Mendocino – SIR DOUGLAS QUINTET***

Mendocino/I Don’t Want/I Wanna Be Your Mama Again/At The Crossroads/If You Really Want Me To I’ll Go/And It Didn’t Even Being Me Down/Lawd I’m Just A Country Boy/She’s About A Mover/Texas Me/Oh Baby It Just Doesn’t Matter

The Texan rock group Sir Douglas Quintet enjoyed a short lived commercial revival with the minor hit single Mendocino. They were noted for melding Texan and Mexican music into a sub-genre known as Tex-Mex. (US:81)

“All the eclectic elements that Doug Sahm would return to again and again are here - Tex-Mex, country, blues, soul - with perhaps a stronger psychedelic rock influence than anything that came later. Although everything he recorded - at least that I've heard - is worth spending some time with, I don't think he ever reached the passion present in these songs, and it is beyond comprehension that he is not better known. There are no weak songs here, and each works in such a different way.”

“This is Tex-Mex with a garage sound. The mix is inventive. The sound is a lot more spare. The more I hear Mendocino the more I realize how inventive this music was. The mix of blues, garage and Mexican influences is quite a fusion.”

“Sir Doug was seminal to the revival and appreciation of Texas music in the 1970s and this is the precursor to and, maybe the best - certainly, the purest - manifestation of his vast body of work.”

“The music on this album is a mix of surprisingly many styles, but mostly country rock. That is slightly inaccurate though, because a lot of this material is something else. There are a few cuts of psychedelic rock/garage rock flavoured stuff and some minor soul moves in one or two songs.”

“Somewhat lightweight R & B and country flavoured pop, with guitar, that cheesy sounding organ they always use, but with a good period flavour.”

“At a time when psychedelia was burning out, Doug Sahm tossed out this wonderful anachronism. Sahm and the Quintet were always distinguished by their genrestraddling countrified soulful swamp rock, but here the diversity is in full bloom. Influences abound, from Ray Charles to the beautiful Tex-Mex styled ballads, to hard hitting honky-tonk, to horn-driven white soul garage rock.”