Doug Sahm – "Poison Love" (1973)

And I know this love

Is surely not for me

The late Doug Sahm made his radio debut at age five and released his first record when he was 11.  He was on stage with Hank Williams, Sr., in Austin, Texas, for Hank’s final stage performance on December 19, 1952.  (Williams died in the back seat of a car less than two weeks later.)  

Doug Sahm with Hank Williams, Sr.

The story goes that Sahm was offered a chance to become a member of the Grand Ole Opry a few years later, but that his mother said no – she wanted him to finish junior high school.

Sahm was a jack of all trades – his music is a mix of rock ’n’ roll, country, blues, R&B, and Mexican conjunto music, and that eclecticism is the essence of Texas popular music.  Texas is a great big melting pot of musical cultures and styles, and Sahm’s records epitomized that.

*     *     *     *     *

Maybe Sahm would have been a bigger commercial success if he had stuck to one style of music.

In the sixties, he moved to San Francisco after forming the Sir Douglas Quintet, a faux British Invasion band that had two hit singles – “She’s About a Mover” and “Mendocino.”  

I found the group’s first album in the cutout bins at Grandpa’s, a long-gone-but-not-forgotten discount store in my hometown that made Walmart look like Nieman-Marcus.  It was in the three-for-a-dollar section, and I figured that was a fair price for the two aforementioned hit singles.  But the album turned out to be a gem.

Sahm recording with Bob Dylan

Bob Dylan, who was another fan of that album, once said, “Look, for me right now there are three groups: [the Paul] Butterfield [Blues Band], The Byrds and the Sir Douglas Quintet.”

*     *     *     *     *

After the Sir Douglas Quintet broke up, Sahm moved back to Texas and was signed to an Atlantic Records deal by famed producer Jerry Wexler.  His Atlantic albums – which consisted of equal parts country songs and blues tracks – featured guest appearances by Bob Dylan, Dr. John, and the Creedence Clearwater Revival rhythm section (Doug Clifford and Stu Cook).

Sahm’s seventies albums sold poorly, and he spent much of the eighties touring and recording in Europe (he had a hit album on a Swedish label) and Canada.  

In 1989, Sahm formed a Tex-Mex supergroup, the Texas Tornados, who released seven albums and won a Grammy for Best Mexican-American Record.

Sahm died of a heart attack in a hotel room in Taos, New Mexico, in 1999.  He was 58 years old.

*     *     *     *     *

Sahm was kind of the Texas version of Oklahoma’s Leon Russell.  Both were multitalented musicians who sounded good no matter what style of music they were playing.  And both were underrated by the public – although not by the many superstar recording artists they performed with.

Click here to listen to Sahm’s 1973 cover of “Poison Love,” a country song that was first recorded in 1950.  It’s an excellent example of Sahm’s eclecticism – the instruments backing Sahm on this track include mandolin, dobro, honky-tonk piano and Tejano-style accordion.  (It’s sloppy as hell in places – Sahm has only a tenuous grasp on the song’s lyrics – but sloppiness ain’t all bad.)

Click below to buy the song from Amazon:

Doug Sahm -- "Is Anybody Goin' to San Antone" (1973)

Here I am walking down 66

Wish she hadn't done me this way

A couple of weeks ago, 2 or 3 lines featured the original recording of "Is Anybody Goin' to San Antone," which was a #1 country hit for Charley Pride in 1970.  Today we're featuring Doug Sahm's cover of the song, which was released on his 1973 album, Doug Sahm and Band.

This is the seventh (and last) 2 or 3 lines post about my family's trip to San Antonio earlier this summer to attend a dinner celebrating my sister's wedding.  

We were in San Antonio for less than 36 hours.  I think it's pretty amazing that I was able to milk two weeks' worth of posts out of such a brief trip.

The Bexar County Courthouse:
"Go, Spurs, Go"

I took a lot of photos while I was in San Antonio -- most while I was walking or biking along San Antonio's wonderful Paseo del Rio ("River Walk").  I only used a small number of them in the previous six posts, so I'll cram as many of the rest of them as I can into this 2 or 3 lines. 

A detail from the Ace Mart mural
(from Southtown, San Antonio)

San Antonio is where Doug Sahm was born and where he is buried, and he is a product of the Alamo City's diverse musical culture.    

Sahm, who died of a heart attack when he was 58, was a remarkably versatile musician.

The Tower of the Americas (built for
the 1968 "Hemisfair" World Fair)

On the Doug Sahm and Band album, he not only handled the lead vocals but also played electric guitar, acoustic guitar, bajo sexto (a Mexican 12-string guitar tuned in fourths), bass guitar, organ, piano, and fiddle.  

A River Walk mosaic depicting
 the San Antonio skyline

Sahm has been one of my personal favorites ever since I found the Sir Douglas Quintet's 1968 Mendocino album in the three-for-a-dollar cutout bin at a discount store in my hometown several years after it was released.

I figured the band's two radio hits -- "She's About a Mover" and "Mendocino" -- were worth 33 cents.  But there was a lot more to like on that album.

A building on South Presa Street
in San Antonio's Southtown

Sahm's first three solo albums -- Doug Sahm and Band, Texas Tornado and Groover's Paradise -- were released while I was a college student in Texas.  They helped me survive my law-school years in Boston.  (I'm not sure which was worse -- going to law school or living in Boston.)

In memory of Doug Sahm:
"Ars Longa, Vita Brevis"

Here's an excerpt from Austin journalist Margaret Moser's tribute to Sahm -- one of the many that appeared in print after Sahm's death:

If Texas had such designation, Douglas Wayne Sahm would be the State Musician of Texas. Even before his death on November 18, the genial, 58-year-old musician had been making music for almost of his entire life, a Southwestern renaissance man for modern times.  He was "Little Doug Sahm," playing guitar, fiddle, triple-neck steel guitar, and mandolin in country dance halls and sitting on Hank Williams' knee.  He was the Sir Douglas Quintet, scoring three Top 10 hits in the late Sixties.

A great blue heron on the
San Antonio River

When he appeared on the cover of Rolling Stone in 1968, Baron Wolman's photograph of Sahm wearing a cowboy hat and long hair with young Shawn Sahm on his knee, it single-handedly created the image of the cosmic cowboy for the nation and the world.  It's almost laughably quaint to explain today why the cowboy hat and long hair were such an anomaly back then, but dang if Doug Sahm, then based in San Francisco, didn't make the dread redneck look cool.  The Byrds and Burrito Brothers could wear all the satin Nudie shirts they wanted; Sahm and company were the real item. The cowboy hat and long hair became his lifelong look, uniquely Texas, uniquely Doug.

Waiting for some real San
Antonio breakfast tacos

Sahm was a revered figure in Austin.  But Austin eventually became much too crowded and a little too twee for Sahm's taste.  At heart, Sahm was a San Antonio guy, not an Austin guy.

Texas patriot José Antonio Navarro

Margaret Moser's tribute acknowledged Sahm's San Antonio roots:

If it seems odd to focus on Sahm's style of dress and choice of hats, remember that he was a native of San Antonio, and San Antonio style is like no other.  The lowrider culture he grew up around valued pampered cars as much as a well-cut suit and he rubbed shoulders with country boys whose idea of dressing up was a string tie and polished cowboy boots.  The black show bands that Sahm admired from afar and later joined wore matching suits and did dance steps with the music.  In time, these disparate influences all melded into Sahm's unique vision of Texas music, but it could have happened only in one place -- San Antonio.

Paseo del Rio flowers

San Antonio is a melting pot -- roughly equal parts white, black, and brown -- and its music reflects its population.  As Sahm's biographer, Joseph Levy, has written:

It’s almost impossible to classify Sahm and his music as one style or another.  Country, rock, Western swing, Tex-Mex, polka, and blues all form part of the Sir Douglas mix.  Sahm himself said, “I’m a part of Willie Nelson's world and at the same time I’m a part of the Grateful Dead's.  I don’t ever stay in one bag. . . .  I have all these aliases.  Wayne Douglas.  Doug Saldaña.  Saldaña is the name the Mexicans gave me. They said that I had so much Mexican in me that I needed a Mexican name."

Another River Walk artwork

Bob Dylan, who assisted with the vocals on Doug Sahm and Band, was a close friend of Sahm and a great admirer of his music:

Doug was like me, maybe the only figure from that period of time that I connected with.  His was a big soul.  He had a hit record, "She’s About a Mover," and I had a hit record ["Like a Rolling Stone"] at the same time.  So we became buddies back then, and we played the same kind of music.  We never really broke apart.  We always hooked up at certain intervals in our lives. . . . I’d never met anyone who’d played on stage with Hank Williams before, let alone someone my own age. . . . I miss Doug.  He got caught in the grind.  He should still be here.

Here's Doug Sahm's version of "Is Anybody Goin' to San Antone." 

Click below to buy the song from Amazon:

Flaco Jiménez -- "Ay Te Dejo en San Antonio" (1986)

Por que supe que tenias otro amante

Y en Laredo ya tenias otros dos

For those of you who don't speak Spanish, here's an approximate translation of those lines:

I knew that you had another lover

And in Laredo, you had two others

In other words, this guy's girlfriend not only had another lover in San Antonio, but two additional lovers -- an other other lover, and an other other OTHER lover -- in Laredo.

I spent a lot of time walking or biking along the San Antonio River Walk (or Paseo del Rio) on a recent family trip to the Alamo City.

One mode of transportation I didn't utilize to explore the River Walk was a river taxi.  River taxis are very popular with San Antonio sightseers:

You can hail a river taxi at numerous locations:

There's even a lock to enable the river taxis to access the "Museum Reach" section of the Paseo del Rio:

One of the more interesting things you can access via a River Walk water taxi is Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 76, "The Oldest Post in Texas," which was founded in 1917 by veterans of the Spanish-American War.

VFW Post 76

Post 76 is housed in a neoclassical-style mansion with wrap-around verandas, Corinthian columns, and lots of stained-glass windows.  It was built for lumber magnate Van Petty, who hired a prominent local architect, Atlee Ayres, to remodel it in 1904.

Post 76 at night

Ayres was the official state architect for Texas for several years, and drew up plans for several county courthouses, including the old Cameron County Courthouse in Brownsville, TX:

He also designed the 30-story Tower Life Building, which was the city's first skyscraper:

But his most intriguing of his buildings is the Administration Building at Randolph Air Force Base, which is known locally as the "Taj Mahal":

The entrance to Post 76 is guarded by this World War II-vintage M1 57mm anti-tank gun and a bunch of signs.

But once you get past that, Post 76 is a very friendly place.

Unfortunately, I came upon Post 76 on an early-Sunday-morning stroll along the River Walk.  So I missed out on some tasty and reasonably-priced grub.

("Sasauge"?)

The bar at Post 76 closes at 2 AM "or when everyone has left -- whichever comes first."  If when everyone has left comes first and you are one of the last to leave, I'd suggest hailing a river taxi.

Leonardo "Flaco" Jiménez is a conjunto tejano accordion player from San Antonio who has played with the Rolling Stones, Dwight Yoakam, Ry Cooder, and many other musicians, but whose primary musical collaborator was Doug Sahm.

Los Texas Tornados: Flaco Jiménez, Doug
Sahm, Freddy Fender, and Augie Meyers

Jiménez is prominently featured on the Doug Sahm and Band album, and he and Sahm were among the founders of the Texas Tornados, a very successful Tex-Mex group whose often mixed English and Spanish words.  (The group's eponymous debut album was released in both English and Spanish versions.)

"Ay Te Dejo en San Antonio" was written by Jiménez's father, who was a pioneer of conjunto tejano music.  Flaco's recording of it won a Grammy in 1986.

Here's "Ay Te Dejo en San Antonio":

Click below to buy the song from Amazon:

Texas Tornados -- "Guacamole" (1992)

She reached for my pepper

I grabbed her tomatoes . . .

Guacamole! 

Guacamole!

We'd be making guacamole all night long

The prime mover behind the Tex-Mex supergroup, the Texas Tornados, was our old friend Doug Sahm, who was unofficially declared the "State Musician of Texas" after his untimely death in 1999.  Sahm first achieved fame as the leader of the Sir Douglas Quintet (remember "She's About A Mover" and "Mendocino"?) but was never better than when he was playing Tex-Mex music.

The Texas Tornados were formed in 1990 by Sahm and three of his old amigos -- the late Freddy Fender (a Mexican-American singer-songwriter whose "Before the Next Teardrop Falls" was a #1 pop and country hit in 1974), Flaco Jimenez (a Tejano accordionist from San Antonio), and Augie Meyers (who played the Vox organ on all of the Sir Douglas Quintet's hits).

Sahm, Meyers, Fender, Jimenez

There's no question that the Texas Tornados are the perfect band for 2 or 3 lines to feature on Cinco de Mayo.  Contrary to popular belief, Cinco de Mayo -- the 5th of May -- is not Mexico's Independence Day (which is observed on September 16).  Cinco de Mayo is the date that the Mexican Army soundly defeated a much larger French army in the Battle of Puebla in 1862.

What the hell was a French army doing in Mexico in 1862?  In 1861, Mexican President Juárez announced a two-year moratorium on the repayment of Mexico's foreign debts.  (After the Mexican-American War of 1846-48 and a civil war a few years later, Mexico was almost bankrupt.)

The Battle of Puebla

Britain, Spain, and France sent naval forces to the port of Veracruz and demanded that Mexico show them the money.  The British and Spanish withdrew after negotiations with Mexico.  But Napoleon III, the emperor of France, decided to take the opportunity to establish a Mexican empire that would be closely allied to France, and landed an invasion force.  

The Mexican victory at Puebla, which came relatively early in the war, provided a major morale boost for the home team.  But the Mexican victory was irrelevant to the eventual outcome of the war.  The 30,000 French soldiers that Napoleon III sent to Mexico eventually prevailed over the Mexican army, occupied Mexico City, and installed Ferdinand Maximilian Joseph (an Austrian nobleman who commanded the Austrian Navy) as Emperor Maximilian I of Mexico.

Emperor Maximilian

France's real goal may have been to help the Confederates win the American Civil War.  If it was, the French defeat at Puebla threw a monkey wrench into the works.  By the time the French took control of things a year later, the tide had turned against the South in the Civil War and it was too late for the French to do much about it.

Once the Civil War ended, the Americans started to help out Juárez, who was leading a guerrilla movement against Maximilian.  The French were already worried about the prospect of war with an increasingly belligerent Prussia and didn't want a tussle with the United States, which blockaded the Mexican coast to prevent the French from sending reinforcements.

Manet's "The Execution of
Emperor Maximilian" (1868-69)

Napoleon III pulled his troops out of Mexico in 1866, and Emperor Maximilian's government collapsed the next year.  The emperor and his generals were executed by a firing squad, and that was the end of that.

Cinco de Mayo -- which is more widely celebrated in the United States than it is in Mexico -- is mostly an excuse to get drunk.  It once ranked a distant third among the major binge-drinking holidays, but today you say it was number three with a bullet -- it's gaining fast on St. Patrick's Day and New Year's Eve.  (The main difference between Cinco de Mayo and St. Patrick's Day is that you drink Guinness and whiskey on St. Patrick's Day, but you drink Corona and tequila on Cinco de Mayo.)

Margarita + tequila shot + Corona
+ sombrero = "Cinco de Snooki"

When I worked for the federal government many years ago, I knew a guy who was the biggest drinker I've ever known -- by several orders of magnitude.  Although he was Irish and a big drinker, he never went out drinking on St. Patrick's Day.  When I asked him why he didn't, he told me "That's when all the amateurs go out to drink."  I wonder if he feels the same way about Cinco de Mayo.

Cinco de Mayo's secret weapon in its quest to become the numero uno drinking day in the U.S. is guacamole.  Crispy tortilla chips and spicy, creamy guacamole is an irresistible combination, and demands that you have plenty of beer or margaritas on hand.

Making guacamole never sounded more enjoyable than it does in this song.  But if you get your mind out of the gutter for just one minute and listen carefully to the lyrics, you'll realize that the singer tells you all you need to know to make guacamole for real.

So stop by the grocery store on your way home from work tonight.  If you see a comely young lass buying avocados, go grab some onions and some lemon and some cervezas and introduce yourself.  If you're lucky, she'll accompany you to su casa, reach for your pepper, and allow you to grab her tomatoes.  Before you know it, you'll be making guacamole -- all night long. 

   

Here's "Guacamole":

Click here to buy the song from Amazon:

    

Doug Sahm -- "Catch Me in the Morning" (1974)

Catch me in the morning 

When I'm feelin' better

The gig was really hard on my head last night

For the grande finale of this year's "29 Posts in 28 Days," I'm featuring a song by one of my all-time personal favorites – Doug Sahm.

Earlier this year, I found out that Sahm had died of a heart attack in a Taos, New Mexico hotel room in 1999, when he was 58 years old.  For some reason, it really bothered me that it had taken almost 12 years for me to become aware of that fact.  

For me, Doug Sahm was the ultimate Texas musician.  Shortly after his death, an Austin newspaper had a story about him titled "State Musician of Texas," and I think that's a very good title for him.

Sahm was a jack of all trades – his music is a mix of rock 'n' roll, country, blues, R&B, and Mexican conjunto music, and that eclecticism is the essence of Texas popular music.  Texas is a great big melting pot of musical cultures and styles, and Sahm's records epitomized that.

"Little Doug" Sahm

Sahm was never anything but a musician.  He began performing at age six and released his first record when he was 11.  (In fact, he was on stage with Hank Williams, Sr., in Austin, Texas, on December 19, 1952.  That was Williams's last performance – he died in the back seat of a car on New Year's Eve.)  The story goes that Sahm was offered a chance to become a member of the Grand Ole Opry, but that his mother said no – she wanted him to finish junior high school.

Doug Sahm was never a big star.  I'm pleased to see that he still has many loyal fans, and I'm glad that he has been honored by (among others) the city of Austin, which named a hill in a city park "Doug Sahm Hill."

Sahm's friends raised money to commission this memorial marker, which they placed on the hill.  (Texas may have more than its share of rednecks, but it has plenty of hippies, too.)

The artist who created the memorial, Kerry Awn, is perhaps best known for the many concert posters he created.  Here's one he did for a Willie Nelson-Doug Sahm show:

Here's another Awn poster for a Sahm show:

Awn also did the cover of the Groover's Paradise album:

One of Sahm's most popular albums, Groover's Paradise was released the year I moved to the Boston area to begin law school.  After four years attending college in Texas, Massachusetts was a shock to my system, but this record helped.

"Catch Me in the Morning" is the last song on Groover's Paradise, which features nine Sahm originals plus the Mexican-American polka, "La Cacahuata."  The musicians who accompany Sahm on the album include Doug Clifford and Stu Cook, who played drums and bass (respectively) for Creedence Clearwater Revival.  

Clifford and Cook comprised perhaps the steadiest and least narcissistic rhythm section in the history of rock music – they were great, but always seemed to be content to stay very much in the background.

Stu Cook, Doug Clifford, and John Fogerty
of Creedence Clearwater Revival

"Catch Me in the Morning" isn't a complicated song.  The singer – presumably Sahm himself – is a musician who isn't at his best after a performance.  He's tired and irritable and he's guilty because he's taking his tiredness and irritability out on his woman, who deserves better.  He knows from long experience there's not much to do in such a situation except to wait.  Catch me in the morning, he says – hopefully I'll be myself after a little quiet time on my own.  

The music that accompanies the song's verses is country – the drums are kept in the background, and most of the instrumental load is carried by the piano and steel guitar (shoutout to steel player extraordinaire Gary Potterton).  The chorus goes all rock 'n' roll on us – the tempo doesn't change, but drummer Doug Clifford pounds out a driving back-beat rhythm and Sahm belts out the chorus at about twice the volume of the verses.

That's it for this year's "29 Songs in 28 Days."  I already have a tentative topic for next year's version – and for the 2015 "29 Songs in 28 Days" as well.  (I'm not too obsessed with my wildly popular little blog, am I?)

Click here to listen to "Catch Me in the Morning."

Click here to buy the record from Amazon.