Any suggestions on airplane fairs ?

The funeral will be Mon or Tue.

I just called Freddy's wife Vangie and she said she heard it was a heart attack. For those of you who knew him, I think you'll agree that Doug was, shall we say, a "unique" character. His passing marks the end of a musician who had a lot of influence in melding country, blues, and Tex-Mex genres. Condolences go out to his family.

Once again, the music business has lost one of the “greats”.

All of us who were part of the "Doug Sahm story" have lost our captain. Exasasperating as he could sometimes be, he still always had our love and our respect of his awesome musicianship. None of us expected this to happen, he was the last guy you would expect to go like this. True to form, the Texas Tornado has blazed his own path.

Goodbye, Captain.

He will not be replaced!

(Forumites: Jimmy Grabowski is a steel player, no longer playing, that was very influential in the western swing circuit in Central TX in the 1950's and 1960's.)

Doug came up to me one night at the Broken Spoke and talking like he had 9-too-many cups of coffee, said that he'd "discovered the secret to steel guitar, man! It's the total groove! The Jimmy Grabowski tuning, man... Jimmy Grabowski. It's that Scorpio thing, man. That Scorpio groove. Jimmy, man. F****in' awesome groove. It's that tuning, man."

I picked up that he was jazzed about the tuning. He hauled out his National doubleneck and sat in with the band... I think it was with Gary P. Nunn. He was totally wild. Doug was a very enthusiastic steel player.

I think Doug really loved his persona as a steel player, and he really respected steel players. I believe Tommy Detamore was Doug's last steel player, or was on one of Doug's last projects, for sure.

I'd also like to add my $.02 about Doug and his musical talent. He could nail any type of roots American music perfectly. He had the innate ability to get to the absolute essence of a distinct style, and make it part of his own music. Regardless of whether the music was rock, blues, or country. He could sing like Lefty Frizzell. Play guitar like T.Bone Walker. He was a total universalist, and a traditionalist at the same time.

I once saw him sit in with Alvin Crow's western swing band and do a 20 minute medley of British rock from 1963 to 1970, calling off band names ("Kinks... Animals..."), songs, and then playing lick for lick and inflection for inflection of the originals. You had to have been there to appreciate a totally awesome performance. Then he did 15 minutes of Lefty Frizzell, perfectly. Then a medley of "And the Rains Came,""Mendocino,"" and the ultimate "She's About a Mover." This was at the old Skyline Club on North Lamar in Austin, a sweaty old non-air-conditioned Texas honky-tonk jam-packed in the heat of summer. Real cold beer. It was a perfect musical night.

He was fun to play steel for, incidentally. Though sometimes going on the road with him could be emotionally challenging.

I'm leaving to go to the funeral now, and I expect to see a whole lot of old pickers. Should be a packed house, which is what Doug always wanted.

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About half way through the set Doug says...”Oh yea, I want to introduce you to a friend of mine from Nashville, TN (turns to the guitar player)...Charlie Daniels!”. Believe it or not in 1970 I had never heard of Charlie Daniels, but I was sure impressed. Then Doug reaches back behind his amp, drags out an old beat up fiddle and kicks off “Is Anybody goin’ to San Antone”...yea, best I remember it was Doug that played fiddle, not Charlie (although my mind is a little foggy on that one). They then proceeded to do about a 10 minute medley of a lot of old country standards.

To this day I am convinced that 90% of the LA crowd that night never really understood what they were seeing. But Doug and Charlie walked off stage that night to a standing ovation! Doug Sahm was the master of the “unexpected”!

I wish he was still here.

Doug Sahm made page 1 of the San Antonio Express & News (with a large pic of the memorial service). I think he probably did that once or twice, but I don’t remember when he was the “lead” story. Several quotes from the article titled “Farewell to a Troubadour” by Jim Beal our local music writer...

“About a thousand people swarmed Sunset Memorial Park & Funeral Home to send Sahm off in style”.
Doug, as Herb Steiner mentioned, always wanted a packed house. Well, he got one!!

“While cowboy singers stood with blues pickers and poets and said ‘Way too soon’.”...
There were many “names” mentioned in the article. Most of them were local players that you would not know, but there were also people like Lee Roy Parnell, Augie Myers, Ray Wiley Hubbard, Doug Clifford (Creedence Clearwater’s drummer).

A quote from Lee Roy Parnell...
“A friend was saying this was a tragedy. No, the tragedy would have been if Doug Sahm would have never been born.”

A quote from Jim Beal...
“Wreaths and photos ringed the chapel. A fiddle and a triple-neck Fender Steel guitar, Sahm’s first instrument, flanked the coffin.”

Even as Doug went out the door...he was a steel player. Now, if that is not a tribute to a great musician and our instrument, I don’t think I have ever seen one. God rest him in peace...he was one of “ours”.

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Every Country, Dance band did this song. It was the most played song in bands for years here.

I`ve heard Doug a couple of times with Larry Campell(sp?) on steel. Doug and Larry did "Orange blossom special" and "Faded Love" with twin fiddles and brought the house down here in Bergen back in the 80`s.

One of the great is gone and will be missed.