For the sake of an attention-grabbing headline, we call these “crazy covers” and for the most part they’re not crazy at all.
Back in the day it was fairly common practice for even the biggest artists to do covers, because they were cheap and easy to license. And besides – when the songwriters of the day were Lennon-McCartney, Jagger-Richards, Ray Davies and this cat named Dylan, why not toss in a cover?
So here we have a handful of cover versions, mainly of tunes from the 1960s when the giants listed above still ruled the world. Each cover version sheds a new light on each song, in their own initimable way.
A few of these are kind of sneaky: Clarence Clemons is of course “covering” a song he originally played on as part of the E Street Band. Neil Diamond and Carole King are here “covering” songs that they actually wrote, but were made famous by others.
It may seem like we run a video featuring this song once a month, but we can never get enough Sir Doug. Here, of course, is “Mendocino,” this time as performed on the classic TV show “Playboy After Dark.”
This one has a vintage of 1969 … dig those groovy dancers!
We’ve written about this act before, probably too many times, but there is no way around it: the Texas Tornados are a great live act. Anchored by guitarist/singer Shawn Sahm (son of the late, very great Doug Sahm), keyboardist Augie Meyers and the very, very great accordionist Flaco Jiménez, the Tornados bring some Texas thunder every place they play.
Thursday night under a perfect sky, and with Houston’s gleaming skyline in the background, the Tornados played a free show in Discovery Green park that drew one of the season’s biggest and most enthusiastic crowds. Of course, the ladies gravitated to Jiménez – even though he’s 72 years old, he gets his fair share of flirtatious notes and greetings from women. He got his own spotlight, with the favorite “In Heaven There Is No Beer,” the polka warhorse given some Mexican spice by Flaco’s deft accordion work.
Shawn Sahm
One lady held up a sign “Flaco for President,” and Sahm mused how great that would be … peace talks could be held at a Miller Lite brewery somewhere, he said.
Much of the band’s set was dedicated of course to the late Sir Douglas Sahm and Freddy Fender, the powerhouse personalities who founded the Tornados way back in 1989. Singer Nunie Rubio sang Fender’s classic “Wasted Days and Wasted Nights” and although no one can match Fender’s singular singing style, Rubio did a fine and credible job. Organ player Augie Meyers held his own with “Dinero,” “Velma from Selma” and his own crowd favorite “Hey Baby (Que Pa So).”
The set featured many of the band’s trademark tunes that fuse rock, country and Tex-Mex, including “Who Were You Thinkin’ Of?” and “Adios Mexico.” This time, though, they dipped a little deeper in the Sir Douglas Quintet catalog and pulled out gems like “Nuevo Laredo,” “Texas Tornado” and the stone classic “Mendocino.” They also played crazy accordion-laced versions of “Wooly Bully” and the Southeast Texas classic “Matilda.” And it wouldn’t be Houston if the band didn’t wrap it with “She’s About A Mover,” the Sir Doug anthem first recorded in Houston way back in 1965.
At the end of the show, after the ovations, Jiménez paused to address the crowd. First he reminded everyone to visit the CD/T-shirt table, and plugged his new solo CD … which he said was going to be his last. “It’s time to hang it up,” he said, and although he didn’t seem to rule out playing live Jiménez made it clear he is ready to slow down.
So let’s wish him well – Flaco Jiménez is a five-time Grammy Award winner who’s recorded with everyone from the Mavericks to the Rolling Stones, and he is a classic Texas performer. Hope we can see him play live a few more times before he hangs it up for good.
YouTube: “Mendocino” by the Texas Tornados (from Antone’s in Austin)
Huey P. Meaux, the legendary and controversial Southeast Texas music producer who discovered the Sir Douglas Quintet, Freddy Fender, “Jivin’ Gene” Bourgeois and Barbara Lynn, died Saturday at the age of 82.
Meaux had been in federal prison since 1996, when a police raid of his Sugar Hill studios in Houston uncovered evidence that Meaux participated in child pornography, sex with underage females and drug possession. He skipped bail and ran to Mexico, but he finally gave up and was sentenced to 15 years in prison. Meaux was released because of failing health and he lived in Winnie, where he died on Saturday.
Meaux, known as the “Crazy Cajun,” was a barber by trade and a radio DJ in Port Arthur, Texas, in the late 1950s. He would do a radio show on KPAC on Saturday afternoons, playing Cajun music for the transplanted coonasses who came to Texas to work at the oil refineries. One day Meaux got a visit from one of those refinery workers.
As Meaux told it, “He walked in with blue jeans and bare feet and these big thick glasses like Clark Kent. He wanted me to record his rock and roll band … I told him I didn’t know what the hell I was doing but if he was OK with that, then let’s get down to it.”
Huey Meaux's letterhead
The guy was Gene Bourgeois, soon to be known as “Jivin’ Gene.” In the old KPAC studio those days they had a Magnecord mono reel-to-reel, and Huey hung a ribbon mike from a boom. The drums, he put way back to keep them from overpowering everything and he put Bourgeois in the toilet to get the proper echo on his voice.
“Yeah, I really did sing in the shitter,” Bourgeois told me once. “But it was because I was so shy, I didn’t want anyone looking at me when I sang.” Anyway, the song was “Going Out With The Tide,” and after Huey sent it to Jin Records owner Floyd Soileau it became a regional hit. Jivin’ Gene’s next tune was produced by Meaux in Crowley (at J.D. Miller’s studio): “Breaking Up Is Hard To Do,” which is not the Neil Sedaka hit.
This song got more radio airplay, and eventually it was leased to Mercury Records, which put it out nationally. “Breakin’ Up” went to No. 69 on the pop charts in 1959, and Huey Meaux was on his way.
In 1962 Meaux produced a Beaumont singer, Barbara Lynn, and the song “You’ll Lose A Good Thing,” which rose to No. 8 in the Billboard charts. Meaux also signed Big Sambo, whose “The Rains Came” was a modest hit and Sunny and the Sunliners, who got a nice chart ride with “Talk To Me.”
In 1965, Meaux heard a bunch of kids from San Antonio who played a weird mix of rock and roll and Mexican music; he noticed first that it was a lot like Cajun music and then that it kinda had the same beat that stuff like the Beatles and the other British Invasion groups were doing. So he told the boys, “Grow some hair and let’s go cut some of this shit,” and the Sir Douglas Quintet cut their very first hit, “She’s About A Mover,” in Houston. Meaux produced their hits until the band got freaky and moved to San Francisco in the late 1960s.
Huey Meaux, with unidentified artist (or secretary) sitting on his lap in the 1980s.
Meaux also revived the career of Freddy Fender, who was an ex-con with a mechanic’s job when he cut “Before The Next Teardrop Falls” in 1975. Also cut in Houston, the song was first released on Meaux’s Crazy Cajun label before being leased to Dot, and then it went all the way to No. 1 on the pop charts. “Wasted Days and Wasted Nights,” the followup, was also a Top 10 hit.
After Fender, Huey Meaux was content to cut regional artists in Texas and Louisiana. In 1984, Cajun/zydeco artist Rockin’ Sidney created “My Toot Toot” which got some airplay in the region and Meaux stepped in to get it signed to Epic Records, on which it rode into the country Top 40. It was the first zydeco record to get airplay on major rock, pop and country radio stations of the day.
Meaux always was loyal to his artists, and he never failed to offer a colorful story or two about working with them. His conviction and imprisonment was, like Phil Spector’s, a sad and pathetic end to a legendary music career.
Lightnin' Hopkins and his official marker from the State of Texas
Two of Texas’ greatest musical legends have received permanent markers in their respective home towns, signs that share their legends with visitors. Bluesman Sam “Lightnin'” Hopkins received an official Texas State Historical marker in Houston’s Third Ward, while legendary rock and roller Doug Sahm got a permanent marker atop the hill named after him in Austin.
The colorful marker now atop Doug Sahm Hill
Hopkins, who died in 1982, is only the second Texas blues great to get a marker – his mentor Blind Lemon Jefferson has one near the presumed site of his grave in Wortham, Texas. Lightnin’ is of course the seminar guitar-playing bluesman who influenced such greats as Jimi Hendrix and Stevie Ray Vaughan. His marker weighs more than 75 pounds and stands about six feet tall. It is located on the grounds of Project Row Houses in Houston’s Third Ward (near the intersection of Dowling and Francis streets), where “The King of Dowling Street” spent most of his time.
Meanwhile, friends and family of the late Sir Douglas Sahm gathered in Butler Park to unveil a permanent marker that resides atop Doug Sahm Hill. Shawn Sahm of the Texas Tornados and Shandon Sahm, Sir Doug’s sons, were joined by Austin artist Kerry Awn, who designed the marker, and a large crowd to pay tribute to Doug Sahm, the singer/songwriter who died in 1999. Sahm led the Sir Douglas Quintet in the mid-1960s, then had a fruitful solo career before organizing the Lone Star supergroup Texas Tornados around 1990.
Now that some of Texas’ legendary musicians have been honored in their home state (Stevie Ray Vaughan has a statue in Austin’s Auditorium Shores park), one can only wonder how long it will take these worthy musicians to find a place in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
Welcome to our big Labor Day singles spin-a-thon … I believe I mentioned earlier that the first single I ever bought was “Good Vibrations” by the Beach Boys. Naturally, I still have it in a box some place. So yesterday I’m looking for it, and as I flipped through the stacks of old 45s a wave of memories came flooding back to me.
My grandmother on my mother’s side and her second husband (not my grandfather) owned a pool hall/dive bar back in the 1960s, in Catahoula, Louisiana. Called Knott’s, the place was a ramshackle building on brick pilings (to keep the bayou waters out) with plywood floors. Even in broad daylight, inside it was usually dark as a cave. And in one corner there was a jukebox.
As kids we’d go over to visit with my parents, and because my grandmother was usually tending the bar and cash register, we’d hang out in the pool hall. She noticed we always asked for nickels for the jukebox, so once when the guy came over to change out the records she asked him for the old ones. Naturally my brothers and I played the shit out of those singles, and later I shared them with my friends in high school.
There were some regional acts, playing traditional Cajun music but there were some swamp rockers and blues guys too. Some golden oldies from the 1950s stayed on the jukebox but the record guy had to frequently replace them with fresh copies. Plus the occasional Tom Jones 45, some country (which we never listened to) and of course Elvis. Usually they came in the wrong paper sleeve, sometimes with a simple handwritten notation in the corner: “Knott’s.” There was one from the early ’70s, a single of the Who’s “Won’t Get Fooled Again,” which said it was from the motion picture Lifehouse. At the time I didn’t realize there was a Who’s Next album, with an even longer version of “Won’t Get Fooled Again.” Maybe the LP hadn’t come out yet, I don’t remember for sure. When those 45s came in what appeared to be the correct paper sleeve, you could guess the record didn’t get much play on the Knott’s jukebox.
Even after I grew a little too teenaged-cool to visit Catahoula regularly, we still got those records. Well into the 1970s, my grandmother remembered how we liked the music so she’d usually send a stack back with my parents. Knott’s eventually shut down, Knott himself died and finally my grandmother passed about five or six years ago. I could probably try to play those old 45s but they’d crack and pop so bad you wouldn’t hear the music. Or I could just close my eyes … and remember.
But I want you to hear them too. So I downloaded ’em!
Rockin’ Sidney was Sidney Simien, a zydeco musician who also played everything from blues to country. He had a big hit in the 1980s, “My Toot Toot,” which was a payoff for Sidney’s years of kicking around the roadhouses of South Louisiana and Southeast Texas. I always liked his old stuff, which rocked out. Recording sometimes as Count Rockin’ Sidney, he put the blues into the swamp and it came out nothin’ but fine, fine, fine. This one’s from 1961, when Sidney was recording for Floyd Soileau’s Jin Records.
I didn’t need Knott’s Pool Hall to alert me to Jivin’ Gene Bourgeois. He was actually our neighbor in Groves, Texas. When I was about six or seven, my dad pointed him out on TV – it turned out to be either Jan or Dean; my old man didn’t know shit about pop music. But we’d go hang out at Gene’s house and listen to him rehearse with his band. When we tried to form our own band in the late 1960s, Gene would come over to the garage and tell us to turn it down. Then he’d give us a bit of advice that we quickly forgot. And there you go – I was never a rock star. Jivin’ Gene was, and he is at his best in 1959 on “Going Out With The Tide.”
On a foggy morning recently, I climbed to the top of Doug Sahm Hill. It was just a few days after a bunch of Austin musicians gathered at Antone’s to pay respect to the late, great Douglas Wayne Sahm. I didn’t go to the concert but I did drop by Austin’s new Lady Bird Lake park and took the winding path up to the top of the hill named after this legendary Texas musician.
Doug Sahm
Not much to see from the top – especially with the fog and all – and the only thing up there is a concrete bench circling a Texas map inlaid in concrete. The only clue that the hill is related to anything about music is the sign you see as you are about to climb the hill (see above). That’s why they had this big show the other night at Antone’s: to raise money for a plaque, a statue or something.
Climb to the top and take a look around. You should have some Doug Sahm music playing in your portable player, because there’s no music to be heard up here. At the right time of year you can certainly hear live music coming from just across the street at Auditorium Shores; a number of live shows happen there, including the big SXSW free shows in the spring.
I always hate that dead period in American sports – the weeks between the Super Bowl and the beginning of baseball season. There’s always basketball, but the local team is the Rockets – well, you see my point.
Oh, there are plenty of things to distract us until the first week of April: down here we have the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo, various Mardi Gras celebrations, South by Southwest over in Austin and this year only, the big ol’ Wrestlemania 25 event in Reliant Stadium. (By the way, the publicist for rockers AC/DC says they are NOT coming to Wrestlemania after all. Bummer.)
So while all this stuff is goin’ on, we here in Texas have ample opportunity to enjoy our fine native beers. Lone Star Beer, a perennial, I’ve written about before. Today I want to offer some thoughts on my favorite, Shiner Bock. Shiner is a little town located between Houston and Austin, in a region of Texas inhabited by many descendants of German immigrants. For about 100 years they’ve brewed some mighty fine beer over in Shiner and this year they are celebrating their centennial with a new brew.
If there were a Mount Rushmore in Texas of our state’s greatest musical artists, the head of Douglas Wayne Sahm would rightfully be there, next to Willie Nelson and Stevie Ray Vaughan. “Sir” Doug Sahm is the godfather of Texas music and during his career he brilliantly covered rock and roll, country, blues and of course Tex-Mex. Today’s Austin music scene – in fact all of Texas music – would not be the same without the influence of Doug Sahm. So why isn’t he in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame?
Sahm performed as a teenager on the streets and stages of his hometown San Antonio but in 1965, producer Huey Meaux gathered a motley group of musicians around Sahm and tried to beat the Beatles at their own game. The Sir Douglas Quintet had a hit with “She’s About A Mover” – cut at Meaux’s Sugar Hill studios in Houston – and audiences soon realized the musicians weren’t British moptops at all.
One of the most influential figures in Texas music was the late, great Doug Sahm. Even though he was somewhat underappreciated on a national scale, he nonetheless put together a body of work whose range surpasses even that of Willie Nelson.
Beginning with the seminal Sir Douglas Quintet in the mid-1960s, Sahm’s music encompassed British Invasion pop, Gulf Coast blues and spicy Mexican conjunto to form a joyous blend that resulted in the hits “She’s About A Mover” and “Mendocino.” Later in his career Sahm would show he was equally at ease with country, 1960s psychedelia and big-band blues and pop.
30 Days Out 