Celebrating Augie Meyers, born on this day in 1940. —Ed.
Hey ears: Hungry for some delicious Tex-Mex? I recommend you head for lovely San Antonio, where in 1964 the late, great Doug Sahm put together the Sir Douglas Quintet, which proceeded to cook up a heady concoction made out of ingredients from both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border.
The band hit a creative peak with 1969’s Mendocino, which may have failed to make much of a dent on the pop charts but stands up just fine as a stellar collection of bravura performances by a band that was bravely creating its own Longhorn brand of what Gram Parsons famously dubbed “Cosmic American Music.”
What set the Sir Douglas Quintet apart from its contemporaries was its range of flavorings; thanks to the farfisa organ of Augie Meyers and the psychedelic-tinged guitar of Sahm, the Quintet could deliver the garage rock goods, but they could also turn on a peso and, by means of Sahm’s fiddle and country croon, sound like they were playing a barn dance. And on LP closer “Oh, Baby, It Just Don’t Matter” they ratchet up the decibels, crank up the guitar, and make like nothing less than a Lone Star State adjunct of Creedence Clearwater Revival.
Mendocino’s two stand-out tracks are both farfisa-fueled; thanks to Meyers the title track is one of the most cheerful salutes to a small city you ever will hear, while “She’s About a Mover” is a stone-cold rave-up, from its crunchy guitar to Meyers’ Vox Continental organ, which Sahm introduces by saying, “Lay it on me Augie.” A jerky-jerky salute to gutbucket rock ’n’ roll served up border style, “She’s About a Mover” is as timeless as they come and the most noteworthy thing to come out of the city on the San Antonio River since the Alamo.
Aside from those cuts, Mendocino is all over the place, but on Mendocino all over the place always leads you straight back to the bar. “I Wanna Be Your Mama Again” is honky-tonk country and western, from its piano and great drum shuffle to Sahm’s lamenting that he wants to be your mama again like a natural-born man. Meanwhile, the lugubrious but tres moving “At the Crossroads” sounds like the Grateful Dead playing a distaff cover of “Hey Joe” and is designed to make you cry tears in your Lone Star Beer. “You just can’t live in Texas,” sings Sahm to the accompaniment of some very fine farfisa, “if you don’t have a lot of soul,” and he definitely qualifies for citizenship.
“I’m Just a Country Boy in This Great Big Freaky City” is a funky stroll through Haight-Ashbury by a goggle-eyed rube who can’t wait to get back to the safety of his hometown taproom. All poor Doug wants to do is “Shoot pool with all the boys” in this wonderful precursor to Elton John’s “Honky Cat,” which has Augie playing Elton on piano and John Perez keeping things swinging on drums. As for “Texas Me” it pits Sahm’s very country fiddle against Meyers’ organ to produce a savory confection designed to please the taste buds of the urban rural demographic.
The lovely and reverb-heavy “I Don’t Want” evokes both the Dead and the Byrds and is as fine an example of West Coast country rock as you ever will hear; the Quintet’s cover of Delbert McClinton’s “If You Really Want Me to I’ll Go” is pure Byrdsmania with some groovy Farfisa tossed in. As for “And It Didn’t Even Bring Me Down,” it’s a big horn-based number included, presumably, to demonstrate that these boys had big pop potential. Which they didn’t. But that’s okay. 1969’s loss is posterity’s gain.
The Sir Douglas Quintet were cosmic cowboys and friendly border outlaws dead set on starting one helluva party, and on Mendocino they climb behind the bar to pull the tap on a whole slew of border-crossing classics. A tip of the old ten-gallon hat to the contributions of our south-of-the-border brethren to the great rock’n’roll melting pot, Mendocino is proof that far from building a wall, we should be sending engraved invitations. And thank you notes.
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