Austin American-Statesman from Austin, Texas • 146

II 1SI JL of the V. Great Hippies Doug Sahm played many styles of music and stood for many things. But through it all, he followed his heart. he voice on the other end of the phone was cracking, having just heard the news. "When you look back on the true originators, the real pioneers of Texas music," the seasoned critic and journalist said, "there are four main guys: Bob Wills, Willie Nelson, T-Bone Walker and Doug Sahm." With that last ing polka band in the land and producer Huey P.

Meaux hummed future hits while he cut hair at his barber shop in Annie. Now that Sahm is gone, the recent past seems like ancient history. When "Little Doug" sat on Hank Williams' knee at the old Skyline Club as an 11-year-old in 1952, it was an impromptu moment But with Hank's death just a couple weeks later, the meeting has passing-the-torch implications. Like Williams, Sahm cultivated a taste for gritty soul music of all forms as a boy looking through windows of forbidden joints. Even as the San Antonio native evolved from a country prodigy to a rock 'n' roller and then someone who could play just about every indigenous style with as much credibilty as the masters of each genre, he never stopped looking through those windows, never stopped searching for the sounds that could shorten the walk home.

The night he died, the radio played his songs and as the doo wop, slicing electric blues, conjunto numbers, garage rock classics and unclassifiable groove tunes all came together like a big family at dinner time, you could feel what music meant to Sahm. He had indeniable instincts for what was the good stuff, with the rare ability to make his own. In an interview Friday, Sahm's former Texas Tornados bandmate Freddy Fender said that Sahm loved to be called a hippie. "The Last of the Great Hippies" is what Fender suggested his tombstone read. The word "hippie" today conjurs an image of a stoned burnout who talks like a surfer, but Sahm embodied the higher ideals of the counterculture.

He was a true hipster hence the cowboy garb in tie-dyed '60s San Francisco who created music that made people dance. He'd take natural beauty over social conventions every day of the week. He didn't like what Austin has become in recent years, with so many newcomers who hadn't even heard of, well, Doug Sahm. Seeing this musical mec-ca transformed into a high-rent, high-tech capital was painful to the point that even Austin's enchiladas just didn't taste the same. Sahm would often drive all the way to San Antonio for lunch.

There can be no better way to be remembered than in the way Sahm has been in the past week, as a person who craved honesty, devotion and soul whether it was with music, food or his beloved pastime Griffey goes to Atlanta, then I'm through with baseball," he stated just two weeks ago). It had to come from the heart or Sahm would walk away, cursing aloud. He wrote the soundtrack to all that is real in these parts and so he receives the special salute given to those who, in death, remind us the great things that can come from this life. name, the voice finally crumpled in to grief. Joe Nick Patoski was crying when he recalled his friend Sahm, the 58-year-old Texas Tornado who died from heart disease last Thursday in Taos, N.M.

Patoski was one of many who moved to this "Groover's Paradise" in the early 70s be-by mkhael corcoran cause this is where Doug american-statesman staff Sahm lived. "It's like they burned the encyclopedia of Texas music," said Joe "King" Carrasco, whose "nuevo wavo" sound owed a huge debt to the music Sahm and organist Augie Meyers made with the Sir Douglas Quintet Being in the presence of Doug Sahm was to be linked to the days when Lightnin' Hopkins and Freddy King played juke joints, Ernest Tubb's tour bus hit every honky tonk in Texas, Aldolph Homer had the most stomp Don McLees remembers Sahm as a friend, 31 John T. Davis relates Sir Doug stories and anecdotes, 32 Chris Riemenschneider assesses the artisf recorded work, 34 One question, one answer, 34 Doug Sahm: A life in music Late '52: Heads to the Skyline Cub just north of Austinwhere Hank Williams is playing what would be one of his last shows. Hank calls Doug out to sit on his lap and play. "It was awful," Sahm later told critic Ed Ward.

"His breath stunk of whiskey, and there was nothing left to him. He was all skinny, and his knees were sharp, poked right into me." 1955: Makes his recording debut as Little Doug Sahm on the Harlem label with the single, "A Real American Joe." 1 957-1 962: Fronts a succession of bands including the Pharaohs, becoming something of a rival to fellow bandleader Meyers. Records several regional hits, including the Little Richard takeoff "Crazy Daisy" (1959) and the "Sapphire" (1961). 1963: Begins pitching songs to Houston producer Huey P. Meaux, the "Crazy Ca-jun" behind hits by B.J.

Thomas and Sunny Ozuna. Meaux isn't impressed. Sahm marries and has his first of three children. 1964: Beatlemania hits, and Meaux scrambles to keep up. After deciphering some nominal connection between the Beatles and Cajun music, Meaux calls Sahm and tells him to get a band, grow his hair and write a song on par with the Brits.

1965: The Sir Douglas Quintet, featuring a reluctant Meyers on Vox organ, land a continued on page 32 Nov. 6, 1941: Douglas Wayne Sahm born in San Antonio to Lebanese American parents. y' 1 948: Begins performing in local honky-tonks as Little Doug Sahm, a wun-derkind on the steel guitar. 1 95T: Asked to perform on "The Grand Ole Opry," but his mother won't let him take the time off school. Plays the influential Shreveport, program "Louisiana Hayride" instead.

1952: Meets Augie Meyers in the grocery store owned by Augie's parents. "He'd always come in buying baseball cards," Meyers recalled last week. "Eventually, we got to talking about music." 3 j-C The Sir Douglas Quintet, circa 1965: That's Sahm, left, beside Augie Meyers. 30 November 1999 Jjf, Austin.