To Sir Doug With Love

Since the trio has enough originals in our sets that I feel I can hold my head up, we've started adding cover material that puts our little combo in some kind of context. As a few of you noticed, we're covering the Sir Douglas Quintet's two biggest hits, "She's About A Mover" and "Mendocino".

Doug Sahm is definitely one of my patron saints. He refused to hold still long enough to be classified, and when he failed, he did so with such style that his adventures were generally worth the flawed results.

He was a child steel guitar whiz born in 1941, grew up in San Antonio, made his first record at age 11 (on the Sarg label, for whom Floyd Tillman also cut, played steel later that year on the show that turned out to be Hank Williams' last, and as a teenager was a player on the Westwide of san Antonio's very interracial R&B scene. He was a mainstay. Norton did an anthology of his early stuff. He'd revisit the style until his death.



In 1965, producer Huey Meaux decided he needed his own Beatles, and reached out to Doug. With organist Augie Meyers in tow, the Sir Douglas Quintet -- named to seem British -- was formed, and the immutable "She's About A Mover" was cut.


Things were going okay until Doug got clipped for pot in Corpus Christi, and he took off for Northern California. He formed an experiemental jazz/blues/etc band featuring brilliant but ultimately doomed pianist Wayne Talbert, which resulted in the flawed but fascinating Honkey Blues album in 1968. Word: all that bullshit Gram Parsons jawed about cosmic music, Doug really had happening. Like Jimmie Rodgers and Bob Wills before him, Doug was Unified Field Theory. And his music was much better than Gram's. Doug 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."



His career went however, until 1990 when he formed the Texas Tornados, basically the SDQ augmented by Freddy Fender and Flaco Jimmenez, with both of whom he had recorded a bit by then.



About two weeks before his death in 1999, I saw what was his last show in the LA area, at the City of Industry Equestrian Center. Freddy was out of the band at that point, and Little Joe -- who opened the show (!) -- took his place, revealing his amazing latent R&B ballad singing chops. Doug hardly played guitar. Later I found out that his fingertips had been tingling for weeks, and the inevitable heart attack got him. A month later, Curtis Mayfield returned to heaven. Two of my biggest, greatest heroes, snatched.

I met Doug a couple of times -- Ray Campi introduced us. So -- as I had once with Curtis -- I got to tell him how much his music means to me. Even better with Doug cuz I got to tell him face to face. He sang "Cowboy Peyton Place" to me in the kitchen at Jack's Sugar Shack. Very, very cool.

Doug Sahm understood that fiddles and Vox organs and accordions and saxophones were already mingling, and he put everything together in the most joyous, fraternal way. He was a spiritual godfather to those of us who love music for its own sake.

Skip's new book, The Stuff: New & Used Writing, is finished and ready for print and digital life. Meet Cowboy Jack Clement, NRBQ, Phil Alvin, Bob Dorough, Yma Sumac, Wanda Jackson, Stan Ridgway, Lalo Guerrero, Joe Bussard, and more. Californiana, music stuff, travel stuff, recording stuff (including a chapter about cutting at the legendary Sun Studio), and then some.

Coming in May.

electricity

I love Jimmy Murphy. This record was cut in 1951, and it went nowhere. Jimmy Murphy either prefigured the rockabilly combination of country and traditional blues or he was the last holdover of the American Folk Music era as anthologized by Harry Smith. Or both. He was a true individual. And no matter what he cut -- and he cut for several labels through the fifties -- it didn't sell. He was out of step with his era.

I first heard "Electricity" when Joe Bussard played it for me in his legendary basement in Frederick, MD. Bussard is the most formidable collector of Old Time American music, and he informed me I was about to hear the last good record cut in "Trashville". He put this on, cranked the volume, and this pulled out of the speakers like a train going too fast. The first thing I thought of was Gitfiddle Jim's "Paddlin' Madeline Blues".



I only found up recently Gitfiddle Jim was Kokomo Arnold.

Apparently, Bussard changes his mind about which Murphy record is the best. Another time, he played "Hub Cap" and gave that one his endorsement. For this film crew, he chooses yet another.



Murphy was rediscovered shortly before his death in 1981 and cut a great album for Sugar Hill. He still had his fastball. He never was able to give up his day job, but I don't think it hurt his mjusic any. Listening to "Electricity", he was clearly a man who knew something about tradition but nothing about formulas.

Thankfully.

burt bacharach doesn't need my help

In the 1990's, there was an alleged revival of interest in Burt Bacharach. I was told it was instigated in a small way by an article I wrote about him for Tower Records' Pulse magazine. I'd say this is totally absurd. There weren't a great many articles being written about Burt at the time, but it ain't like "Walk On By" needed to be restored to public view.

We never have to revisit Burt, the Beatles, Pet Sounds, or any of the other canonical stuff. They glow enough on their own. But every so often, the critical community "rediscovers" something and elevates it to some canonical place to which it didn't likely earn its way. Next thing you know -- viola! -- a forgotten genius is born.

Ken Nordine warned me that nothing fails like success, and that doing something well makes you assailable. When someone becomes canonical, they're big enough to be an easy target.

Burt Bacharach's lack of hipster stylishness had nothing to do with any lack of musical style on his own part. But his body of work was so huge and generated so many hits over so long a period of time that he became a guy people took for granted. Then you'd turn on the late show and hear his themes for Promise Her Anything or Made In Paris and his genius -- yes, genius -- announced itself.



When I interviewed Burt, Alison Anders had recently gotten in touch and wisely proposed teaming him up with Elvis Costello to write a song for her Brill Bulding-set film Grace Of My Heart, which resulted in this song, and this version, which is to my ears much better than the one issued by Elvis Costello. Kristen Vigard needs better management. She hits this out of the park, and it's not easy sung.

A new critical respect was afforded Burt. The article I wound up writing for Pulse, I had first shopped to Jazz Times, whose publisher dismissed the idea as "cheese" and "revisionism". Not much later, Bill Frisell did a disc of Bacharach's new songs (co-written with Costello), and certain viewpoints had been modified in Burt's favor.

Why it took a magazine normally as good as Jazz Times so long to catch up to something my mother had figured out by 1965... Go figure.

Next time out, I'll explain how Count Basie doesn't need my help either.