The Sir Douglas Quintet was an American rock and roll band formed by the late great Doug Sahm with longtime friend Augie Meyers in San Antonio, Texas in 1964. Sahm had been pestering producer and former barber Huey P. Meaux (nicknamed the ‘Crazy Cajun’) to record him. Meaux, having achieved success with acts like Barbara Lynn and Dale and Grace, was not interested. However, the producer soon found himself without a market when Beatlemania hit America.
The story goes that Meaux, not to be outdone by a bunch of British upstarts, headed for San Antonio where he shut himself away in a hotel room with a bountiful supply of Thunderbird wine and every Beatles record he could find, determined to discover what made them sell. His conclusion: "The beat was on the beat, just like a Cajun two-step." He then called Sahm, told him to grow his hair long, form a group, and write a song with a Cajun two-step beat.
It was Meaux who gave them an English sounding name, the Sir Douglas Quintet and, in 1965, they scored a hit with ‘She's About A Mover’, an infectious blend of Texas pop and the Beatles' ‘She's A Woman’, pepped up with a Vox Continental organ motif (Meyers apparently owned the first Vox Continental Organ in Texas at the time). The song was recorded on January, 14, 1965, and proved to be their all-time biggest – indeed international - hit. It peaked at number thirteen in the Billboard US Singles Chart, fifteen in the UK, twenty-one in Australia, and eight in Canada.
Apart from Doug on lead vocals and guitar, the band comprised Augie Meyers (keyboards, vocals), Jack Barber (bass), Frank Morin (saxophone, trumpet, keyboards and percussion), and Johnny Perez, Ernie Durawa or TJ Ritterbach on drums.
The SDQ toured the UK in November 1965, and even played on the classic British TV Pop programme, Ready, Steady Go, alongside The Who, The Moody Blues, Donovan, and Paul & Barry Ryan. Although the band seemed to be consolidating their commercial breakthrough successfully, their progress was critically impeded on 29th December 1965, when Sahm, his Quintet colleague Morin, and an unnamed other were arrested for possession of marijuana at Corpus Christi Airport. They were sentenced in March 1966 and put on probation (with supervision) for five years. By contemporary standards, such a sentence seems staggeringly harsh and, following this particular dose of heat, Sahm moved West to California to escape the constricting conservatism of his home state.
Signing up to the Mercury Records distributed Smash label, Sahm put together a new variant of the Quintet (they’re billed as ‘The Sir Douglas Quintet x 2’) to record the album ‘Honkey Blues’ between March and June 1968. Comprising a rather spare seven tracks, it featured Sahm on guitar, vocals, and fiddle (he also produced the album), another great Texan, George Rains, on drums, Wayne Talbert on keyboards, Whitney ‘Hershey’ Freeman on bass, and horn players Mel Martin, Martin Ferrio, Bill Atwood and Terry Henry. It was a concise set of songs that perhaps marked the first example of Sahm’s furiously eclectic approach.
Needless to say, given its marked diversion from the SDQ sound of yore, ‘Honkey Blues’ was not the album to restore Sahm’s commercial fortunes. Therefore, Sahm got the old band back together - or at least some of them, and quickly recorded the third SDQ album ‘Mendocino’ with Meyers, Morin, Johnny Perez on drums and Harvey Kagan on bass guitar. Produced by Amigos De Musica the album is an at times deceptively breezy collection, again furiously eclectic in styles, but somehow cohesive, melodic and greatly enjoyable.
‘Mendocino’ would give the Sir Douglas Quintet a much-needed shot of American chart success, peaking at number twenty-seven on the Billboard singles chart, in an impressive fifteen-week stay in early 1969. Its jaunty groove and catchy chorus making it a winner from the get-go. The album peaked at number eighty-one on the Billboard Album charts, Stateside, and also was well-received in continental Europe and Scandinavia.
The SDQ followed Mendocino up with two quick-fire releases in 1970 – the albums ‘Together After Five’, and ‘1+1+1=4’. Reviews of ‘Together’ were a shade ho-hum but they did better with ‘1+1+1=4’ is an improvement on its predecessor. Again produced by ‘Amigos de Musica’, it was an eleven-track set that shuffled the musical deck with material that ranged from the straight-ahead pop, Jump Blues Latinate Funk.
‘The Return of Doug Saldana’, from 1971, marked the last of the Sir Douglas Quintet albums for the Mercury label, and to many an SDQ aficionado, it perhaps just has the edge as the defining example of what they represented, musically. Produced by Sahm, Meaux and Doyle Jones, it’s a fine album, and one that puts Sahm and the SDQ as one of the early outliers of what has come to be termed ‘Americana’. He deserves to be held in the same level of esteem as the likes of Ry Cooder, Taj Mahal, and even The Band. Sahm would go on to record stellar albums for Atlantic Records, and would find considerable commercial success in Scandinavia and Continental Europe in the 1980s. However, ‘Doug Saldana’, bookended with ‘Mendocino’, arguably represent him at his best.
With thanks to Alan Robinson