The Sir Douglas Quintet Is Back!
Compilation album by The Sir Douglas Quintet
Released 2000
Recorded 1964-1966
Genre Country Rock
Length 31:52
Label BeatRocket
Producer Huey P. Meaux
The Sir Douglas Quintet-five kids from San Antonio with an upscale moniker-scored massive hits with "She's About A Mover" and "The Rains Came" in 1965-66 by injecting the pumping Tex-Mex sound into the British Invasion. The Sir Douglas Quintet Is Back!, a 14-track compilation-stuffed with SDQ singles, B-sides and vintage '65-'66 Tribe Records material unissued at the time, is the Sir Douglas Quintet album that never was. Both albums are a double-barreled loving tribute to the scintillating vocal style and songwriting talent of the late Doug Sahm.
Another incredible beat garage reissue from Beatrocket, pressed in limited numbers and now long out of print. This collects most of their singles from 1964-66 from releases on Crazy Cajun and Tribe Records, and were remastered from the original master tapes. Pressed on heavy 180 gram vinyl, this is a great artifact from the middle of the beat generation.
This is a collection of rare singles, B-sides and unreleased tracks. This set is a companion to The Best of The Sir Douglas Quintet. Among these 14 songs are a slew of rare and obscure singles. Doug Sahm and his cohorts, along with producer Huey P. Meaux, fearlessly apply their multi-cultural inclinations to British invasion pop and flat-out rock & roll with bracing results. Recording between 1964 and 1966, the band easily move through the variety of musical genres prevalent in their Texas homeland: Tex-Mex, jump blues, country weepers, and even garage pop. Sahm invests himself in all of it with aplomb and taste. On "Blues Pass Me By," his mastery of blues phrasing is readily apparent. Augie Meyer, who appears again with Sahm in his '90s band the Texas Tornados, gets credit for the rollicking Farfisa solos that appear here. Recorded at Pasadena Sounds Studio, Pasadena, Texas between 1964 & 1966. Originally released on Crazy Cajun & Tribe. Includes liner notes by Peter Doggett.
Professional Ratings:
allmusic 4.5/5 stars
Review by Ritchie Unterberger of allmusic:
This and Beat Rocket's companion reissue of the 1966 The Best of Sir Douglas Quintet album seem to gather most or all of what the group recorded for Tribe in the mid-'60s. Seems simple enough, but it's cause for rejoicing among '60s collectors, considering that this back catalog had somehow eluded the marketplace for more than 30 years prior to these two sets. If you're looking to choose one over the other, The Best of would get the nod for its inclusion of their only two Tribe hits: ("She's About a Mover" and "The Rains Came"). However, the various flop singles and outtakes comprising The Sir Douglas Quintet Is Back! are about equal in quality to the sister volume, with the same invigorating, erratic combination of British Invasion, Cajun, blues, soul, country, and even folk-rock. Certainly "In Time," a minor-key Sahm original with echoes of the Animals and the Zombies, and "Blues Pass Me By," a grand illustration of Sahm's stature as one of the finest white soul-rock vocalists ever, rate among their finer moments. Another Sahm original, "She Digs My Love," has astonishing fluttering blues-rock guitar licks that sound a hell of a lot like Jimi Hendrix -- although Hendrix had yet to release records under his own name when it came out. According to the liner notes, their debut 1964 single "Sugar Bee" preceded the Beatles' "She's a Woman" by several months, boasting a very similar riff and rhythm. It does make you wonder whether some of rock's giants somehow managed to borrow some ideas from Sir Douglas Quintet singles that very few people heard. At times the material on this disc can be perfunctory, but the mix of so many elements in one band (and sometimes in one song) are seldom less than interesting.
Review by Brook Pridemore on Jezebel Music:
Just looking at the cover of The Sir Douglas Quintet Is Back!, youÕd be excused for mistaking The Sir Douglas Quintet for a cheap Animals or HermanÕs Hermits knockoff. EveryoneÕs doing their approximation of a young British Invasion sensation of the day: leader (and namesake) Doug Sahm doing his Pete Townshend and drummer Johnny Perez looks an awful lot like Keith Moon, albeit a Keith whoÕd spent a little more time at the beach. Organist Augie Meyers (later famous for his Vox work on DylanÕs Time Out Of Mind) could have been replaced by Mick Jagger, heÕs got the look down pat. ItÕs almost as if somebody in a position of power thought they could make a quick couple of dollars fooling American teens into buying Is Back! based on cover photo, in hopes that Sahm and Co. could pass as lesser UK popsters. What a shock those kids would have suffered when they set the platter on the hi-fi and The Sir Douglas QuintetÕs brand of weird ÒcosmicÓ country barreled through the speakers.
Cosmic country? Certainly. The Sir Douglas Quintet, based out of San Antonio and most active in the mid-1960s, shared more than a little in common with their contemporaries (and Austin neighbors) the 13th Floor Elevators: the natural rambunctious energy of the music, the Cajun and Tex-Mex influences in the instrumentation and song structure (certainly a natural occurrence in ANY band from southern Texas). Is Back! is country music in the same way that Highway 61 Revisited or Sticky Fingers are country music: songs like ÒOld Bill BaettyÓ move with the same road-movie energy that posesses ÒTombstone Blues,Ó and SahmÕs blistering fret-styling on ÒWhen I Sing the BluesÓ and ÒBlues Pass Me ByÓ could easily be mistaken for Mike Bloomfield performances that got lost in the mix or accidentally deleted. ÒIsabellaÓ could easily have been a Jagger-Richards castoff from their country era.
ThereÕs something else going on here though, that sets The Sir Douglas Quintet apart from the rest of the Òcountry-rockÓ pack. ÒWine, Wine, Wine,Ó ÒSheÕs Gotta Be Boss,Ó and ÒSugar BeeÓ (complete with its own fake-out false fade ending) share the energy and abandon of proto-punk, ÒgarageÓ rock bands like the Sonics and the Monks. I also detected more than a hint of the ghetto soul that Detroit rockers ? and the Mysterians made infinitely more famous on their classic singles like Ò96 TearsÓ and ÒCanÕt Get Enough Of You, Baby.Ó The Sir Douglas Quintet did not play rock music packaged as country, and they did not play edgy country music that pandered to a rock and roll audience. What Doug Sahm and Co. wrangled from their instruments was a genre-hopping sound that belonged to them wholly. God bless them for that.
LP track listing
Side One
1. "Sugar Bee" (Eddie Shuler) - 2:18
2. "Love Don't Treat Me Fair" (Doug Sahm) - 1:31
3. "You Got Me Hurtin'" (Donald Mask) - 2:11
4. "We'll Never Tell" (Augie Meyers, J. Schenider) - 1:59
5. "Oh, What a Mistake!" (Phillip Boudreaux) - 2:17
6. "She Digs My Love" (Doug Sahm) - 2:45
7. "When I Sing the Blues" (Doug Sahm) - 2:29
Side Two
8. "The Story of John Hardy" (Doug Sahm) - 2:38
9. "In Time" (Doug Sahm) - 2:14
10. "Old Bill Baetty" (Doug Sahm) - 1:51
11. "Isabella" (John Getz) - 2:32
12. "Blues Pass Me By" (Doug Sahm) - 2:52
13. "Wine, Wine, Wine" (Jack Allday, Mario Daboub, Gene Haufler, Billy Joe Shine, David Swartz) - 2:05 [as The Devons]
14. "She's Gotta Be Boss" (Doug Sahm) - 2:10
Personnel:
* Doug Sahm - vocals, guitar
* Augie Meyers - organ
* Frank Morin - saxophone, percussion
* Jack Barber - bass
* John York - bass (1966)
* Johnny Perez - drums
* Peter Ferst - trumpet, organ (1966)