S
Doug
Sahm
b: Nov. 6, 1941, San
Antonio, TX
Guitarist, composer, arranger and songwriter
Doug Sahm hasn't exactly carved a niche for himself as a straight-ahead blues
player over the years. But one of his recent albums, The Last Real Texas
Blues Bands,(1994, Antone's) was nominated for a Grammy Award. It's a
firecracker of an album, perhaps the best thing he's ever
recorded.
Sahm is a knowledgeable music historian
and veteran performer who's equally comfortable in a range of styles, including
Texas blues, country, rock 'n' roll, Western swing, and Cajun. He began his
performing career at age nine where he was featured on a San Antonio area radio
station, playing steel guitar. Sahm began recording for a procession of small
labels (Harlem, Warrior, Renner, and Personality), In 1955 with "A Real American
Joe", under the name of Little Doug Sahm. Three years later he was leading a
group called the Pharaohs. Sahm recorded a series of singles for
Texas-based record companies including "Crazy Daisy"(1959),
"Sapphire"(1961), and "If You Ever Need Me"(1964). After being prompted in 1965
to assemble a group by producer Huey Meaux, Sahm asked his friends Augie Meyers
(keyboards), Frank Morin (sax), Harvey Kagan (bass), and Johnny Perez (drums),
if they would join him. Meaux gave the group the name the Sir Douglas Quartet.
The group had some success on the radio with "The Rains Come", but Sahm later
moved to California and recorded a now-classic single, "Mendocino". The
resulting album was a ground-breaking record in the then emerging country-rock
scene. The Sir Douglas Quartet followed Mendocino with Together After
Five, another album that led them to a larger fan
base.
But it was Atlantic producer Jerry
Wexler who realized that country-rock sounds were coming into vogue (and there
was no place in Nashville for people like Sahm) so he signed both Sahm and
Willie Nelson. One of his greatest albums, Doug Sahm and Band, (1973,
Atlantic), was recorded in New York City with Bob Dylan, Dr. John, and Flaco
Jimenez and a resulting single, "Is Anybody Going To San Antone?" had
some radio success. The Sir Douglas Quartet got back together again and recorded
two more albums, Wanted Very Much Alive, & Back To The
'Dillo.
Charlie
Sexton
b: Aug. 11, 1968,
Austin, TX.
Although only in his mid 30's, guitarist, singer and songwriter Charlie
Sexton has already had several phases to his career. Sexton, raised in
Austin, TX made his debut with Pictures For Pleasure in 1985 at age
16. He followed that up with a self-titled second album when he was
20. Because word of his reputation as a prodigy guitar player spread far
and wide, he found himself an in demand session player while still in his late
teens, and he had the opportunity to record with Ron Wood, Keith Richards, and
Bob Dylan.
Born to a mother who was just 16 when she
gave birth to Charlie, he and his mother moved to Austin when he was just
4. His mother would get him out to clubs like the Armadillo World
Headquarters and the Soap Creek Saloon. Places like The Split Rail and
Antone's blues clubs became his classroom. After living outside of Austin
for a while with his mother, he moved back to Austin when he was 12, and the
musicians around Austin, his heroes, people like Jimmie Vaughan and Stevie Ray
Vaughan, Joe Ely and others, took him in and put him up until he could earn more
of a living on his own.
From 1992-1994, he
was a member of Austin's Arc Angels along with Doyle Bramhall II, Tommy Shannon
and Chris Layton. That group recorded one self-titled album, released in
1992 on Geffen Records. By the time The Arc Angels decided to disband,
Sexton was 24 years old and already pegged as a blues musician. But in
fact, Sexton plays gutsy, fluid blues guitar, but also spirited rock 'n' roll
guitar.
In 1994 and 1995, he formed and
recorded with his new group The Charlie Sexton Sextet, in his debut for MCA
Records, Under the Wishing Tree, was released in 1995. Sexton's
album was well received by the critics. Under the Wishing Tree
presents Sexton in an array of musical genres, touching on Celtic flavored rock,
folk-rock and blues. There is a lot of interplay between guitars, violins,
cellos, Dobros and mandolins on the recording, and Sexton's vocals ride high on
top of the melodies. On his 1995 tour to support the album, he was
accompanied by Susan Boelz, violin, Michael Ramos, organ, and George Reiff,
bass, and Rafael Gayol, drums.
As a songwriter,
Sexton writes about what he knows, so Texas themes permeate his songs. He
considers Bob Dylan his strongest song writing influence, while he counts Austin
legends Jimmy Vaughan and the late Stevie Ray Vaughan among his prime influences
for guitar playing. His lyrics mix autobiographical experiences with
images that are open to interpretation. More great things are in the
offing for this young guitarist, singer and songwriter.
Robert
Shaw
b: Aug 9, 1908,
Stafford, TX
d: May 18, 1985, Austin, TX
He didn't record much at all - a
marvelous 1963 album for Almanac, reissued on Chris Strachwitz's Arhoolie label,
remains his principle recorded legacy - but barrelhouse pianist Robert Shaw
helped greatly to establish a distinctive regional style of pounding the 88's
around Houston, Ft. Worth and Galveston during the 1920's and
30's.
Those decades represented Shaw's playing
heyday, when he forges a stunning barrelhouse style of his won in the bars,
dancehalls, and whorehouses along the route of the Santa Fe RR. Shaw got
around - in 1933, he had a radio program in Oklahoma City. But by the
mid-30's, Shaw relegated his playing his playing to the back burner to open a
grocery store. Mack McCormick coaxed him back into action in 1963 and the
results as collected on Arhoolie were magnificent; "The Cows" was a piece
of incredible complexity that would wilt anything less than a legitimate ivories
master. Shaw continued to perform stateside and in Europe intermittently
in the 70's, turning up unexpectedly in California in 1981 to help Strachwitz
celebrate Arhoolie's 20th anniversary.
TV Slim (Oscar
Wills)
b: Feb. 10, 1916,
Houston, TX
d: Oct. 21, 1969, Kingman, AZ
Oscar "TV Slim" Wills' hilarious
tale of a sad sack named "Flat Foot Sam" briefly made him a bankable name in
1957. Sam's ongoing saga lasted longer than Slim's minute or two in the
spotlight, but that didn't stop him from recording throughout the 1960's.
Influenced by DeFord Bailey in both Sonny Boy
Williamsons on harp and Guitar Slim on axe while living in Houston, Wills sold
one of his early compositions, "Dolly Bee", to Don Robey for Junior Parker's use
on Duke Records before getting the itch to record himself. To that end, he
sat up Speed Records, his own label and source for the great majority of his
output over the next dozen years.
The first version
of "Flat Foot Sam" came out on a tiny Shreveport logo, Cliff Records, in
1957. Local record man Stan Lewis, later the owner of Jewel/Paula Records,
reportedly bestowed the colorful nickname of TV Slim on Wills; he was a
skinny television repairman, so the handle fit perfectly.
"Flat Foot Sam" generated sufficient regional sales
to merit reissue on Checker, but it's ragged edges must have rankled someone at
the Chicago label enough to convince Slim to recut it in much tighter form in
New Orleans with a vaunted studio band at Cosimo's. This time, Robert
"Barefootin'" Parker blew a strong sax solo, Chess A&R man Paul Gayten
handled piano duties, and Charles "Hungry" Williams laid down a brick second
line beat. It became Slim's biggest seller when unleashed on Argo
Records.
Slim cut a torrent of 45's for
Speed, Checker, Pzazz, USA, Timbre, Excel, and Ideel after that, chronicling the
further adventures of his prime meal ticket with "Flat Foot Sam Made a Bet",
"Flat Foot Sam Met Jim Dandy", "Flat Foot Sam No.2". Albert Collins later
covered Slim's Speed waxing of the surreal "Don't Reach Across My Plate".
Wills died in a car wreck outside Kingman, AZ in 1969 en route home to Los
Angeles after playing a date in Chicago.
Funny Papa Smith
(John T. Smith)
b: 1890, TX d: 1940
J.T. "Funny Papa" Smith was a
pioneering force behind the development of the Texas blues guitar style of the
pre-war era; in addition to a signature sound distinguished by intricate melody
lines and simple, repetitive bass riffs, he was also a gifted composer,
authoring song of surprising narrative complexity. A contemporary of such
legends as Blind Lemon Jefferson and Dennis "Little Hat" Jones, next to nothing
concrete is known of John T. Smith's life; assumed to have been born in East
Texas during the latter half of the 1880's, he was a minstrel who wondered about
the panhandle region, performing at fairs, fish fries, dances and other
community events (often in the company of figures including Tom Shaw, Texas
Alexander, and Bernice Edwards). Smith settled down long enough to record some
22 songs between 1930 and 1931, among his trademark number "Howlin' Wolf Blues"
Parts one and two, indeed, he claimed the alternate nickname "Howlin' Wolf some
two decades before it was appropriated by his more famous successor, Chester
Burnett. (The true story behind Smith's more common nickname remains a matter of
some doubt - some blues archivists claim he was instead dubbed "Funny Papa" with
the "Funny Paper" alias resulting only from record company error). His career
came to an abrupt end during the mid-30's, when he was arrested for murdering a
man over a gambling dispute. Smith was found guilty and sent to prison and was
believed to have died somewhere around 1940.
Victoria
Spivey
b: Oct. 15, 1906,
Houston, TX
d: Oct. 3, 1976, New York, NY
Victoria Spivey was one of the more
influential blues women simply because she was around long enough to influence
legions of younger women and men who rediscovered blues music during the
mid-60's US blues revival brought about by British blues bands as well as their
American counterparts, like Paul Butterfield and Elvin Bishop. Spivey
could do it all: she wrote songs, sang them well, and accompanied herself
on piano and organ, and occasionally the
ukulele.
Spivey began her recording career at
age 19 and came from the same rough and tumble clubs in Houston and Dallas that
produced Sippie Wallace. In 1918, she left home to work as a pianist at
the Lincoln Theater in Dallas. In the early 20's, she played in gambling
parlors, gay hangouts, and whorehouses in Galveston and Houston with Blind Lemon
Jefferson. Among Spivey's many influences was Ida Cox, herself a sassy
blues woman and taking her cue from Cox, Spivey wrote and recorded tunes like
"TB Blues", "Dope Head Blues", and "Organ Grinder Blues" in the 1920's.
Spivey's other influences included Robert Calvin, Sara Martin, and Bessie
Smith. Like so many other women blues singers who had their heyday in the
1920's and 30's, Spivey wasn't afraid to sing sexually suggestive lyrics, and
this turned out to be a blessing nearly 40 years later in the sexual revolution
of the 1960's and early 70's.
She recorded her
first song "Black Snake Blues", for the OKeh label in 1926, and then worked as a
songwriter at a music publishing company in St. Louis in the late 1920's.
In the 1930's, Spivey recorded for Victor, Vocalion, Decca and OKeh labels and
moved to New York City, working as a featured performer in a number of
African-American musical reviews, including the "Hellzapoppin' Revue". In
the 1930's, she recorded and spent time on the road with Louis Armstrong's
various bands. By the 1950's, Spivey had left show business and sang only in
church. But informing her own Spivey Record label in 1962, she found a new
life in her old career. Her first release on her own label featured Bob
Dylan as an accompanist. As the folk revival began to take hold in the
early 1960's, Spivey found herself an in-demand performer on the folk-blues
festival circuit. She also performed frequently in night clubs around New
York City. Unlike others from her generation, Spivey continued her
recording career until well into the 1970's, performing at the Ann Arbor Blues
and Jazz Festival in 1973 with Roosevelt Sykes. Throughout the 1960's and
1970's, she had an influence on musicians as varied as Dylan, Sparky Rucker,
Ralph Rush, Carrie Smith, Edith Johnson and Bonnie
Raitt.
In 1970, Spivey was awarded a "BMI
Commendation of Excellence" from the music publishing organization for her long
and outstanding contributions to the many worlds of music. After entering
Beekman downtown hospital with an internal hemorrhage, she died a short while
later in 1976. Spivey is buried in Hempstead, NY.
Angela
Strehli
b: Nov. 22, 1945,
Lubbock, TX
Don't let her lack of albums fool you; vocalist
Angel Strehli is an immensely gifted singer and songwriter, a Texas blues
historian, impresario and fan. Strehli comes out of the same school of
hippie folk singers that gave rise to some of Americana music's most gifted
writers, people like Jimmie Dale Gilmore and her brother Al
Strehli.
Raised in Lubbock and inspired by a
mix of blues, country and rock 'n' roll she heard on West Texas early-60's
radio, she learned harmonica and played bass before becoming a full-time
vocalist. Despite the fact that her recordings are scant, Strehli spends a
good portion of each year performing live shows in Europe and around the US and
Canada.
You can hear Strehli, who's now based
in San Francisco in all her glory on Soul Shake (1987, Antone's Records),
Dreams Come True, with Lou Ann Barton and Marcia Ball (Antone's, 1990)
and Blond and Blue (1993, Rounder Records). Of these,
Blond and Blue seems to best showcase her talents as a vocalist and
writer of quality songs. Strehli, and avid student of the blues and a
sharp blues historian who helped build the Austin blues scene with club-owner
Clifford Antone and musicians like Kim Wilson and the Vaughan brothers, knows
enough about the state of the art to know there's an awful lot of albums out
there. As a result, she takes her time writing and weeding out less than
top notch songs and records albums of lasting
significance.
"My thinking has
always been that volume is not so great, what's more important is the quality of
the material", she explained in a 1995 interview in Austin.