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Fueled by the amazing fiddle of Benny Thurman, former bassist for the 13th Floor Elevators, and featuring the vocals of stunning Jerrie Jo Jones, PLUM NELLY was a part of the “outlaw country” movement created when Willie Nelson moved to Austin and began playing local venues, most significantly the Armadillo World Headquarters. PLUM NELLY was rare among the artists at the era as it featured four lead vocalists, no drummer, and vocal harmonies ahead of their time.
Tennesse native Billy Stoner created PLUM NELLY as a duo with Jones in 1973, creating a stir at the Kerrville Folk Festival and winning the New Folk Contest that year. Shortly after, Thurman, bassist/vocalist Ernie Gammage and guitarist Johnny Richardson were added to the group. Stoner’s songs were at the core of the Plum Nelly ethos although the rest of the band, individually and collectively, wrote material. Much like the progressive country scene itself, PLUM NELLY was courted by the Nashville music business machine and finally sputtered to its demise in the late 1970s.
The group was the perfect mirror of the intersection of traditional Nashville country music and the free-wheeling hippie lifestyle of early 70s Austin. Stoner’s song “Devil and the Deep Blue Sea” singularly captures this rare point in America’s musical history. “Used to be a redneck” Stoner sings, but “Hippie or a redneck I don’t know which one to be. I’m in between the devil and the deep blue sea.”
* Dennis Keller - vocals
* Michael Stephen Knust (March 11, 1949 - September 15, 2003) - guitar
* Rob Landes - synthesizer, organ, piano
* E.E. "Bud" Wolfe - bass guitar
* John Tuttle - drums
Fever Tree is a former American psychedelic rock band of the 1960s, chiefly known for their anthemic 1968 hit, "San Francisco Girls (Return of the Native)"
The band hailed from Houston, Texas and started in 1966 as folk rock outfit, The Bostwick Vines. They changed their name to Fever Tree a year later after the addition of keyboard player Rob Landes.
Their fifteen minutes of fame arrived when their song "San Francisco Girls (Return of the Native)" reached #91 in the U.S. charts, sometime in late 1968. Like most of the band's material, it was written by the couple of Scott and Vivian Holtzman, who also were their producers. This four-minute track captured all the band's trademarks: Dennis Keller's incantation-like vocals, the quick shifting between slow parts with an almost sacral feeling and faster, more rock-oriented parts, and especially the searing guitar work by Michael Knust.
Fever Tree also released their self-titled debut album, Fever Tree, in 1968, which charted at #156. A second album, Another Time, Another Place, followed in 1969. Apart from "San Francisco Girls", they never had another hit, although they later also tried writing songs themselves when they had dropped the Holtzmans as producers. The group disbanded in 1970, but reformed in 1978 with only guitarist Michael Knust remaining from the original line-up. The new formation of the group had little commercial success; Fever Tree was not heard of again until 2003 when Michael Knust died.
Dennis Keller has in the past couple of years fronted a new band called Fever Tree Rising. He has played to some good reviews.
One last piece of trivia.... The band's signature song was of course about those " San Francisco Girls" however Fever Tree never played in the Bay area.
The Golden Dawn are an American psychedelic rock band formed in Austin, Texas, in 1966, that broke up and then reformed in the early 2000s.
Taking their name from the esoteric teachings and philosophy of the Hermetic Tradition, this band was formed in Austin in 1967. The 13th Floor Elevators got them a recording contract with International Artists. Indeed, George Kinney and Roky Erickson had grown up together in South Austin, attended the same school and played together in The Fugitives, a garage band from 1964/65. Kinney also played in Chelsea from late 1965 to late 1966 joining The Golden Dawn at the invitation of some high school friends when Chelsea fell apart.
The band released one album, entitled Power Plant, before breaking up soon after the album's release in 1968. Their sound is similar to their well-known Austin contemporaries, The 13th Floor Elevators, and both bands were on the International Artists label. In 2002, Eric Arn from the psyche rock music group, Primordial Undermind, asked George Kinney to reunite the other members of the band and play the Texas psyche fest. Kinney formed a new Golden Dawn and recorded the band's second album, titled Texas Medicine, which came out in 2006. The Golden Dawn play around Austin and Houston, and have been featured at the Austin Psych-fest the last couple of years
There were two bands from Texas with long hair in the mid-‘60s: Roky Erickson’s 13th Floor Elevators and the Sir Douglas Quintet. Sahm claimed his band was unfairly set up for its drug arrest and that he was really just being harassed for his rebel-hippie stance. Soon after, Sahm decided to move with wife Violet and their two young sons, Shawn and Shandon, to the more tolerant environs of Northern California. Living in Salinas and spending much of his time in San Francisco during its ‘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,” says Denny Bruce, a producer and manager who now runs the Takoma 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 initially stayed in Texas), Sahm began what many consider 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 with fellow Texpatriots like Chet Helms and Janis Joplin.
Thriving in San Francisco, Sahm was featured on the cover of Rolling Stone in 1968 and again in 1971. George Rains, a drummer from Fort Worth, played for the SDQ during this time. “Doug was such a promoter of San Francisco,” says 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.’”
His first California album, 1968’s Honkey Blues, was credited to the Sir Douglas Quintet + 2. The record displays a jazzy, experimental and strangely psychedelic R&B that was undeniably brilliant, but it confused both his record company and his fans. Sahm reunited with Meyers and his Vox for the Quintet’s next effort, Mendocino.
The California edition of the SDQ recorded two more masterful albums (Together After Five and 1+1+1=4, both from 1970), but Sahm was ready to move back to Texas
A gifted organizer, Sahm wasn’t the best businessman. “Doug pulled a lot of stunts in his life, financially,” says Denny Bruce. “I’m not saying Doug screwed Augie, but there were so many times that he would take advantage of him. But just when you would count Doug out, he would come up and it would be like, ‘Let’s go, get on the bus, Augie!’”
Part of Sahm’s survival was linked to an enduring popularity overseas. After signing with a Swedish label, Sahm went platinum with the crowd-pleasing “Meet Me In Stockholm” in 1983. Moves to Canada and back to Texas were peppered with the requisite number of baseball games, long nights and musical adventures. Sahm’s relationship with sons Shawn and Shandon (the latter played drums in the Meat Puppets) was musical as well. Doug Sahm & Sons appeared on 1990’s Where The Pyramid Meets The Eye (a tribute to Roky Erickson) and eventually recorded a 1994 full-length called Day Dreaming At Midnight (credited to the Sir Douglas Quartet).
Sahm remained a baseball fanatic throughout his life, and there were times when he would refuse to come out of his hotel room—even to rehearse—when watching a ballgame on television. He declined to tour one fall so he could stay home and watch the World Series. “He liked so many different teams,” says Shawn Sahm. “To be a baseball scout would have been his dream. He had a Joe DiMaggio baseball and an autographed menu from DiMaggio’s restaurant. He would call me from all these training camps, ‘Yeah Shawn, I’m hanging out with the Cubs!’”
Bruce once made a trip to Yankee Stadium with Sahm. “Doug worked his way down to the bullpen and was leaning over and talking to (pitcher) Goose Gossage,” he recalls. “He came back and said, ‘I knew that Goose got high!’ They were talking about pot.”
Performing with ensembles like the West Side Horns and the Texas Mavericks, Sahm was never far from his San Antonio roots. But it wasn’t until 1989 that his love affair with Tex-Mex and Conjunto music came to full flower. Along with Meyers, Sahm reunited with Fender and Jimenez to form the Texas Tornados. Several Tornados albums and tours followed, highlighted by a Grammy award in 1991. “Doug was a real versatile guy and soulful, of course,” says Jimenez. “He was a groover—a super groover—and he played a pretty good bajo sexto, too. There’s not too many Anglos doing that.”
Forever returning to those intricate blues shuffles and triplets he practiced in San Antonio, Sahm made a 1998 album called S.D.Q. ‘98, which included two collaborations with Texas rockers the Gourds. Gourds frontman Kevin Russell noticed a hint of melancholy in Sahm’s manner. “He had a taste of fame back in the day, and I think he was always trying to recapture that,” says Russell. “There was always a little bit of sadness about his best days being behind him. He wouldn’t say that, but I got the feeling that was how he felt.”
The cover of Sahm’s next record, 1971’s The Return Of Doug Saldaña, said it all. “He’s sitting on my front porch (in Bulverde, Texas), leaning back in a chair holding a bottle of Big Red,” says Meyers. “He owes me enchiladas for that.” For the uninitiated, Big Red is an all-the-sugar-and-twice-the-caffeine soda that originated in Texas and is usually consumed by kids too young to know better. Still, Sahm always enjoyed the stuff, and the elixir probably took the edge off of the copious amounts of weed he was smoking. Hyperactive with or without Big Red, Sahm moved home to San Antonio only to quickly leave again. This time he headed to Austin, where he helped blaze the trail of so-called redneck rock.
Divorced and living down the road from the Soap Creek Saloon, Sahm grooved into another essential phase of his musical sojourn. Between Soap Creek and the Armadillo World Headquarters club, there was an assortment of cosmic cowboys hanging around—including Jerry Jeff Walker and the newly arrived Willie Nelson, who was eager to reinvent himself after a decade of songwriting in straight-laced Nashville. Sahm established a weekly gig at Soap Creek and set about gathering his troops. Jack Barber moved up from San Antonio, and George Rains followed Sahm from San Francisco. Old pals like Rocky Morales and trumpeter Charlie McBirney gave Sahm the toughest horn section in town, reviving memories of the fabled West Side Sound.
Austin also allowed Sahm to be supportive of musicians less fortunate than himself. By reviving Fender’s classic tune “Wasted Days And Wasted Nights” during his Soap Creek sets, Sahm showed empathy for a forgotten compadre who’d been imprisoned for marijuana possession and had withdrawn from the music business. He eventually coaxed Fender out of retirement, securing the singer a reassuring comeback gig within the friendly confines of Soap Creek. Sahm also produced the “Red Temple Prayer (Two-Headed-Dog)”/“Starry Eyes” single for Roky Erickson, who’d fallen on hard times due to a nasty combination of schizophrenia and drug abuse.
In 1973, Atlantic Records honcho Jerry Wexler produced Doug Sahm And Band in New York City. The star-studded album featured Meyers, Dr. John, David “Fathead” Newman, an obscure accordion player named Flaco Jimenez and the very famous Bob Dylan. “In many ways, Doug and Bob were flip sides of each other’s personalities, which is why they were so musically compatible,” says Chet Flippo, Sahm’s friend and a veteran music journalist. “Each perhaps secretly envied the other a little bit and hoped that some of that particular magic would rub off.”
Wexler had signed both Sahm and Willie Nelson to recording contracts, but neither artist fared well with Atlantic. (Nelson’s success came soon after leaving the label.) Speedy Sparks, a roadie for Sahm and sometime bassist with the SDQ, remembers the influence Sahm had on Nelson. “Willie wanted that rock ‘n’ roll crowd, and Doug had them,” he says. “Willie would come out and watch Doug and figure out what Doug was doing. Willie got the hip rednecks, and then he won everybody else over. At first, Doug was the king, not Willie or Jerry Jeff or Waylon.”
Using leftover tracks from Wexler’s Manhattan sessions, Sahm pieced together a 1973 album called Texas Tornado. “Texas Tornado is one of the records that made it hip to play country music in Texas,” says Steve Earle. “There used to be a dividing line between musicians that played pop music and the musicians that played country. It was a social line, too. That whole Armadillo World HQ/Soap Creek Saloon thing in Austin, it changed Texas.” 1974’s Groovers Paradise was a passionate homage to Austin and featured the former rhythm section of Creedence Clearwater Revival. Sahm was still making great music, but his commercial success was dwindling.
In recognizing the talent of Doug Sahm I have decided to post items reflective of each of the various music types that he was so very proficient at. The posts will a collection of songs under each type. In OMO Doug Sahm is the most influential musician that came out of the Texas 60's It is an absolute shame that he is not in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame where he rightly belongs.
Doug Sahm is a giant of American music, and he’s even bigger than that in his home state of Texas. But the rebel cowboy hippie who spent his life crossing the borders of Tex-Mex, British Invasion, psychedelia and honky-tonk continues to flirt with obscurity long after his death. By Mitch Myers
In the old days, unless your name was George 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 fair share of idyllic wealth and golden opportunities, but it 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 same kid might grease back his hair and imagine being 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. 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 embracing sophisticated jazz, soul, R&B and Dylan. Sahm met most of the famous artists he respected, shared in the joys of their music and delved into their unique lives. But he always moved on.
Sahm 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. Sahm epitomized the complex traditions of Texas music in a way that Willie Nelson never could. Of course, Nelson was smart. Smart enough to emulate Sahm’s redneck-hippie persona and doubly smart to hook up with Waylon Jennings, another Texas rebel. Still, when it came to Texas, Sahm was the man.
Sahm 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 50 years, until his death on Nov. 18, 1999. Still, the Sahm discography remains splintered and disorganized, with several of his finest recordings lamentably out of print. In a world where American music martyrs like Townes Van Zandt and Gram Parsons command respect in terms of comprehensive reissues, there’s no retrospective boxed set being planned for Sahm.
There are, however, two new tribute albums. The Bottle Rockets’ Songs Of Sahm and Eugene Chadbourne’s Texas Sessions: Chapter Two were made on minuscule budgets and released on indie labels. There are no special duets or alt-country superstars paying homage—just bright new versions of wonderful songs written by Sahm.
“Doug’s an example of why music is interesting, and it’s not about accumulating large amounts of money,” says avant/jazz/psych guitarist Chadbourne. “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.”
While he may be the polar musical opposite of Chadbourne, Brian Henneman—frontman of alt-roots-rockers the Bottle Rockets—agrees. “The first time I heard Doug Sahm, our friend put on (1969’s) Mendocino,” he says. “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.”
Catch A Man On The Rise
Born Nov. 6, 1941, Douglas Wayne Sahm began making Texas music at a very early age. With his parents’ encouragement, Sahm 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 Little Doug. Something of a novelty, Little Doug performed on Louisiana Hayride (a popular live radio show), played with local Western-swing bands and began supporting big-time country acts like Webb Pierce and Hank Thompson. Little Doug even appeared onstage with Hank Williams in Austin in 1953, just two weeks before Williams’ death.
A smattering of black blues bars on San Antonio’s East Side had a huge impact on Sahm as a teenager. 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 Sahm in 1957 and gigged with him sporadically over the next four decades. “We bounced around all of the clubs on the East Side,” says 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 playing shows at night, Sahm also worked at a nightspot called the Tiffany Lounge in the Chicano-dominated West Side, where shootings were common and a breed of rough-and-tumble musicians was getting its start. The brusque mixture of white, black and Hispanic culture was a natural part of life in downtown San Antonio, and it soon became a component of Sahm’s own sound.
Sahm 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, he enjoyed regional success with the Little Richard-inspired screamer “Crazy Daisy.” By the time Doug Sahm & The Mar-Kays (featuring tenor saxophonist Rocky Morales) hit it big with “Why, Why, Why” in 1960, his celebrity within San Antonio’s Chicano population was well established.
As a hip-shaking-cat-gone-rock-‘n’-roller, Sahm provided South Texas with a local alternative to the growing number of entertainers inspired by Elvis Presley. During this time, Sahm 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, and like so many musicians Sahm met during those days—Barnett, Morales, Durawa and drummer Johnny Perez among them—he would be pulled into Sahm’s musical whirlwind for decades to come.
Sahm’s next group, the Sir Douglas Quintet, was born of the British Invasion; just as the Beatles and Stones captured the imagination of teenagers on both coasts, they inspired the racially mixed R&B groups thriving in San Antonio. Original SDQ bassist Jack Barber remembers 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 came up with the idea after the Beatles came out. He knew Huey could help us.”
Enter Huey P. Meaux, a.k.a. “The Crazy Cajun.” A self-styled hustler who owned a barbershop in Houston, Meaux had his fingers in countless pies and made contacts in the course of his work behind the barber chair. Just why Sahm was so excited to make records with Meaux is something to consider, but their unusual business alliance proved to be successful beyond anyone’s expectations. The key to their success lay in the hands of a childhood friend of Sahm’s named Augie Meyers. Meyers owned a Vox Continental organ (the only one in Texas at the time), and it became the jewel in Sahm’s ornate musical crown.
“Doug and me grew up together since we were 10 years old and met at my momma’s grocery store when he was looking through all the baseball cards,” recalls Meyers. “I had my band and he had his band until we were in our 20s, 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, ‘Man, 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, the Sir Douglas Quintet didn’t receive a royal reception with its first single, 1964’s “Sugar Bee.” But the group’s second effort, “She’s About A Mover,” broke things wide open later that year. Powered by Sahm’s bluesy voice and Meyers’ monomaniacal Vox pulse, “Mover” borrowed from Ray Charles’ “What I Say” while adding the demented context of infectious greaser garage rock. “We were doing things different way back when,” says 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.”
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 Sahm met Bob Dylan, who insisted he wasn’t fooled by the SDQ’s English façade on Shindig.
The SDQ released more singles and scored again with “The Rains Came,” but the band’s momentum came to an abrupt stop when its members were arrested at the Corpus Christi airport for possession of marijuana. Pot laws in Texas were unusually harsh during this time, and the bust didn’t bode well for the SDQ.
Not to be deterred, Meaux released the band’s debut full-length, The Best Of The Sir Douglas Quintet, in 1965. The “best of” title was a particularly confusing claim for a group’s first record, but Meaux was unsure of the Quintet’s future after the bust. So unsure, in fact, that he designed an album cover featuring the band in silhouette in an attempt to extend its faux-British mythos. The anonymous group photo also allowed Meaux to package phony versions of the SDQ for concert appearances while Sahm and the boys were out of commission.
As a continuing tribute to Doug Sahm I believe a will stay in the Sir Douglas modefor a little while longer. I will post some of the Sir Douglas Quintets more obscure works. I thought it might take a while to get across this big state of Texas and I was right. I would have to say that this series of musical treasures qualifies me as a Doug Head in good standing. Thanks Mr Sahm for all the great beautiful vibrations in your music. On to the Sir Douglas Quintet!
Arguably the greatest and most influential Tex-Mex group ever, the Sir Douglas Quintet epitomized Texas' reputation as a fertile roots music melting pot and established the career of Tex-Mex cult legend Doug Sahm. The Quintet mixed country, blues, jazz, R&B, Mexican conjunto/norteño music, Cajun dances, British Invasion rock & roll, garage rock, and even psychedelia into a heady stew that could only have come from Texas. Although they went largely underappreciated during their existence (mostly in the '60s), their influence was far-reaching and continues to be felt in Texas (particularly the similarly eclectic Austin scene) and beyond; afterward, Sahm embarked on a frequently fascinating solo career and reunited with the Quintet or its individual members several times over the years.
According to legend, the Sir Douglas Quintet was the brainchild of Houston producer Huey P. Meaux, who at the height of the British Invasion took a stack of Beatles records into a hotel room and studied them while getting drunk on wine. He found that the beats often resembled those of Cajun dance songs and hit upon the idea of a group that could blend the two sounds well enough to fool Beatles fans into giving a local band a chance. Doug Sahm, meanwhile, had been something of a childhood prodigy as a country artist -- he turned down a spot on the Grand Ole Opry in order to finish junior high and performed on-stage with Hank Williams. Sahm had made Meaux's acquaintance while leading a series of bands around San Antonio in high school and wanted to work with him. Meaux told Sahm his idea and Sahm quickly formed a band featuring childhood friend Augie Meyers on organ, bassist Jack Barber, drummer Johnny Perez, and percussionist Leon Beatty (who didn't stick around for too long); saxophonist Frank Morin was added after a short time. Meaux gave them the deceptively British-sounding name the Sir Douglas Quintet and released their debut single, "Sugar Bee," on his Pacemaker label in 1964; it flopped. However, their next single, the British Invasion/garage-flavored "She's About a Mover" (on a different Meaux label, Tribe), became a classic of Tex-Mex rock and an international hit, climbing into the U.S. Top 20 in 1965. Later that year, "The Rains Came" hit the Top 40 and Meaux assembled an LP from their singles sessions with the misleading title The Best of the Sir Douglas Quintet. The group toured the United States and Europe, but upon returning, they were arrested at the Corpus Christi airport for possessing a tiny amount of marijuana. Feeling targeted for his long hair and hippie image, Sahm decided to break up the band upon his release from jail, and moved to San Francisco in early 1966; Morin tagged along.
The third 13th Floor Elevators album, "Bull of the Woods," has always been somewhat of a disappointment. The band had pretty well disintegrated from legal troubles, insanity and various other pressures. With vocalist Roky Erikson and lyricist/electric jug player Tommy Hall pretty much out of commission, guitarist Stacy Sutherland did the best he could and he did manage to pull off a pretty good psych rock album. The problem was that it didn't really deliver as an Elevators album. This collection gives us a much groovier view of what a real third Elevators album could have been. Rocky Erikson sings on all of the tracks that feature vocals, even if a few of them are likely just guide vocals, and the band rocks a lot closer to their signature sound. The monoural sound quality is somewhat muddy, but us longtime Elevator fans should be used to that from years of substandard versions of their first two albums. The electric jug only shows up on one track, but let's face it - the jug was always a bit of a novelty and the band does pretty well without it. Also, we get to lose those damn horn overdubs which marred "Bull of the Woods."
The first six tracks here are first rate, if a bit rough, 13th Floor Elevator rockers and stand up pretty well in comparison to the classics on the first two albums. "It's You" is a fine display of the poppier side of the band with a chorus that will end up stuck in your head forever, while "Livin' On" and "Never Another" serve up a tighter version of the psychedelic guru vibe that the group pursued on "Easter Everywhere." Erickson's version of "May the Circle Be Unbroken" is one of the group's absolute masterpieces, although it does admittedly come across a little better in its stereo version on "Bull of the Woods." Since the first six tracks only clock in at about 22 minutes, the disc is filled out with some instrumental takes called "Sweet Surprise" and "Moon Song." They're relatively dispensable, with the former coming across like a blues based jam and the latter sounding like a rocked up version of "Postures (Leave Your Body Behind)." Still, they're a nice momento of the prime Elevators sound just before it was lost forever. Review by Dr Schluss
"Originally released in 1968 on the International Artists label. This is their 3rd album which is not a live album at all. The tracks were studio outtakes with fake applause added. Along with versions of the band's classics 'You're Gonna Miss Me' and 'Roller Coaster' this album contains 5 songs not included on their previous two studio albums: Bo Diddley's 'Before You Accuse Me', Buddy Holly's 'I'm Gonna Love You Too', Solomon Burke's classic 'Everybody Needs Somebody To Love' and two original compositions ('You Gotta Take That Girl' and 'You Can't Hurt Me Anymore').
While much of the 13th Floor Elevators’ popularity today rests upon their studio albums and 45s, this wasn’t always the case. Especially not in Texas, where the Elevators first became famous as an outstanding live act, with a combination of ferocious drive and dark mystique that was unlike anything seen before. When the Psychedelic Sounds LP was released in late ‘66, some fans in their hometown Austin felt it was missing a bit of the captivating energy they associated with the band. Even Tommy Hall, the band’s lyricist and intellectual nexus, stated in a 1989 interview that “our real show was live”.
Before getting on to the true live recordings, a word about the infamous, fake Live LP on International Artists. This odd concoction was put together by I A producer Fred Carroll in the Summer of ’68, after months of studio sessions with the band had failed to produce anything release-worthy. Pulled together from old outtakes, the Live album is decidedly non-live, despite Carroll’s attempts to create a concert atmosphere via dubbed-in crowd noise. Much venom has been thrown upon this record over the decades, but fake live LPs were common in the ‘60s – much more so than real live recordings – and as far as the actual music goes, it’s a very good album, including a couple of songs unavailable elsewhere. Any fan of the band needs it. ‘Nuff said.
Except for the three core members of vocalist Roky Erickson, guitarist Stacy Sutherland and jug player/lyricist Tommy Hall, the Elevators underwent several line-up changes during their 2.5-year life span. A commonly held opinion back then was that as a live act, none of the later configurations could match the earliest line-up, with bassist Benny Thurman. Thurman, who was a formally schooled violinist but not a “real” bass player, contributed to the strange and exciting aura around the group during the first half of 1966. According to Bill Miller of Cold Sun, who saw the early Elevators several times, “Benny was just as important as Roky” to the band.
At that time, the Elevators’ official recordings were limited to the “You’re Gonna Miss Me” 45 (released January ‘66), and except for some demo tracks, this first line-up was not preserved on any other studio reels. The three live tapes that exist from the Spring ‘66 are thus important documents of the band’s early days, and better yet, they confirm the praise heard from the original fans. The energy level is breath-taking, yet the band finds room to spread their psychedelic message via complex drug songs like “Roller Coaster” and “Fire Engine”. Previously published in Shindig magazine, 2008
The 13th Floor Elevators were one of the pioneering bands of psychedelic music; many have cited them as the first true psychedelic rock band, and if they weren't, they certainly predated most of the San Francisco bands that gave the sound a global audience. The Elevators played a bracing fusion of garage rock and genre-defying musical exploration powered by Roky Erickson's feral vocals and rhythm guitar, Stacy Sutherland's concise but agile lead guitar work, and Tommy Hall's amplified jug playing, the latter of which gave them a sound unlike any other in rock. The Elevators were also exploring the outer limits of both consciousness and rock & roll in Texas in the early to mid-'60s, a time and place that wasn't quite ready for them, leading to the myriad problems that at once fueled their legend and cut down the band before their time.
The 13th Floor Elevators story began in Kerrville, TX, where in 1963, Stacy Sutherland (born 1946) was hanging out in the parking lot of a diner and met John Ike Walton (born 1942). Walton was a banjo picker who was playing for anyone who cared to listen, and Sutherland, already an accomplished guitarist, struck up a conversation. The two became friends, and when they met Benny Thurman (born 1943), a classically trained violinist who could also play bass, they formed a band. The Lingsmen featured Sutherland and Max Range on guitars, Thurman on bass, and Walton on drums, and soon landed a steady gig in the resort town of Port Aransas, TX. Meanwhile, Tommy Hall (born 1942) was a student at the University of Texas, studying chemical engineering and psychology. Hall was keenly intelligent and had a philosophical bent, and he fell in with a group of Austin bohemians who were experimenting with peyote. In 1964, Hall claims to have been part of LSD experiments which took place at UT; no records exist which confirm such experiments, but however he became interested in the drug, Hall was a quick convert, and believed it was a tool to reaching the next level in psychological and spiritual evolution. As pop music grew more sophisticated with the emergence of Bob Dylan and the Beatles, Hall believed that rock & roll could be used as a medium to advance his ideas about psychedelics and philosophy. Sutherland, who had developed a powerful taste for marijuana and downers, began hanging out in Austin, and through mutual acquaintances met Hall; after seeing the Lingsmen play, Hall recruited Sutherland, Walton, and Thurman for the new band he hoped to form.
Hall was a gifted lyricist but no singer, so the group needed a lead vocalist. Roger Kynard Erickson (born 1947), known to his friend as Roky, was the frontman with a popular Austin band called the Spades, who had scored a local hit with "You're Gonna Miss Me." Hall and Sutherland believed Erickson's raw, powerful voice was just what their band needed, and in late 1965 they lured him away from the Spades to join the newly formed 13th Floor Elevators (the name a reference to the floor on a skyscraper that usually goes unnamed). In early 1966, the Elevators re-recorded "You're Gonna Miss Me" for a local label, Contact Records; the new version was in every respect more powerful than the original, and it looked to have the makings of a hit. By the spring, the record had been snapped up by an upstart label in Houston, International Artists Records, and IA was able to turn "You're Gonna Miss Me" into a small nationwide success.
While on the surface the Elevators rise to fame seemed ordinary, underneath things were anything but. Under Hall's leadership, the Elevators did every rehearsal, performance, and recording session under the influence of LSD (except for Walton, who after a bad trip refused to have anything to do with the drug), and while their single was climbing the charts on AM radio, the bandmembers were becoming the heroes of a Texas community that had not yet become known as hippies. When the band released their debut album, The Psychedelic Sounds of the 13th Floor Elevators, in the fall of 1966, Hall insisted on including bizarre liner notes charting man's efforts to alter his consciousness. And while LSD was not yet illegal when the group began using it, the marijuana they habitually smoked certainly was, and around the time "You're Gonna Miss Me" was released, Erickson, Hall, Sutherland, and Walton were busted for possession. While the group attempted to keep up a busy schedule of performances, they did so knowing they could end up in jail at any time. Despite this, the Elevators went out on tour and even appeared on American Bandstand, where Dick Clark innocently asked Hall, who was the head man of the group, to which he replied, "Well, we're all heads."
After an extended stay in San Francisco, where they made a strong impression on the budding local rock scene (and reconnected with an old Austin friend, Janis Joplin, who was beginning to make a name for herself in California), the Elevators ended up back in Texas in 1967 as they began work on their second album, Easter Everywhere. While the album was a masterpiece, it didn't spawn a hit like "You're Gonna Miss Me," and it was recorded as the band was beginning to splinter; Walton, unhappy with the band's business affairs and their relationship with International Artists, left the group, and Thurman followed. Danny Galindo became their new bassist, and Danny Thomas signed on as drummer. The band's fragile legal situation prevented them from touring and they played only limited local shows in support of the album. When an attempt to record a live album at a concert in Houston went awry after Sutherland sunk into a bad trip on-stage in 1968, International Artists released The 13th Floor Elevators Live, a ludicrous LP in which old studio demos were overdubbed with crowd noises taken from a boxing match.
The Elevators' use of drugs was beginning to catch up with most of them, and Erickson in particular began to buckle under his constant use of LSD and speed, ending up in a hospital for a while. At the same time, Hall grew tired of his role as the band's overseer, so Sutherland became the de facto leader of the group for the recording of their third and final album, Bull of the Woods. With Erickson and Hall making only token appearances on the album, and Galindo replaced by Ronnie Leatherman, it was the most stripped-down and elemental Elevators album, despite IA's insistence on adding horn overdubs to several songs. When Erickson was busted for marijuana again in 1969, it spelled the end of the group for all practical purposes, especially when Erickson, pleading insanity on the advice of a lawyer, ended up in an Austin mental hospital. Hall and some friends attempted to liberate Roky, who had tried to escape several times on his own, and eventually he was sentenced to the Rusk Prison for the Criminally Insane, where he was subjected to repeated shock treatments and powerful psychoactive drugs.
Various handfuls of Elevators alumni played periodic reunion shows during the '70s after Erickson was finally released from Rusk, but those came to an end in 1978, after Sutherland was shot to death by his wife during a domestic dispute. Since then, only Erickson has continued to make music on a regular basis, finally overcoming frequent bouts of physical and mental illness to make a comeback album in 2010. With time, the legend of the Elevators grew, and in 2007, author Paul Drummond published a richly detailed biography of the group, Eye Mind: The Saga of Roky Erickson and the 13th Floor Elevators, The Pioneers of Psychedelic Sound. In 2009, Drummond helped compile Sign of the Three Eyed Men, a ten-disc box set that finally brought together the Elevators' recorded legacy in its definitive form. All Music Bio
Gold Star Studios Houston, TX. June 1966
01 - You Can't Hurt Me Anymore 02 - Before You Accuse Me 03 - You Gotta Take That Girl 04 - Splash 1 05 - Fire Engine 06 - Roller Coaster 07 - Monkey Island 08 - Thrue the Rhythm
Summit Sound Studios Dallas, Tx. Oct. 1967
09 - Tried to Hide 10 - Roller Coaster 11 - Fire Engine 12 - Youre Gonna Miss Me 13 - Monkey Island 14 - Dont Fall Down 15 - You Dont Know 16 - Thru The Rhythm 17 - Tried To Hide
Andrus Studios Houston, Tx. Jan. 1967
18 - Levitation
Andrus Studios Houston, Tx. Sept. 1967
19 - Splash 1 20 - Right Track Now 21 - Dust
I.A.Studios Houston, Tx. March 1968
22 - Fire in My Bones 23 - I Dont Ever Wanna Come Down
"COLD SUN" left to right : "Billy Miller", "Hugh Patton", "Mike Ritchey", "Tom Mcgarrigle" live in the Palmer Auditorium, circa 1971
Austin band with an obvious "13th Floor Elevators" influence recorded this amazing Psychedelic demo LP in 1970. Cold Sun had a lot of things going for them. They were from Austin, TX in the 1960s, and hung out with Roky Erickson and the Elevators. They had an electric autoharp, which sounds sort of like three 12-string Rickenbackers being played at once with a velvet pick. My first couple times through this album, I couldn’t figure out what the shit was making that noise.
Cold Sun clearly took a lot of hallucinogenic drugs, which went well with the fact that they had a real thing for reptiles. Whoever wrote the lyrics really liked snakes and lizards and other scaly things, and sang about them in songs.
It’s hard to describe the Cold Sun sound—maybe if you could imagine the 13th Floor Elevators, and then make that image very, very blurry, and at times aimless, and add a weird, dreamy autoharp . . . that’s sort of it. Or, maybe more accurately, it sounds like humanoid-reptilian beings living inside of a hollow earth picked up on radio transmissions from Texas in 1966, and attempted to pay tribute to them in their own band. As biology would have it, their reptilian ears and brains couldn’t quite process how rock and roll worked, so they came up with their best approximation of it via their evil reptile music. Also, they’ve never seen the sun. Or maybe the sun is cold in there.
"Roky Erickson"'s first backing band, Bleibalien, were essentially made up of members from "Cold Sun".
An interesting partial review from the Little Black Egg Blog Thanks
Bubble Puppy was a Texan psychedelic rock band formed in 1967 in Austin. The name "Bubble Puppy" was taken from "Centrifugal Bumble-Puppy", a fictitious children's game in Aldous Huxley's Brave New World. "Hot Smoke & Sasafrass" was a line lifted from an episode of The Beverly Hillbillies.
They started rehearsing in San Antonio in 1967 using a temporary name Willowdale Handcar Changing their name to Bubble Puppy, they headed for Austin where they played at the now legendary Vulcan Gas Company but after being signed by International Artists they moved on to Houston. Their first 45 reached No. 9 in the U.S. charts in March 1969 and combined hard rock with fresh vocal harmonies. Their album, which actually reached No. 176 in the U.S. Album Charts, was similar in style and, although their three subsequent 45s never achieved the success of the first, they became International Artist's most successful act after the 13th Floor Elevators. During a tour with Steppenwolf Nick St. Nicholas convinced them to move to California which they did signing to Steppenwolf's ABC/Dunhill label. Here they changed their name to Demian issuing an album in 1971. Later in 1977 they reformed as Sirius. However, the story was not over. They re-emerged in 1987 with a new album which contained new versions of their old classics as well as fresh material but which frankly showed them to be a shadow of their former selves. (Fuzz, Acid & Flowers)
Personnel: ROY COX Bass DAVID FORE Drums TODD POTTER Guitar ROD PRINCE Lead Guitar
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