Doug Sahm - Best of Sir Douglas 68-75

List Price: $11.98
Our Price: $4.38
You Save: $7.60 (63%)
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Category: Music CD
See more new music releases

Music CD Cover

Free Music Notes for Best of Sir Douglas 68-75

Free Music Review: Is This The Sound of Texas?
Hit: 5 Stars

THE BEST OF DOUG SAHM & THE SIR DOUGLAS QUINTET is a remarkable compilation. If your a newbie to this San Antonio native's artistic genius, then this is the collection you'll want to start out with. It gathers the very best of Doug's golden era, 1968 - 1975. Although the Sir Douglas Quintet story actually begins in 1965 with the Tribe recording sessions produced by the Crazy Cajun Huey P. Meaux, which yielded the classics "She's About a Mover" and "The Rains Came", the SDQ songs captured on this compilation show a more musically mature and much more adventurous band at work, and they show why no label could be ever placed on Doug's music. There are also treasures from his early solo work. "Mendocino" is essential SDQ with Augie Meyers' priceless Vox organ leading the way back to South Texas from San Francisco. "Song of Everything" is reminiscent of what Ornette Coleman might have sounded like at the Fillmore West. "So Glad for Your Sake (But I'm Sorry for Mine)" and "Wasted Days & Wasted Nights", the latter penned by Freddy Fender, show the R&B style that was among Doug's earliest influences. "Be Real", which Doug released in 1970 as a country single in Nashville under the pseudonym Wayne Douglas, shows Doug to be among the finest vocalists that genre as ever seen or heard. Another country song, "Texas Me", drives home that point as Doug vents his pain from being homesick for the Lone Star State. "Is Anybody Goin' to San Antone?", featuring Bob Dylan, is from Doug's all-star album DOUG SAHM & BAND, yet another example of Doug's extraordinary skills as a writer & arranger. Of all the songs in this collection, perhaps this one says "Texas" the most. "The Gypsy" shows that Doug must have been a big fan of Louis Prima, and exhibits yet another element that influenced his style, what Doug called "that stridin' thing". What about the blues? T-Bone Walker's "Papa Ain't Salty" is given a seriously raw but textbook reading from the SDQ, and Doug shows off his scat-guitar skills on the equally raw "West Side Blues Again". He had serious skills at that! "In the Dark" shows off a fantastic and tight horn section, and as blues singer Doug is simply "da man". "Michoacan", from the 1972 motion picture CISCO PIKE, is an authentic South Texas polka and shows why the Chicanos changed Doug's last name to Saldana. A real treat is "I'm Not That Kat Anymore" from 1975 and Doug's brief tenure with Casablanca Records; it's kinda funny when you think about Doug Sahm being label mates with Parliament/Funkadelic and Kiss. It is quite possibly the most difficult song in the collection to even attempt to categorize.

Doug Sahm may have left this Earth, but he lives on forever thanks to compilations like this one, and also thanks to the re-release of his SDQ back catalog available on import as well as posthumous releases of his earliest work as a bandleader in San Antonio, his work with the Texas Tornados, and his last solo album THE RETURN OF WAYNE DOUGLAS. If one had to describe Doug in only a few words, take a line from his song "At The Crossroads", -"You just can't live in Texas if you don't gotta lotta soul..." Doug had more soul than the rest of us could ever imagine. Get this CD and listen for yourself.

Best of Sir Douglas 68-75 Poster