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.