Classic rock is everywhere. It’s on radio stations, in the elevators, in stores, in commercials, in movies, and on television shows. Since so many of the creators of this music have now sold their rights, classic rock is not only the sound of the past and present, it is also the sound of the future.
There were great albums that never made it into the canon of classic rock. For the sake of this column, I am going to call them Lost Classics.
This column focuses on Mendocino, by the Sir Douglas Quintet.
Overview
Mendocino is the third album by the Sir Douglas Quintet, released in the spring of 1969. Their first album was called The Best of the Sir Douglas Quintet. Somebody thought this would be a funny name for a first album. The record didn’t do well, but it did spawn the Quintet’s biggest hit, 1965’s She’s About a Mover.
Their second album was 1968’s The Sir Douglas Quintet+2=Honky Blues. It’s a staggering excursion into a jazzed-up blues sound, featuring horns and some wild songs. My favorite song title from this album is You Never Get Too Big And You Sure Don't Get Too Heavy, That You Don't Have To Stop And Pay Some Dues Sometimes. And guess what, it’s a great song. Honky Blues is highly recommended and deserves a Lost Classics column all its own.
On Mendocino, the proceedings are somewhat stripped down. It’s just the Quintet, with Doug on vocals and string instruments, Frank Morin on vocals and horns, Harry Kagan on bass, Augie Meyers on Continental Vox organ, piano and keyboards, and John Perez on drums.
Doug Sahm is a powerhouse. A great guitar player and singer, he had mastered steel guitar by the age of five and even got to sit in with the great Hank Williams. By the time he was a teenager, he was mixing up R’n’B with Latino influences. The British Invasion gave birth to the Sir Douglas moniker. This was a time when American bands were thrown out of work as The Beatles and the Rolling Stones dominated the record charts. All their British friends were outselling the American R’n’B groups. The Animals, Gerry and the Pacemakers, and even Herman’s Hermits were doing better than American groups. It was time to start imitating.
The Quintet got Prince Valiant haircuts, put on suits, and played their hardcore Tex-Mex R’n’B music with the same intensity as always. You can see them on Shindig via YouTube. You can also see them on the other teen music show of the time, Hullabaloo! On that show, they are presented in a fake castle setting, with beautiful models decked out in knightly attire, posing motionless.
In 1965, they had a hit with the song they performed on those shows, She’s About A Mover, a Ray Charles-type number. Augie Meyers, the organist of the Quintet, was quoted in Magnet magazine as saying, “We were doing things different way back when, 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.” The Quintet was mixing things up.
They had a follow-up minor hit with The Rains Came. Their manager decided that two minor hits were good enough for a greatest hits collection, and their first album was born. It featured material from their club sets, from She’s About A Mover to He’s In The Jailhouse Now, the old Jimmie Rodgers standby.
Mendocino was released in April of 1969. The Sir Douglas name remained, but nothing else was left of the faux-British Invasion scam. 1969 was hippie time. The Quintet was a long-haired Texas roadhouse band, and they knew their business. The band relocated back to the Lone Star State after their San Francisco sojourn, which had failed to make them famous.
The Songs
Mendocino is the first song on the album. The rhythm section is tight, and the Vox Continental organ, powered by Augie Meyers, keeps the song moving. A paean to a hippie paradise in a small Northern California coastal town, the groove is irresistible. It would make a great roller-skating song. It’s got feel, soulful vocals, and the aforementioned deep groove. The single rose to #27 on Billboard’s Top 100 chart. It spent 15 weeks on the chart.
I Don’t Want is the next song. Doug wants somebody to love. The Vox organ is still there to fill up the sound, the guitar plays a figure throughout, and someone is singing harmony. The guitar steps up for a short solo that has nothing to do with acid-rock. Doug’s singing style is a bit reminiscent of Delbert McClinton, another Texas roadhouse king.
I Want to Be Your Mama Again was later covered by Tracy Nelson. This is a soul ballad that utilizes a combination of major/minor chord interplay. There’s some beautiful piano by Meyers throughout the track, tying it all together. The track occasionally veers into heavy reverb-soaked freakout territory, but it always comes back to the soul ballad it is. “You’ll cry, you’ll cry for me, but I’ll be in infinity, where are you gonna find me?” is a favorite weird lyric.
The next song is At The Crossroads. It is not related to the Robert Johnson song. It’s about standing at a crossroads in one’s life, and trying to choose a way. Some of the songs on this album deal with Sahm’s transitions from Texas to San Francisco and back to Texas. This is another soulful ballad with beautiful instrumentation, soulful vocals, and the most quotable lyric:
“You can teach me lots of lessons, you can bring me lots of gold, but you just can’t live in Texas if you don’t have a lot of soul.” This is four and a half minutes of beautiful, moody, heartbroken confessions.
Next up is If You Really Want Me To, I’ll Go. This is a Delbert McClinton song. Delbert was a fellow Texas roadhouse musician. He was best known for giving John Lennon some tips on harmonica playing when he played The Star Club in Hamburg. It was released in 1965 by the Ron-Dells, an early band of McClinton’s. Doug sings it soulfully, and the arrangement has been updated from the Ron-Del’s single. A teenage love lament is turned into a more mature song of lost love.
And It Didn’t Even Bring Me Down. A lush bed of horns and Vox organ brings us in, then Doug is singing “It was a calm occasion/ you said it was all my fault/ it didn’t even bring me down.” It’s about a break-up that didn’t even bring him down. There’s a beautiful horn arrangement supported by Meyers on the organ and the great rhythm section. The arrangements of all these songs are so lived-in, so warm, and in such a groove, and this is no exception.
Lawd, I’m Just A Country Boy in This Great Big Freaky City. Apparently, the big city freaked him out. Some nice freaky guitar, heard after Doug shouts, “Play it, Charlie!” He pronounces the name as Cholly. Doug is the only guitarist credited on the album. This is surprising because of the wide range of guitar styles employed. Doug was known to use many styles of music, and he mastered a number of string instruments early on in his life. It’s amazing if it’s true that he is the only guitar player on the album.
She’s About A Mover is next. It was their minor hit from 1965, so they recycled it. More precision organ, more Tex-Mex rhythms, and a call from Doug, “ Do your thing, Augie!” Augie does his thing on the Vox. The song works as well as ever, and we get some more freaky guitar.
Texas Me. “I wonder what happened to that man inside.” Don’t we all? This song is kicked off by twin fiddles playing Texas country swing licks over a driving beat. Doug name-checks his favorite Texas spots, including a barbershop. He refers to Sausalito, a place that made him wonder “where I ought to be.” It’s a deep song. Doug is pondering whether he can find his real self, the “real old Texas me.” One of the themes of the album is Doug’s struggle for success and his transitions from Texas to San Francisco and back to Texas.
Oh, Baby, It Just Don’t Matter. Here’s a garage-rock psych classic. He tosses off his troubles and lets the groove take over. His voice is distorted, which is unusual as he is usually a smooth singer. It’s a solid workout meant to get people on the dance floor. It works for me.
This band plays with such confidence and mastery that they can take a throwaway song like this and make it a classic. It should have been a hit.
My Take
While researching this article, I read that the band recorded Mendocino, and it became a modest hit. Then they needed to record an album to go with it. The album was recorded quickly, which may also include the songwriting process. Augie Meyers and Doug Sahm had been in bands together for years. The original band came together when Doug’s band and Augie’s band both opened for the Dave Clark Five. Doug and Augie had known each other since they were 12. They blended their bands and started gigging. They became the Sir Douglas Quintet, and later they were both founders of the Texas Tornados along with Freddie Fender and the late Flaco Jimenez. Augie Meyers went on to play and record with a long and impressive list of artists and is still active in the music business.
Augie and Doug made a formidable pairing of musicians. They were both steeped in American forms of music as well as Mexican forms. When you hear Augie playing the Vox on the Quintet records, you are hearing something unique. His playing is precise and often percussive. It improves every record on which it appears. When he and Doug are driving the band, magic happens. When they teamed up with Freddy Fender and Flaco Jimenez, they formed a supergroup that put Tex-Mex and conjunto on the charts. Is there a reason that these two bands are not in the Rock Hall of Fame? I think not. They belong there, in the category of Musical Excellence.
Sidebar
The Sir Douglas Quintet was not the only rock group to have a hit with a Tex-Mex-based sound. Sam the Sham and the Pharaohs, another band with a gimmick (they dressed like pharaohs, sort of), had a hit with Wooly Bully in 1965. The record sold a million copies during the height of the British Invasion. They were the first American group to accomplish this when the British bands dominated the charts.
In 1966, (Question Mark) ? and the Mysterians went to number one on the Billboard chart with 96 Tears. Based on a hypnotic groove established by the mighty Vox Continental organ, it’s a perfect pop song for the time. It sounds like what it is, a garage-rock band composed of young guys of Mexican heritage living in Michigan. Windsor’s great radio station CKLW broke the record by playing it repeatedly throughout their programming day. It was the Mysterians’ only hit, but it made an impact.
I would argue that these Tex-Mex groups broke the stranglehold the British Invasion bands had on the record charts of the time. They did it by doing something the British groups couldn’t do. They introduced authentic Texas roots music to American popular music. If Sam the Sham, and Question Mark and the Mysterians, had entered the burgeoning album market of the time, as the Quintet did, the format would have made even deeper inroads into American music.
Wrap-Up
Mendocino has been one of my favorite albums since 1969, when I bought the album and put it on my turntable. It is quintessential American music, mixing Texas roots with deep soul and Tex-Mex flavors. The singing is soulful, the songwriting is deep and personal. Everything about the album is remarkable. You would do well to give it a listen. It will improve your life.
A Tip of the Hat to resources I used.
Dave Marsh’s The Roots Genius of Doug Sahm from December of 2002, published by counterpunch.org. Marsh is a rock writer from way back, and a bit of a contrarian. I was surprised to find he has a soft spot for Doug Sahm. Great article.
Mitch Myers: Doug Sahm: A Lone Star State of Mind (Expanded Edition) from November 2020. This was a recommendation I found in Dave Marsh’s article. It’s a great one. It gives us a great feel for how Doug was seen in Texas. He was a superstar. Here we find the quote from musician Joe “King” Carrusco: “The biggest funeral they ever had in San Antonio was Doug’s, and the next one will be when Augie goes.” The article also references Willie Nelson in a Doug Sahm context. It’s a good read.
Doug Sahm and the Sir Douglas Quintet: A Brief History by Joseph Levy. From The Doug Sahm Pages.
Vox Continental: Wikipedia. A storehouse of information on the great Vox Continental organ that Augie Meyers plays so well. You’ve heard it more than you know. A great read.
Augie Meyers: Wikipedia. Some good biographical and professional information about Augie Meyer. Meyer is an important figure in the Doug Sahm story. Without Augie there is no Sir Douglas Quintet as we know it. No Texas Tornados as we know them.
Augie Myers in the Texas Monthly, 2010. This is a wonderful short interview with Augie. There are a few tidbits of valuable new information. Augie brought conjunto accordionist Flaco Jimenez into the Texas Tornados, and Flaco went on to have a great career until the day he died, which was July 31, 2025. Flaco also had a long and fruitful association with Ry Cooder. Augie continued his association with Doug Sahm until 1999, when Doug passed away. It’s one of music’s great partnerships. Augie’s still kicking at 85.
https://augiemeyers.com/
A Late Find…
The Evolution of Texas-Mexican Conjunto Music by Teresa Palomo Acosta. A great resource on the history of conjunto. Recommended reading. Conjunto influenced Doug Sahm and Augie Meyers. Flaco Jimenez became the leading proponent of this music, and his father was a star of the music before him.