The Sir Douglas Quintet
may have began life as an admirably nervy attempt by
Doug Sahm
and producer
Huey P. Meaux
to crash the Top 40 with a band of Texas rock & rollers during the height of the
British Invasion
, but
Sahm
's wide-ranging musical tastes would move in a single direction for only so long. With time, the enthusiastic
Tex-Mex
garage rock
of the early
Sir Doug
sides took on strong
blues
,
country
, and
norteno
influences as their career wore on into the mid-'70s, when
retired the band's moniker. In 1981, with dozens of
new wave
bands copping the Farfisa organ sound that anchored the
hits of the '60s (and
Joe "King" Carrasco
making a career out of playing a revved-up variation of
's old style),
pulled
the Sir Douglas Quintet
out of mothballs, and while he approached the old
garage
stuff with admirable enthusiasm, he wasn't about to set aside any of the other things he picked up along the way, as this set proves.
Live from Austin, Texas
was recorded during a taping of the
PBS
television series
Austin City Limits
, and while the crowd on hand obviously dug hearing
Sir Douglas Quintet
hits like
"She's About a Mover,"
"Mendocino,"
and
"The Rains Came,"
they seem just as jazzed by lesser-known sides like the bluesy
"At the Crossroads"
(in which
sings his immortal line "You just can't live in Texas if you don't have a lot of soul"), accordion-fueled border music (
"Ya No Llores/Chicano"
),
two-steppers (
"(Is Anybody Goin' To) San Antone"
), and anything else the band has up their sleeve. And it's no wonder the crowd was eating this up -- the quintet is in fine form here, with
's vocals and guitar work sounding spot-on;
Augie Meyers
nailing his classic, stuttering keyboard style, and also showing impressive chops on the squeeze box;
Alvin Crow
lending superb support on guitar and fiddle; and the rhythm section giving this music the loose-but-solid feel it needs.
was a guy seemingly incapable of letting down his audience, and
is a rip-roaring document of the man delivering the goods in one of his many guises; this is Lone Star party music at its best. ~ Mark Deming