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:

Charley Pride -- "Is Anybody Goin' to San Antone" (1970)

Is anybody goin'

To San Antone?

I know someone who went to San Antonio recently.  In fact, I know three people who went to San Antonio.

Those three people are named ME, MYSELF, and I!  

Hahahahaha!  You didn't see that one coming, did you?  When did you last hear that joke?  Sixth grade?  Fifth grade?  (The old jokes are the best jokes -- don't you agree?)

San Antonio's not the only place I've been in 2014.  I've been purt near everywhere this year, man.  I've crossed the deserts bare and I've breathed the mountain air, man.  Of travel I've had my share, man -- I've been everywhere!

We're talkin' Wilmington (DE), Miami Beach, New York City, San Francisco, San Diego, Ft. Worth-Dallas, Joplin (MO), Gettysburg (PA), Cape Cod, San Antonio, Cape Cod (again), Maine . . . whew!

My family went to San Antonio a few weeks ago to celebrate my sister's recent wedding.  (In April, I attended the wedding ceremony itself in San Francisco.  Click here to read more about it here.)  

As soon as we had checked into our hotel, I went off in search of adventure . . . and also a rental bike.

I was in luck, because it turns out that San Antonio has an extensive bike-share system.  A bike-share system allows you to use a credit card to check out a bike that's docked at a local bike-share station and ride it wherever you want to go -- assuming that where you want to go is near another bike-share station, where you can leave the bike.

A San Antonio B-cycle station

San Antonio's B-Cycle bike-share system is the 9th largest in the country, with 51 stations.  (New York City has the largest such system with 330 stations, while Washington, DC -- with 305 stations -- is a close second.)

Bike-share bicycles are usually ungainly machines, weighed down with fenders and chain guards and cargo baskets.  The San Antonio B-cycles had three speeds, which is fine if you're riding somewhere that's pretty flat.  But it would not be fun to try and get a B-cycle up any kind of hill.

A San Antonio B-cycle

Beggars can't be choosers, so I walked to the nearest B-cycle station (which was only a couple of blocks from my hotel) and saddled up.  I headed to the famed San Antonio River Walk (or Paseo del Rio, if you prefer), a paved below-street-level path that follows the San Antonio River.

The most popular part of the River Walk is the tourist-packed section that loops through downtown San Antonio.  It's close to the Alamo and other downtown attractions, and is wall-to-wall restaurants, bars, and shops.

San Antonio's famed Alamo

But the River Walk was extended several years ago and now reaches about five miles north and ten miles south of downtown.  Those parts of the River Walk are much less crowded, and attract mostly locals.

I headed south along the "Mission Reach" part of the River Walk, which takes you past the four of the five old Spanish missions that are part of the San Antonio Missions National Historical Park -- Mission Concepción, Mission San José, Mission San Juan Capistrano.  All four of the missions house active Catholic parishes.  (The fifth and most famous of the San Antonio missions -- the Alamo -- isn't part of the federal park.  It's owned by the state of Texas, and administered by the Daughters of the Republic of Texas.)  

Mission Concepción (completed 1755)

I got all excited when I saw a big sign for the Lone Star Brewery after riding for a couple of miles.  (I had visions of a tasting room and free samples.)

Alas and alack, it turns out that this Lone Star brewery -- which opened shortly after Prohibition was repealed -- was closed in 1996.  No free samples for you, 2 or 3 lines!

I pushed on, and eventually came to the Blue Star Arts Complex, which is home to a contemporary art museum, art galleries and artists' studios, a theater, apartments, restaurants, and San Antonio's oldest brewpub.

Even the parking signs at Blue Star are hip:

Here's another sign I saw at the Blue Star complex.  You know that the American educational system is failing when young people can't spell a simple, common word like "liqueur" correctly:

Today's featured song was a #1 country hit for Charley Pride in 1970.  

Pride, who became the most successful African-American country music singer ever, wanted to be a baseball player.  He signed a minor-league contract with the New York Yankees in 1953, when he was only 17 years old.

Pride hurt his pitching arm in his first minor-league season, and that injury probably ended his chances of making it to the big leagues.  But he kicked around the minors and the Negro leagues (where he and a teammate were once traded for a team bus) for a number of years before giving up on baseball and becoming a recording artist.

Pride's first two singles failed to chart, but then his career blew up.  Of the next 52 singles he released, only one of them failed to make it into the top ten.

Of those 51 top ten singles, 29 of them made it to number one!

"Is Anybody Goin' to San Antone" was the third in a series of six consecutive #1 hits for Pride between 1969 and 1971.  

Here's "Is Anybody Goin' to San Antone":

Click below to buy the song from Amazon: