Augie Meyers (1940-2026)
A tribute to the Texas legend who co-founded Sir Douglas Quintet and Texas Tornados with Doug Sahm. Includes a recommended discography which happens to include some of my all-time favorite records.
Whether you listened to the Sir Douglas Quintet or not, you recognize the sound of Augie Meyers. Maybe you know it from his session work—his organ is one of the first instruments to crawl out of the mix on Bob Dylan’s Time Out of Mind—or maybe it’s through the musicians who adopted his Vox Continental organ technique as their own. Meyer wasn’t the first rocker to play a Vox Continental, but the greasy, propulsive style he flaunted on “She’s About a Mover” laid the foundation for exploitative garage rock and manic new wave; it’s hard not to hear Elvis Costello & the Attractions tear through “Radio Radio” and hear echoes of Meyers.
As much as his instrumental style, Meyers’ borderless aesthetic seeped into the American musical mainstream. The San Antonio native stood at the crossroads of blues, country, rock, and Tejano, gliding between genres with ease, splicing styles without hesitation. These fusions happened from the start—Meyers characterized “She’s About a Mover” as a “polka with a rock and roll beat”—and grew progressively entangled as the Sir Douglas Quintet embraced the cosmic hippie lifestyle at the instigation of Doug Sahm, the band’s ringleader.
Meyers and Sahm were ideal foils, the keyboardist mellowing the singer’s sunny exuberance as often as he heightened it with percussive runs. They complemented each other offstage, too. Sahm said they recognized the chemistry: “It was just magical. Me and Augie had magic together, we realized that.” Huey P. Meaux, who produced the earliest Sir Douglas Quintet records, said, “Augie was the brain behind the business part. Doug hated it, so I talked to Augie when I wanted things done.”
Despite a friendship that took them from childhood through Sahm’s death in 1999, the pair were hardly inseparable. Stubborn Texans that they were, they each followed their own path, one that intersected as often as it ran parallel. Alone or together again, Meyers and Sahm shared a sensibility: they loved the sprawl of American music and prized independence. These beliefs are reflected in their recorded output, which could be as kinetic as a concert and just as ephemeral, too. From the Sir Douglas Quintet through the Texas Tornados, many of their best recordings were made with the support of a benevolent major or a prominent indie, but they never made enough money to stop gigging or cutting records for regional imprints, including Meyers’ own venture The Texas Re-Cord Co.
The sheer number of records, which drift and out of print with the wind, can make the combined discographies of Meyers, Sahm, and the Sir Douglas Quintet feel overwhelming. That’s also part of their charm. Whether they recorded in high-end New York studios with Jerry Wexler or kicked out grimy garage rock in a cheap Texas studio, the music never stopped: there was no beginning or end, it was just an endless groove.
The endless groove also reflected how different cultures intertwined in San Antonio.
