Doug Sahm, R.I.P.
photo by Ike Baruch
by Ed Ward
In March, 1970, I was the new kid at *Rolling Stone,* a 21-year-old college dropout ready to please, when editor/publisher Jann Wenner called me into his office. "Do you like the Sir Douglas Quintet?" he asked me. *Mendocino* had been one of my favorite albums for a long time, and I understood they had another one ready, so I said yes. "Great. I'd like you to go talk to Doug Sahm, find out what he's up to. I understand he's been hanging with Dylan recently; maybe you can find something out about that."
And so, armed with an address in Ross, in Marin County just north of San Francisco, I took off. I had no idea what to expect, although I harbored a hope that Dylan might be there, and I'd really have a scoop. He wasn't, but I really don't remember who was because as soon as I got there, this skinny, stringy-haired guy with granny glasses appeared in the living room with a joint as thick as my thumb, twigs sticking out of each end. "*Rolling Stone*, eh?" the guy said. "I like that magazine. It's soulful." He said it without the "l": sou'ful. "Here, let's smoke this." But, I pointed out, it's got these twigs here... "Yeah, ain't that for aout?" he said. He lowered his voice. "Dylan rolls 'em like that." So we lit up, and here my memory completely fails me, except that the rest of the next couple of hours were total chaos. Sahm talked non-stop, although not about anything I could write about: cosmic theory, astrology (he'd determined early on that we were both Scorpios, with birthdays just a few days apart), good vibes, and probably a lot of other stuff.
The next day, I slunk into the office, only to have Wenner call me into his den right away. "So," he said, with his sternest possible expression, "did you get the story?" I mumbled and stammered, and may have started sweating. Wenner's gaze drilled into me. Finally, he couldn't hold it any longer and started to laugh and laugh. "He got you, too, huh?" he finally gasped. In the end, nobody did the story.
But somehow, Doug liked me, and we kept in touch, which was hard to do because he never seemed to stick around in one place very long. He had my phone number, and he'd call, and I'd go out to see if I could get a story this time. Doug would rave about wherever he was living, saying why it was better than where he'd just been: Vancouver, Oslo, New York, Marin County, all were paradises. Or not.
The oddest Eden, though, was Prunedale. "Hey, man," Doug was raving over the phone, "you gotta come down here and check this shit out. This is, like, Texas in California, man. It's John Steinbeck country. It's got a real sou'ful vibe, and I've found this great new band. They're called Louie and the Lovers." So, along with a photographer friend, we headed down towards Monterrey, turned in to the Salinas Valley, and wound up in Prunedale, where, Doug had neglected to tell us, there was a shooting war going on, part of Cesar Chavez' United Farmworkers strike against the lettuce growers.
"Yeah, man," Doug said, waving his arms around, "it's totally for aout: the growers are tryin' to stop the strike, but the people here are all too much into it. Man, the band works in the fields by day, and they play dances for Chavez' people at night." Pretty soon, Louie Ortega and a couple of the other guys showed up. Only Louie spoke much English, but Doug slapped on a tape of the album he'd produced and was trying to sell to a label. The title track, "Rise," was magnificent, and it was immediately apparent what Doug saw in the band: a purer mixture of Chicano pop and rock than the Quintet had ever achieved, fronted by a guy with teen-idol good looks. I was sold.
So, not long afterwards, was Epic Records, which released the album at a time when the three-minute pop song was distinctly out of fashion. Doug had hoped that "Rise" would take off as an anthem for the farmworkers and their Anglo supporters, but striking farmworkers don't buy albums, and Epic was left with a dud on their hands. A great dud, but a dud. Doug didn't help, of course, by showing up at their showcase gigs: at the Keystone Berkeley, Louie and the guys did a great set, and then Doug came on with his T-Bone Walker guitar, cranked it up to 11, and played a psychedelic freakout that had the band giving each other odd looks and the crowd, hands on ears, running for the exit.
I remained a fan because the albums were good, but it was a lonely crusade: Doug's penchant for under-rehearsed bands and unplanned sets, seemingly played without a sound-check, meant that few newbies lasted through an evening. He could be just as difficult in the studio. I remember when Atlantic put out the *Doug Sahm and Friends* album, with everyone from Bob Dylan to Doctor John to Flaco Jiminez' debut in the Anglo world on it. Jerry Wexler, who'd proudced it, was a frequent San Francisco visitor in those days, and he'd call his press friends together at his hotel, play us some new releases, and then take us out for epic Chinese meals. "But Jerry," I asked one time, eyeing the swag he'd just handed out to us, "didn't you just do a Doug Sahm album?" "Oh, would you like one?" he said, pulling it out of his luggage. "It's a very good record." He then got a soulful-Jewish-guy-outwitted-by-a-hick look on his face. "I'll never do another one with him ever again." And he clammed up.
Doug and I became Texas converts at about the same time, with the big difference that he got to move there and I had to wait a few more years. He always had a knack for over-publicizing whatever place he was enthusiastic about at the moment, and I remember asking him if "Groover's Paradise," which he'd just released, wasn't a bit much. "Yeah, man, Austin's over. You ever been to Vancouver? It's for aout!" I wasn't aware that he'd moved. But he kept doing it: anybody out there remember "Malmo Girls?" I think that was the title. And last year, having heard him complain about the traffic congestion and the loss of Austin's soul, I asked him about this song urging people to move to Austin and get a life. "Aw, hell, let the Mayor and the City Council deal with it," he said.
But that was Doug: constantly spinning off enthusiasm for places and people you'd never heard of, making your head spin with non-sequiturs and non-linear leaps which made perfect sense to him, a Chicano one day, a honky bluesman the next, a missing person the day after that. I owe to him my discovery of San Antonio's '60s West Side R&B scene, several funky taquerias on Austin's East Side, Huey P. Meaux, and, of course, many hours of fine listening. I've even forgiven him telling me he was Lebanese, something he said with a perfectly straight face and I stuck into some liner notes, and which is still being reported as fact. Sahm, as any beer-drinker who's ever read the bottom of an empty glass in Germany knows, is a German name.
It's been a hard week, realizing I'll never see him again, get put on or frustrated by him again, or, most particularly, hear him announce another SXSW softball playoff again. In his own words, he was sou'ful and for aout.