San Antonio: Doug Sahm Gravesite

Doug Sahm could play anything, and he usually did it in the same set. Country, blues, conjunto, rock, and Western swing all came out of him at once. The Doug Sahm gravesite sits in Sunset Memorial Park on Austin Highway in San Antonio. It’s a fitting spot. San Antonio built him, note by note.

Sahm came into the world in San Antonio in 1941. As a boy, he played steel guitar and fiddle well enough to appear on the Louisiana Hayride. Then, in his teens, he started sneaking into East Side blues clubs. The Tiffany Lounge and the Ebony Lounge taught him rhythm and blues. Before long, he was playing on those same stages.

She’s About a Mover

In the mid-1960s he formed the Sir Douglas Quintet. Producer Huey Meaux dressed them up to look British. But Augie Meyers’s cheap, buzzing organ sounded pure West Side San Antonio. “She’s About a Mover” hit the charts in 1965. That organ riff still sounds like a hot afternoon on Zarzamora Street.

Then Sahm drifted to San Francisco and wore cowboy duds among the hippies. Later he landed in Austin as one of the cosmic cowboys. Bob Dylan joined him in the studio in 1972. Meanwhile, English pub rockers studied every Quintet record they could find.

The Groover Comes Home

In 1989 Doug Sahm formed the Texas Tornados with Augie Meyers, Flaco Jiménez, and Freddy Fender. The supergroup won a Grammy and carried Tex-Mex to a whole new audience.

Sahm died in his sleep in a Taos motel in November 1999. He was 58. When his family held the funeral in San Antonio, the crowd overflowed. About a third of the thousand mourners huddled outside around a single speaker. People kept saying the same thing: Doug would’ve loved this.

Austin later named Doug Sahm Hill in his honor. But San Antonio holds the man himself. If you visit, play something loud on the drive over. Pick whatever genre you like. Doug played them all.

For more South Texas music history, visit the Selena Memorial in Corpus Christi.

Photo: public domain, via Wikimedia Commons