The Boy Who Cried Freebird (12 page)

Winter holidays are the time of year when writers are encouraged to bring out seasonal messages. I've always had a difficult time finding a good topic, but recently, I had a revelation and I'd like to reflect on “Oh Happy Day” by the Edwin Hawkins Singers—an unlikely hit single from the year 1969.

If the piano intro to this song sounds familiar, perhaps it's because George Harrison borrowed it for his own song of praise, “My Sweet Lord.” “Oh Happy Day” was actually cut in 1967 when Edwin Hawkins, his brother Walter, and a woman named Betty Watson organized the Northern California State Youth Choir and privately recorded a devotional album entitled
Let Us Go into the House of the Lord
.

Watson and the Hawkins brothers sold just a few hundred copies of their album at the group's concerts. Then, a San Francisco music promoter discovered the recording and passed it onto Abe “Voco” Kesh, a disc jockey at radio station KSAN. The jock began playing “Oh Happy Day” as a novelty, but his listeners responded with a surprising degree of enthusiasm.

Word of mouth spread and the tune quickly became an underground favorite. Buddah Records then purchased the recording and
released the song as a single. If you look at the label of the original Buddah 45, you can see how they squeezed in a lengthy credit line going to “The Edwin Hawkins Singers featuring Dorothy Combs Morrison (Formerly the Northern California State Youth Choir).”

The Buddah single sold millions and earned the group a GRAMMY award for the best soul-gospel performance of 1969. And so, “Oh Happy Day,” this rearrangement of an old Baptist hymn, became the rarest breed of commercial success, a crossover gospel hit that reached number four on the national pop charts—which to my knowledge had never before happened with a gospel recording and has not happened since.

Regardless of the song's status in the history of pop trivia, Dorothy Combs Morrison's ecstatic performance is wholly inspirational. Her voice is strong and clear and filled with love for her lord and savior. And when the elated chorus sweeps upward with “He taught me how…” the choir blows the roof off with righteous enthusiasm.

A simple, direct, and beautiful performance, Ms. Morrison's expressive vocal and the emphatically devout choir combine for a celestial call and response. While the song has been performed countless times since the making of this recording, no subsequent interpretation of “Oh Happy Day” holds the power and the glory of the original version.

Now, I don't consider myself a religious person but I do have my own sense of spirituality. And although my relationship with the figure that the Edwin Hawkins Singers sing praise to is quite limited, I can't help but feel inspired by the performance and want to send out an uplifting thought.

So, “Oh Happy Day” to all you people of Christian faith. “Oh Happy Day” to my brother, his wife, and his kids in Israel and Jews all over the world. “Oh Happy Day” to Muslims and Buddhists and followers of
every other religious persuasion, large and small. “Oh Happy Day” to the agnostics and the atheists, too.

“Oh Happy Day” to all of the different races and extraordinary cultures that inhabit this earth and “Oh Happy Day” to my family and all of my friends. “Oh Happy Day” to politicians and world leaders across the globe. And before I forget, “Oh Happy Day” to Mr. Edwin Hawkins, Dorothy Combs Morrison, and gospel singers everywhere.

Finally, “Oh Happy Day” to you—with so much tension, trouble, and controversy in this world, I know that we all can use some sweet inspiration.

So please, take a moment and consider this simple message of hope, spirit, and goodwill to mankind.

Peace on earth and have a nice day.

In the old days, unless your name was Bush, Texas kids (even the white ones) would rarely dream of growing up to be president of the United States. Of course, Texas has always had its share of idyllic wealth and golden opportunities, but the Lone Star State was one tough place to live in the early 1950s.

And for an all-American boy to imagine escaping the pervasive barrenness, narrow-minded intolerance, and soul-killing humdrum of everyday Texas life, dreams just needed to be a little bit more down-to-earth.

A San Antonio kid might fantasize about being a country-music legend like Hank Williams. A few years later, that kid might grease back his hair and emulate Elvis Presley or a local hero like Lubbock's Buddy Holly. Or maybe he'd learn to play the devil out of the guitar and dress to the nines like Aaron Thibeaux “T-Bone” Walker, a pimped-out blues pioneer from Linden, Texas, whose cutting flamboyance was the stuff of legend.

Later still, that very same kid could fantasize about being in a group like the Rolling Stones or singing like Bob Dylan, or maybe jamming with the Grateful Dead.

Doug Sahm dared to dream all those different dreams, and he grew up to be all those different people. He traversed the realms of country, jump blues, honky-tonk, primal rock 'n' roll, Cajun, San Francisco psychedelia, all sorts of roots music (including Tex-Mex, conjunto, and two-step polkas), as well as embracing jazz, soul, R&B, and Bob Dylan. Sahm met many of the famous artists he respected, shared in the joys of their music, and delved into their unique lives. But he always moved on.

Doug played American music. He mastered the steel guitar by the age of five and soon played fiddle, electric guitar, bass, and mandolin. He could also sing his ever-loving ass off. Looking back, Sahm epitomized the complex traditions of Texas music in a way that Willie Nelson never could. Of course, Willie was smart—smart enough to emulate Doug's redneck-hippie persona and doubly smart to hook up with Waylon Jennings, yet another Texas rebel.

Still, when it came to Texas, Doug Sahm was the man. The currency of Texas music enriched his life, and he made damn sure to tell the world all about it at every turn. Sahm was emotionally and professionally manic and at least half-crazy all of the time. His runaway lifestyle swept up everyone and everything around him. Is it any wonder that he came to be known as the Texas Tornado?

Doug was the hometown boy made good. He earned his own living on his own terms, was fanatical about baseball and wrestling, brought his reefer with him everywhere he went, and loved Texas as much as he loved music. A fast-talking cosmic cowboy, Sahm performed and recorded prolifically for more than fifty years, until his death on November 18, 1999.

“The more you find out about Doug Sahm, the more impressive he is,” said subversive guitar strangler/country-music aficionado Eugene Chadbourne. “Doug's an example of why music is interesting, and it's
not about accumulating large amounts of money. The guy was into so many styles of music—it's too much for most people. Going from psychedelic rock to country and then a heavy blues thing, he kept jumping around the whole time.”

Sahm fan and Bottle Rockets front man Brian Henneman agreed. “The first time I heard Doug Sahm, our friend put on (1969's)
Mendocino
,” Henneman said. “From note one, the sound of that record was cooler than anything that I'd been listening to. I wasn't even wise enough to formulate the reasons why I loved it. I didn't realize that it was country and blues and Mexican music and psychedelic rock. I didn't separate it like that yet. I was still digging Aerosmith.”

Born November 6, 1941, Douglas Wayne Sahm began making Texas music at a very early age. With his parents' encouragement, he was touted as a child prodigy, playing a triple-neck Fender steel guitar. An instrumental wunderkind, he appeared on radio and television and went by the stage name of “Little Doug.”

Something of a novelty, Little Doug appeared on the
Louisiana Hayride
radio show, played with local western swing bands, and opened for big-time country acts like Webb Pierce and Hank Thompson. In 1953, Little Doug appeared onstage with Hank Williams in Austin, just two weeks before the ill-fated singer's untimely demise.

By the time Doug was a teenager he was already a seasoned entertainer. His taste in music had evolved, revealing a brash eclecticism that would carry him for the rest of his life. A smattering of black blues bars on the East Side of San Antonio had a huge impact on Doug. Sneaking into the Eastwood Country Club near his home, the underage Sahm would watch and listen to mature R&B performers like T-Bone Walker, Bobby “Blue” Bland, Hank Ballard, and Clarence “Gatemouth” Brown.

Drummer Ernie Durawa met Doug in 1957 and gigged with him
sporadically over the next four decades. “We bounced around all of the clubs on the East Side,” said Durawa. “That was our education, learning to play blues shuffles. We had a gig playing in a black band led by a tenor player named Spot Barnett at a club called the Ebony.”

Attending high school by day and performing at night, Sahm navigated San Antonio's multilayered racial structure. At a downtown nightspot called the Tiffany Lounge, Doug received a quick introduction to the sporting life, as well as greater exposure to the city's musical melting pot.

Add to this the sonic power of the Chicano-dominated West Side, where shootings were common and a breed of rough-and-tumble musicians were getting their start. The brusque mixture of white, black, and Hispanic culture was a natural part of life in downtown San Antonio and it became the central component of Doug Sahm's sound.

Doug made his recording debut in 1955 but it took a few years for his local appeal to take hold. Now leaning toward San Antonio's Hispanic “West Side Sound” replete with a bruising horn section, Doug enjoyed regional success on the Harlem record label with the Little Richard–inspired screamer “Crazy Daisy.”

The nascent rock 'n' roll that Sahm played was a wild hybrid of youth, Texas bravado, and American roots music. And by the time Doug Sahm & The Mar-Kays (featuring tenor saxophonist Rocky Morales) hit it big in 1960 with “Why, Why, Why,” his celebrity within San Antonio's Chicano population was well established.

As a hip-shaking-gone-cat-rock-'n'-roller, Doug provided South Texas with a local alternative to the growing number of entertainers inspired by Elvis Presley. During this time, he became aware of a Tex-Mex recording artist called El Be-Bop Kid. The Kid was born Baldemar Huerta but became forever known as Freddy Fender. Like so many musicians he met during those San Antonio days—Barnett, Morales, and Durawa
among them—Doug would pull Fender into his whirlwind for decades to come.

Sahm also befriended a young San Antonio drummer named Johnny Perez, who would become an original member of the Sir Douglas Quintet. “When I met Doug, he was playing with Rocky Morales at the Tiffany Lounge,” said Perez. “Doug was playing rock 'n' roll, James Brown, blues and Top-40 stuff—a real mixture, especially for his age level. Doug was brilliant. He had a vision and he was destined to succeed because he had been putting records out from the time he was fourteen. He stayed at it until he finally bloomed.”

The Sir Douglas Quintet was born of the British Invasion—and just as the Beatles and Stones captured the imagination of teenagers on both coasts, they inspired the racially mixed R&B groups in San Antonio, Texas.

Jack Barber was a friend of Sahm's since the 1950s and played bass for the Sir Douglas Quintet. He remembered things this way: “The type of music we played in San Antonio was rhythm and blues like Bobby Bland, with horns and a lot of chord changes. They had these ‘battle of the bands' and everybody had to kick butt or you weren't in the clique. The Quintet came in 1964; Doug was ready to do something besides playing the local areas. He came up with the idea after the Beatles came out. He knew Huey could help us.”

Enter Huey P. Meaux, aka “The Crazy Cajun.” A self-styled hustler of dramatic proportions who owned a barbershop in Houston, Meaux had his fingers in countless pies and made business contacts in the course of his work behind the barber's chair. Just why Sahm was eager to make records with the Crazy Cajun is something to consider, but their alliance proved to be successful beyond all expectations.

The key to their success lay in the hands of yet another San Antonio musician, a childhood friend of Doug's by the name of Augie
Meyers. Augie owned a Vox Continental organ (the only one in Texas at the time), and it became the absolute jewel in Sahm's ornate musical crown.

“Doug and me grew up together since we were ten years old and met at my momma's grocery store when he was looking through all the baseball cards,” recalled Meyers. “I had my band and he had his band until we were in our twenties, then we got together for the Quintet. I opened a show for the Dave Clark Five and Doug's band came on afterward. Huey Meaux was there, trying to see what all the commotion was about with those English bands. Huey said, ‘Augie, you got long hair and Doug, you got long hair—you all got to put a band together. Let's get an English name and go with it.' So that's what we did, but it was really hard to pull off because we had three Mexican guys in the band.”

Masquerading as an English group with Prince Valiant haircuts and a quasi-British moniker, the Sir Douglas Quintet's first single, “Sugar Bee,” did not receive a royal reception. It was their second 1964 effort, “She's About a Mover,” that broke things wide open. Powered by Sahm's bluesy voice and Meyers's monomaniacal Vox pulse, “Mover” borrowed from the Ray Charles song “What I Say” but added the demented context of infectious greaser garage rock.

“We were doing things different way back when,” said Meyers. “‘She's About a Mover,” was a polka with a rock 'n' roll beat and a Vox organ. I played what a bajo sexto [a 12-string bass guitar] player in a conjunto band would do.”

Although their British facsimile eventually faded, Sahm, Meyers, Barber, Perez, and saxophonist Frank Marin were soon touring America, opening for the Rolling Stones, James Brown, Otis Redding, and the Beach Boys, as well as appearing on television programs like
Hullabaloo
and
Shindig
.

It was around this time that Sahm met Bob Dylan. Bob insisted that he wasn't fooled by Doug's English facade on
Shindig
, and the two men developed a strong affinity thanks to their mutual appreciation for roadhouse blues, country music, and vintage R&B. Like so many others, Dylan would encounter Doug repeatedly over the years.

Meanwhile, the SDQ released more singles, and eventually scored again with a song written by Freddy Fender called “The Rains Came.” Unfortunately, the group's momentum came to a halt after the band was arrested in Corpus Christi for possession of marijuana. Pot laws in Texas were unusually harsh during this time, and the bust did not bode well for the SDQ.

Not to be deterred, Meaux released the band's first full-length LP,
The Best of the Sir Douglas Quintet
, in 1965. The “Best of” title was a confusing claim for an album debut, but Meaux was unsure of the Quintet's future after the pot bust. So unsure, in fact, that he designed a cover shot featuring the band in silhouette in an attempt to extend their
faux
-British mythos. Unfortunately, the anonymous group photo also allowed Meaux to package phony versions of the Quintet for concert appearances while Sahm and the boys were indisposed.

Musician Steve Earle grew up in Texas and he remembered the impact of the real SDQ. “I first became aware of Doug as soon as I started paying attention to music because I'm from San Antonio, and the Quintet were
the
local heroes,” said Earle. “‘She's About a Mover' happened while I was in grade school and I was pretty plugged in to it. In those days, there were local teen shows and the SDQ did all that stuff. Then they moved to California.”

According to Doug, there were only two Texas bands with really long hair in the mid-'60s: Roky Erickson's 13th Floor Elevators and the Sir Douglas Quintet. More or less set up for the bust in Corpus Christi and harassed for his rebel-hippie stance, Doug decided to escape the
repressiveness of San Antonio and moved his family to the more tolerant environs of northern California. Living in Salinas and spending much of his time in San Francisco during the '60s heyday, Sahm immersed himself in the liberated lifestyle of the Haight-Ashbury elite.

“When I met Doug, his little son Shawn walked in while we were talking and Doug handed him a joint,” said Denny Bruce, a producer and manager who went on to run the Takoma record label. “It was the first time I had seen an adult give pot to a kid, and Shawn took a toke and his eyes started spinning. Doug was a real free spirit and probably took advantage of the hippie thing. He liked the notoriety and the acclaim.”

Reforming the Quintet without Meyers (who stayed in Texas), Doug began his most adventurous musical period. Performing at the Fillmore Auditorium and the Avalon Ballroom with the likes of Big Brother & the Holding Company, Quicksilver Messenger Service, and the Grateful Dead, Sahm became close with Jerry Garcia and partied heartily with fellow Texpatriots like Chet Helms and Janis Joplin. To some, Doug's enthusiasm, versatility, and revolutionary ways were more synonymous with San Francisco than many of the rock groups that actually hailed from the Bay Area.

Doug flourished in San Francisco, and he was featured on the cover of
Rolling Stone
in 1968 and again in 1971. George Rains was a drummer who had moved from Fort Worth and played with the SDQ during this time. “Doug was such a promoter of San Francisco,” said Rains. “He considered himself a hippie, the whole thing of getting loaded and free love. He felt it was just heaven, and for a musician, it was. That's all he talked about, ‘Man, you gotta go up to San Francisco.'” This type of endorsement would become a familiar refrain for Sahm. As the years rolled on, he'd bless one new “scene” after another, discovering groovy situations in Austin, Amsterdam, and Vancouver (to name a few).