Sir Douglas Quintet

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Sir Douglas Quintet was an American rock band that was internationally known for their hits, especially in the 1960s and early 1970s. With its mixture of country , blues , rock and roll and influences from the Chicano culture, the Sir Douglas Quintet is now an important representative of the so-called Tex-Mex style.

Band history

Foundation and first hits

The Sir Douglas Quintet was founded in 1964 around the Texan Doug Sahm , who had been musically active since childhood and had already founded several bands, and his school friend Augie Meyers . Other band members were Jack Barber ( bass ), Johnny Perez ( drums ) and Leon Beatty ( percussion ), who was replaced early on by Frank Morin ( saxophone ). The band owes its name to its producer Huey Meaux , who wanted to market it with a British-sounding name in the course of the so-called British Invasion , which initially worked. The Sir Douglas Quintet had their first single hits with She's About A Mover and The Rains Came on Meaux's own label Tribe . An arrest for marijuana possession at Corpus Christi airport in 1966 ended the success story for the time being. Sahm broke up the band and moved to the hippie metropolis of San Francisco . Producer Meaux put together a first LP with the misleading title The Best of The Sir Douglas Quintet from the material from the recording sessions . The song She's About A Mover was later inducted by the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame into the list of the 500 songs that shaped rock and roll the most.

The Mercury Years

Sahm started a new attempt with the newly formed Sir Douglas Quintet in 1968 in San Francisco and on the Mercury Records label , initially with the unsuccessful blues and jazz-influenced album Honkey Blues . The big international breakthrough came in 1969 with the single Mendocino and the return of Meyers and Perez to the band. The song became a worldwide success. In Germany he was also known in his hit version by Michael Holm . Dynamite Woman and Nuevo Laredo were other international hits. The line-up of the Sir Douglas Quintet stabilized with Sahm, Meyers, Morin, Perez and Harvey Kagen (bass). The group's stylistically versatile LPs, which were based on psychedelic West Coast rock as well as Texan country and blues traditions, fell short of the record company's expectations in terms of sales.

The album The Return Of Doug Saldana (1971), which was more strongly oriented towards the blues, marked the return of the band to their native Texas. The band members gradually began to drift apart and there were new personnel changes. The last work for Mercury was the single Michoachan (1972), a contribution to the soundtrack for the movie Cisco Pike starring Kris Kristofferson , in which Sahm made a brief appearance as a drug dealer. Because of its drug allusions, the song was rejected by the radio. Mercury lost interest in the band and in 1972 the Sir Douglas Quintet finally disintegrated, not least because Sahm's new record label Atlantic Records signed him as a solo artist. In the meantime, Meyers, Perez and Morin released the LP Future Tense with Byron Farlow (guitar, vocals) as a replacement for Sahm under the name The Quintet , which was unsuccessful. With Rough Edges , the last album of the Sir Douglas Quintet was released by Mercury, which was put together from singles, B-sides and previously unreleased material.

Reunion in the 1980s and 1990s

In the early 1980s there was a new edition of the Sir Douglas Quintet with Sahm, Meyers, Perez, Alvin Crow (guitar, vocals, violin ), Speedy Sparks (bass) and Shawn Sahm (guitar). On the LP Border Wave (1981) and the released single Sheila Tequila , the quintet mixed its typical Tex-Mex sound with New Wave pop . The 1980s Sir Douglas Quintet signed with the Swedish label Sonet and was now more in demand in Europe than in its home country. Meanwhile Louie Ortega had joined the band for Alvin Crow. With Meet Me In Stockholm from the LP Midnight Sun, which was never released in the USA, the band had a big hit in Sweden . In 1985 the group separated again.

A final riot of the Sir Douglas Quintet took place in 1994, when Doug Sahm used the band name again for the album Day Dreaming At Midnight . Meanwhile, Doug Clifford of Creedence Clearwater Revival and Sahm's sons Shawn and Shandon were on board. With Doug Sahm's death in November 1999, the Sir Douglas Quintet also died for good.

In 2006, the label New West Records released in its series with archival footage from the TV show Austin City Limits , entitled Live From Austin, Texas a live recording of the Sir Douglas Quintet from 1981 on CD and DVD.

Discography

Chart positions
Explanation of the data
Albums
Mendocino
  US 81 05/17/1969 (11 weeks)
Border wave
  US 184 02/21/1981 (4 weeks)
Singles
She's About A Mover
  UK 15th 06/19/1965 (10 weeks)
  US 13 04/03/1965 (12 weeks)
The Rains Came
  US 31 01/29/1966 (11 weeks)
Mendocino
  DE 2 06/09/1969 (27 weeks)
  AT 3 07/15/1969 (20 weeks)
  CH 1Template: Infobox chart placements / maintenance / NR1 link 05/20/1969 (18 weeks)
  US 27 01/18/1969 (15 weeks)
Dynamite Woman
  DE 7th 09/29/1969 (22 weeks)
  AT 12 09/15/1969 (15 weeks)
  US 83 08/02/1969 (2 weeks)
Nuevo Laredo
  DE 24 02/23/1970 (9 weeks)
  AT 8th 03/15/1970 (8 weeks)
What About Tomorrow
  AT 8th October 15, 1970 (8 weeks)

Albums

  • Honkey Blues (1968, Smash / Mercury)
  • Mendocino (1969, Smash / Mercury)
  • Together After Five (1970, Smash / Mercury)
  • 1 + 1 + 1 = 4 (1970, Philips / Mercury)
  • The Return of Doug Saldaña (1971, Philips / Mercury)
  • Rough Edges (1973, Mercury)
  • Live Love (1977, Texas Record)
  • Border Wave (1981, Chrysalis)
  • Live Texas Tornado (1983, Takoma)
  • Midnight Sun (1983, Sonet)
  • Quintessence (1983, Sonet)
  • Rio Medina (1984, Sonet)
  • Luv Ya 'Europe (1985, Sonet)
  • Day Dreaming at Midnight (1994, Elektra / Nonesuch)
  • Live from Austin, Texas (2006, New West)

Compilations (selection)

  • The Best of the Sir Douglas Quintet (1966, Tribe)
  • The Best of the Sir Douglas Quintet (1980, Takoma)
  • Sir Doug's Recording Trip: The Mercury Years (1988, Edsel)
  • Spotlight (1988, Sonet)
  • The Best of Doug Sahm & the Sir Douglas Quintet 1968-1975 (1990, Mercury / PolyGram)
  • The Crazy Cajun Recordings (1998, Edsel)
  • The Complete Mercury Masters (2005, Hip-O Select)
  • Scandinavian Years (2008, Universal)
  • She's About A Mover: The Singles A's and B's 1964-1967 (2009, Varese Sarabande)

See also

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Chart sources: musicline.de ( Memento of the original from March 25, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. EN: Chart tracking Sir Douglas Quintet @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.musicline.de
  2. ↑ austriancharts.at AT: Chart tracking Sir Douglas Quintet
  3. ↑ hitparade.ch CH: Chart tracking Sir Douglas Quintet