Doug Sahm
Album: Doug Sahm & Band
Release Date: 1973
There isn’t one album that encompasses the Doug Sahm sound. That would be like defining the flavor of ice cream using a single sample spoon at Baskin Robbins. Throughout his career he delivered the musically diverse repertoire you expect from a child prodigy who was playing the San Antonio club scene before the training wheels came off his bike. I’m sure there are people who could have an intelligent conversation with Sahm about music, and they are named Paul McCartney, Prince, Frank Zappa, or David Bowie. He’s on that plane of genius.
The first instrument to grab his attention was the steel guitar, which he started playing at age six and was instantaneously a prodigy. His mom couldn’t even get him lessons. The teachers didn’t see the point; he could play anything he heard by ear and was already a more talented player than they were. What the fuck were they supposed to teach him? He added the fiddle and mandolin to his arsenal by age eight and was offered a regular spot at the Grand Ole Opry when he was thirteen.
Though barely twenty-five years old, Sahm was a seasoned performer with over a decade of experience when his plane landed at the Corpus Christi airport in 1966 to find a welcoming committee of law enforcement waiting to greet him. He escaped with a five-year probation sentence for marijuana charges, and his probation officer agreed to let him leave the state. Sahm pulled stakes and served his drug probation in Haight-Ashbury, where he performed with Janis Joplin and struck up a friendship with Jerry Garcia. It would be tempting to say that he had a front-row seat to the birth of psychedelic rock, but given his proclivity to perform, it would be more precise to say he had an on-stage seat.
With his probation over and the ’60s dead, Doug Sahm returned to Texas and traded in the flower child scene of San Francisco for the artsy-cowboy thing going on in Austin. Famed producer Jerry Wexler was hanging around Austin in the early ’70s, anchored by his rising star Willie Nelson, and he enthusiastically offered to produce an album on the progressive country label he was running.
Sahm was given complete creative control of the project, and his ambition was to translate the eclectic sound of his live show to a studio album. This was accomplished with loose recording sessions that included a variety of talented musicians who could follow Sahm down any musical path he chose. In all, eighteen musicians play on the album, including David “Fathead” Newman on the jazz saxophone, Flaco Jimenez on the accordion, Dr. John on organ, and Augie Meyers joining Doug Sahm on guitar. Oh yeah, Bob Dylan was there too. He contributed his song “Wallflower,” which shows up as the fifth track on Side A.
It’s not a live album, but it feels like one. You can hear Sahm shouting directions to the band between verses, and there is a free-spirited spontaneity in the music. It sounds like a bunch of musicians having fun in a recording studio; in that way, it is reminiscent of what The Band did at Big Pink. The album captures the essence of a performance, and Doug Sahm seems intent on carrying the audience through as many styles as he can conjure.
It opens with the dueling fiddles of “(Is Anybody Going to) San Antone,” setting the tone for a foot-stomping country album. That’s followed by the rock ballad “It’s Gonna Be Easy,” which shifts gears into something the Grateful Dead could play at the Fillmore. The next song is classic blues…it’s eclectic but cohesive, and by the end of the album, you are aware that the diversity is part of the performance.
Wexler produced a few albums by Austin musicians that were commercial disasters. This one was a debacle. It topped out at number one hundred twenty-five on the Billboard charts. The LP in my personal collection is a cutout. That’s what the record labels did when an album didn’t meet sales expectations; they’d cut a notch out of the corner and sell it at deeply reduced prices to mitigate their losses. Typically, it was a sign they printed a lot and sold a little.
Commercial success and chart-topping albums were never what defined the Austin scene. In fact, “Live Music Capital of the World” is a polite way of saying “best music that nobody is buying.” This album is better than at least half of the ones listed on Rolling Stone’s 500 Greatest, but it didn’t pile up widespread accolades. Jerry Wexler attributed the lack of commercial success to the genre-bending nature of the music. He described Doug Sahm as a river and said the challenge was choosing which part to bottle and sell. I don’t understand that statement, but maybe it’s true.
The Martinez
The Martinez holds an exalted position on the cocktail family tree. You’d have to trace all the way back to Abraham in the Biblical family tree to find a human equivalent. This is the original cocktail that spawned both the Martini and the Manhattan, and the families of derivatives that followed.
It delivers a deep, softly sweet, and layered flavor profile, combining the aromatic notes of gin, a mild bitterness from the vermouth, and a faint cherry touch from the maraschino liqueur.
Ingredients:
- 1 1/2 ounces gin
- 1 1/2 ounces sweet vermouth
- 1/4 ounce Luxardo maraschino liqueur
- 2 dashes Angostura bitters
- Garnish: orange twist
Directions:
- Add the gin, sweet vermouth, maraschino liqueur, and bitters into a mixing glass with ice and stir until well-chilled.
- Strain into a chilled coupe glass.
- Garnish with an orange twist.
