break the code.  His playing speaks volumes, speaks in tongue actually.  He can bring a song, certainly any one of mine, into the real world.  I’ve loved his playing going all the way back to the Sir Doug days. . . . [H]e’s the master of syncopation and timing and this is something that cannot be taught.  If you need someone to get you through the shipping lanes and there’s no detour, Augie will get you right straight through. Augie’s your man.

Click here to listen to “Love Sick,” the first track on Dylan’s acclaimed 1997 album, Time Out of Mind, which won Album of the Year and two other Grammies.  Meyers played not only his signature Vox organ on the album but also a Hammond B3 and the accordion.

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When Doug Sahm died, the Austin Chronicle newspaper said, “If Texas had such a designation, Douglas Wayne Sahm would be the State Musician of Texas.”

I agree with that one thousand percent.  Texas music is an unique agglomeration of blues, country, rock, Tejano (or “Tex-Mex”), and a few other musical categories – and Sahm was a master of each and every one of those genres. 

Augie Meyers was just as versatile as Doug Sahm.  While he mostly remained in the background when he performed with Sahm, Meyers was crucial to the success of the Sir Douglas Quintet, the Texas Tornados, and their other collaborations.

Augie Meyers in 2019

Tex-Mex new wave musician Joe “King” Carrasco had this to say about Sahm shortly after his death:

Nobody that had ever come from Texas covered the whole cross-section of what Texas was about except Doug.  The biggest funeral they ever had in San Antonio was Doug’s, and the next one will be when Augie goes.  That’s a whole chapter of what’s the best of Texas.  Once these guys are gone, that’s it.

Sadly, that day has arrived.  Augie Meyers died in his sleep on March 7, 2026.  He was 85.  

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Click here to watch the Sir Douglas Quintet lip-synching to “She’s About a Mover” on NBC’s Hullabaloo.

Click here to watch the group lip-synching to “Mendocino” on Playboy After Dark.  (Yes, that’s Barbi Benton – best Playmate ever! – dancing with Hugh Hefner.)

Click here to watch the Texas Tornados performing “(Hey Baby) Que Paso,” a song co-written by Meyers that was released on the band’s 1990 eponymous debut album.  That’s Augie Meyer singing and playing the accordion, while Doug Sahm takes Meyers’s place behind the Vox Continental organ.

Click here to buy “(Hey Baby) Que Paso” – which has been called the “National Anthem of San Antonio” – from Amazon.

William Shatner (ft. Joe Jackson) – "Common People" (2004)

I want to sleep with common people

I want to sleep with common people like you

Not everything you read on the Internet is true.

According to the Internet, Mark Twain once said, “Politicians are like diapers – they should be changed frequently, and for the same reasons.”

But Mark Twain did not say that.  

The Internet also says that 94-year-old William Shatner – who famously portrayed Captain James T. Kirk on the original Star Trek television series – is planning to release a heavy metal album titled A Gathering of Forces later this year.

That can’t be right – right?

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Wrong!  It is right!

Shatner says his new album will feature over 30 recording artists.  He hasn’t identified any of his collaborators yet, but the musicians he has recorded with in the past include Peter Frampton, Brian May (Queen), Henry Rollins (formerly of Black Flag), Ritchie Blackmore (Deep Purple), Zakk Wylde (who was the late Ozzy Osbourne’s lead guitarist), and Chris Poland (formerly of Megadeath) – so I’m guessing there will be some big names helping out Shatner on his newest project.

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In the previous 2 or 3 lines, I told you about The Transformed Man, Shatner’s 1968 debut album.   

Shatner waited 36 years to release a follow-up to The Transformed Man.  (That’s a long time, although perhaps not long enough.)  His second album – which was titled Has Been – contained a number of original songs co-written by Shatner and Ben Folds (best known as the frontman of the Ben Folds Five), who produced the album.

The initial track of Has Been is a cover of Pulp’s Britpop hit, “Common People,” which was featured in the penultimate 2 or 3 lines.  

Shatner is joined on “Common People” by Joe Jackson, one of very best singer-songwriters of his generation.  I’m not sure why Jackson chose to sing with Shatner on that recording, but he kills it.

One reviewer had this to say about Shatner’s “Common People,” which she called “one of the strangest and somehow best musical covers I have ever heard”:

Shatner’s distinctive spoken-word style has found its perfect outlet in this song.  No one speaks like Shatner does.  His idiosyncratic style contains an overabundance of dramatic pauses and his gravelly tones overflow with emotion; there’s little subtlety there and he gets his message across like a sledgehammer.  But the lyrics of “Common People” are infused with emotion, most notably disdain, and the wealth of emotion in Shatner’s is a perfect fit.

(What kind of dressing would you like with that word salad?)

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Click here to listen to Shatner’s cover of “Common People.”

Click here to buy that recording from Amazon.

Click here to watch Shatner et al. performing “Common People” on The Tonight Show.

William Shatner – "It Was a Very Good Year" (1968)

But now the days are short

I’m in the autumn of the year

(I’m “in the autumn of the year”?  IN MY DREAMS!)

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The last 2 or 3 lines featured Pulp’s big Britpop hit, “Common People.”

And the next 2 or 3 lines will feature William “Captain Kirk” Shatner’s very odd cover of that song, which was released in 2004 on Has Been – his second album.  (God willing, it will be his last album – although it is being reported that the 94-year-old Shatner plans to release an album of heavy-metal songs sometime this year.)  

But today we’re featuring a track from his debut album, The Transformed Man, which was released in 1968 – 36 years before Has Been.

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It may surprise you to learn that the original Star Trek series was not a very popular show.  In fact, the show was cancelled by NBC in 1969 after only three seasons on that network.

The show’s star, William Shatner, saw the handwriting on the wall when Star Trek’s ratings sank during its second season.  “I honestly did not think we’d pull through to a third season,” Shatner later told a reporter.  “I was . . . sure we were to be canceled.”  So he began to look around for other projects. 

Shatner bought the movie rights to a book he liked and had a script based on it written, but it the project never went any further.

He also released one of the oddest record albums of all time.  The Transformed Man combined readings from Shakespeare and other authors with spoken-word covers of pop songs. 

One reviewer hit the nail on the head when he wrote that the songs on Shatner’s album are “really, really awful.  In fact, they are so awful that they're great!”

Here’s what another reviewer said about The Transformed Man:

It’s unclear if Shatner is merely having a good time and goofing around, or if he’s embarrassingly dead serious. . . . The result is a must hear (unintentional?) comedy classic.

There’s no way Shatner had his tongue in his cheek when he did this album.  I would bet dollars to doughnuts that he was as being serious as cancer when he recorded The Transformed Man.

Click here to hear Shatner’s mashup of Hamlet’s “To be, or not be” soliloquy with “It Was a Very Good Year,” which had been a big hit for Frank Sinatra in 1966.

Click here to buy that track from Amazon.

Pulp – "Common People" (1995)

She came from Greece

She had a thirst for knowledge

She studied sculpture at Saint Martins College

“Common People” is a snarky song about a Greek art student that Blur frontman Jarvis Cocker wanted to sleep with.  Unfortunately for Cocker, the woman had no desire to sleep with him.

If she had slept with him, I’m pretty sure the song would have been quite a bit less snarky.

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Cocker met the woman in 1988 while both were students at the Central St. Martins College of Art and Design in London.

The woman told him that her father was very wealthy, but that she wanted to move to Hackney – which was a very sketchy neighborhood at the time – and “live like the common people.”

The singer in “Common People” tells the woman that even if she rents a crummy, cockroach-infested flat and spends all her time dancing, drinking, and screwing, she’ll never truly be one of the common people because “[i]f you called your dad, he could stop it all.”

Cocker – whose father had deserted the family when he was seven – knew that people with rich daddies will never have a clue what life among the “common people” was really like.  His song heaps scorn on “class tourists” like the Greek art student who “think that [being] poor is cool.”   

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“Common People” is considered by many to be the greatest of all the records that came out of the Britpop movement of the 1990s.  (My personal Britpop favorite is Blur’s “Parklife.”)

The producers of a 2006 BBC documentary about “Common People” went through Central St. Martins enrollment records in an unsuccessful attempt to ascertain just who the Greek art student in the song was.  (They thought they had identified the woman in question, but Cocker told them they were wrong after watching a video interview of her.)

In 2015, a Greek newspaper concluded that a different female artist was the subject of the song, but that woman – who was the daughter of a textile magnate and went to Central St. Martins at the right time – has neither confirmed or denied the rumor.

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Click here to watch the official music video for “Common People.”  (It’s dreamy!)

Click here to buy “Common People” from Amazon.