Texas Tornado: The Times & Music of Doug Sahm

Brad and Michele Moore Roots Music

by Jan Reid, Shawn Sahm

Doug Sahm was a singer, songwriter, and guitarist of legendary range and reputation. The first American musician to capitalize on the 1960s British invasion, Sahm vaulted to international fame leading a faux-British band called the Sir Douglas Quintet, whose hits included "She's About a Mover," "The Rains Came," and "Mendocino." He made the cover of Rolling Stone magazine in 1968 and 1971 and performed with the Grateful Dead, Dr. John, Willie Nelson, Boz Scaggs, and Bob Dylan. Texas Tornado is the first biography of this national music legend. Jan Reid traces the whole arc of Sahm's incredibly versatile musical career, as well as the manic energy that drove his sometimes turbulent personal life and loves. Reid follows Sahm from his youth in San Antonio as a prodigy steel guitar player through his breakout success with the Sir Douglas Quintet and his move to California, where, with an inventive take on blues, rock, country, and jazz, he became a star in San Francisco and invented the "cosmic cowboy" vogue. Reid also chronicles Sahm's later return to Texas and to chart success with the Grammy Award–winning Texas Tornados, a rowdy "conjunto rock and roll band" that he modeled on the Beatles and which included Sir Douglas alum Augie Meyers and Tejano icons Freddy Fender and Flaco Jimenez. With his exceptional talent and a career that bridged five decades, Doug Sahm was a rock and roll innovator whose influence can only be matched among his fellow Texas musicians by Buddy Holly, Roy Orbison, Janis Joplin, and Stevie Ray Vaughan. Texas Tornado vividly captures the energy and intensity of this musician whose life burned out too soon, but whose music continues to rock.

Genres: Music, Biography

201 pages, Hardcover

First published February 15, 2010

About the author

Jan Reid has written for Texas Monthly, Esquire, GQ, Slate, Men’s Journal, Garden & Gun, and the New York Times. Reid received the Lon Tinkle career achievement award from the Texas Institute of Letters in 2014. His twelve books include The Improbable Rise of Redneck Rock, The Bullet Meant for Me, Rio Grande, Comanche Sundown, and Let the People In: The Life and Times of Ann Richards. The biography of the late Texas governor won praise from Bill Clinton to the Washington Post to the Economist, and the Houston Chronicle cited it as one of the ten best nonfiction books of 2012. Let the People In won two awards from the Texas State Historical Association, for 2012 book of the year and co-winner of the award for best book on women in Texas history. It also received a nonfiction book of the year award from the Philosophical Society of Texas. His prior book, the novel Comanche Sundown, was awarded best fiction 2011 by the Texas Institute of Letters, an award that has previously gone to Larry McMurtry’s Lonesome Dove and Cormac McCarthy’s All the Pretty Horses. Reid's Texas Tornado: The Times and Music of Doug Sahm, was an Oxford Magazine Music Book of the Year in 2010. Reid’s fiction and non-fiction have also won awards and grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, PEN Southwest, and the Dobie-Paisano Fellowship; his short fiction has appeared in Northern Liberties Review and the anthologies On the Brink and Texas Short Stories, his nonfiction in The Best of Texas Monthly, The Slate Diaries, twice in Best American Sportswriting, and most recently in Curiosity's Cats: Writers and Research. He is at work on a new novel titled Sins of the Younger Sons and a novella, The Song Leader, that is related in one of its settings to his first novel, Deerinwater. Reid grew up in Wichita Falls, Texas, and has lived in or near Austin since 1970.

Reviews

[Michael Jandrok · Rating 4 out of 5]

My family moved to central Texas in the fall of 1996. One of the things that I quickly discovered was that Austin had a MUCH better and more diverse commercial radio lineup than did Houston, the city we relocated from. One of the more popular stations was KGSR, with a huge focus on local music and an eclectic format that presaged what would eventually be called Americana. One of their feature artists was one Doug Sahm, who was at the time experiencing something of a commercial revival due to his involvement in a Tex-Mex supergroup of sorts called The Texas Tornados.

Sahm was a childhood musical prodigy born into a working-class family. Raised in San Antonio, he was schooled in a wide variety of musical styles: conjunto, country, cajun, dance hall, blues, doo-wop, soul, and rock. He was savvy enough to capitalize on the British Invasion in the mid-'60s by forming the faux-British rock group the Sir Douglas Quintet, vaulting himself to the brink of international stardom. The Quintet’s signature hit, “She’s About A Mover,” is still a classic rock staple. But it was hard for him maintain that focus and keep the Quintet relevant with the decline of the British Invasion, and his star began to fade. He became a musical chameleon, putting out a series of uneven albums and settling for becoming the Musical Mayor of Austin, Texas during its cosmic-cowboy heyday in the mid-'70s.

A lot of his back catalog is still in print, but his musical legacy is still largely undiscovered and unappreciated outside of Texas. That's too bad, because Sahm was truly a guy who knew his way around an astonishing number of styles and genres. The man could flat out PLAY, and his ability to channel and combine different influences was phenomenal.

“Texas Tornado” is authored by Jan Reid, a man who wrote the quintessential primer on Texas-based outlaw rock and country, “The Improbable Rise of Redneck Rock.” Sahm gets some play in that book and its revision, but it’s nice to get a fully fleshed-out picture of Sahm. “Texas Tornado” is a short read, but it's well researched and written and it has a ton of good photos. Sahm was a complex guy, an often prickly pear sort of personality with a generous streak a mile wide. He wore his freak badge proudly, and seemed to be someone who was comfortable with his legacy as a bona-fide hippie and counterculture icon.

KGSR is still broadcasting, but the format has changed and the music has moved on. SUN Radio now employs a lot of the old KGSR deejays and program directors, and they still spin a lot of Doug Sahm. It’s a link to an Austin that no longer exists, replaced by toll roads and expensive lofts located where the ice houses and independent record stores used to be. Sahm died in his sleep in a hotel room in New Mexico in 1999. His death was blamed on natural causes, a heart condition contributing to his early demise. But his legacy lives on here in Groover’s Paradise, and if you’re driving I-10 somewhere between Austin and San Antonio late at night you MIGHT can turn that radio dial over to the AM band and find an old station broadcasting out of somewhere in the ether blasting “Mendicino” and you might could SWEAR that was Wolfman Jack rasping out those call letters…….

[Bill · Rating 2 out of 5]

Stupidities jump out of this biography of Doug Sahm like fleas off one of his friend Augie Meyers' dogs. The writer, Jan Reid, calls jazz giant Horace Silver a blues musician, says J. Garcia learned steel guitar to join the New Riders of the Purple Sage BEFORE he joined the Grateful Dead, talks about Louie Ortega as Doug's protege and then IDs someone else as Louie in an accompanying photo. But the biggest shortcoming is that there is no sense of Sir Doug here--just a chronology of his career, little better than one of those bio sketches in Record Collector or similar magazines. Reid doesn't detail the extent of his research, but it's apparent he talked mostly to Doug's son Shawn (who is co-credited), didn't talk to Flaco Jimenez of the Texas Tornados, maybe had one phone call with Augie Meyers and didn't spend much time running down other key musicians in Doug's various bands. Reid, in fact, blows off the last 20 years of Sahm's life in just 20 or so pages. Doug Sahm was a fascinating, complex musician and deserves better. As Sid Griffin says, this is thin gruel.

[Ed Smith · Rating 3 out of 5]

I have loved the Sir Douglas Quintet since early 1973 when I
bought Mendocino LP in Santa Monica for $1.00 at a
record warehouse with my cousin. He was the late Pat Sabino a drummer with many bands in California. Pat and I saw Augie Myers up in San Jose
in 1978. Another story, but this a a well written book. SOme
in correct data about Jerry Garcia playing steel petal to join
the New Riders. Not so, Jerry a Dead leader and he played
steel on Teach YOur Children. Let us not be so pickly. Oh
Me talking. Jan Reid and Doug's son
Shawn put together a nice biography of Doug Sham.

I feel he was under appreciated in America. I saw him
play at the Capitol Therare in Passaic,NJ he
was the opening act for Frank Zappa. Hey, what a
bill, right. THose days are over, the age of Innocence
1964-1975 when rock 'n roll meant something to everyone.
Everyone had their own favorite music. Then
music did die as after Vietnam fell and our America
was torn apart. Much like it is now. Now we are
bankrupt then just a useless War going nowhere.

It was an honor to see Doug in concert.. I used to go
to all the record stores & search for his records. I
purchase them for $3.99 in the discount bin. Yep, that
doesn't exist anymore.
Listen to his music which still is "groovy" and treat to hear
that sound of Tex-Mex music fills my ears to this day.

I remember giving poet Steve Carey a copy of some
Doug's songs. It remined him of California. "Great" he said
to me. "You got anymore, Ed." "No, just this here tape," I said
circa 1982.

Magnificent! a good book

[Texacelt · Rating 3 out of 5]

The first biography of Texas visionary musician Doug Sahm, whose music fused white, black, and brown cultures in danceable grooves. A little dry and a little inaccurate considering source material available (critic Ed Ward who feuded publicly with Sahm worked for the daily paper, not the hipper weekly, for example), but a concise biography of one of rock & roll's most talented and versatile musicians ever. If Reid prose is spare, neither does he gush unnecessarily. Love the photos!

[Steven Pattison · Rating 3 out of 5]

An elaborate biography on Doug Sahm known to most as the Doug in The Sir Douglas Quintet - to those from Texas he became a local musical folk hero not only as a pedal steel guitar child prodigy who played with Hank Williams once when he was 7 but later in life defined what modern day Texas music is all about.

[Erlend Aasland · Rating 2 out of 5]

Lettlest bok om Doug Sahm. Dessverre rotete skrive, dårleg språk, full av ikkje-relevant name-dropping, og fråvær av evne til å setja ting i kontekst og historisk perspektiv. Men eg fekk med meg ein del morosame anekdoter om Sahm, i tillegg til ein overfladisk introduksjon til dei ulike musikalake epokane og samarbeidspartnarane han hadde.

[Randy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Really good book on an underappreciated voice in music. the writer's style was a little sloppy in places.

[Riobhcah · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting take on one of my favourite musicians. RIP, Doug, we miss you.

[Rod · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good information and stories. Doug Sahm made it great. Could have been better written.

[larry cowan · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed recalling the musical performers from the Austin scene from late 60's to the 80's.