Tag Archives: Blues

Collection Highlight: The Clifford Antone Lectures

Before his death in 2006, club owner and Austin music scene icon Clifford Antone brought his vast knowledge of music — more specifically the blues and rock and roll — to the Forty Acres for a lecture series hosted by the Department of Sociology called “The History of the Blues According to Clifford Antone.”

Antone’s affable style and enthusiasm for the subject matter easily won over students of the 12-week guest spot in Dr. Lester Kurtz’s course, “Blues, Race and Social Change” (SOC 308).

Antone was the founder of his namesake club Antone’s, a legendary blues club that launched the careers of Texas music artists like Stevie Ray Vaughan, the Fabulous Thunderbirds and Charlie Sexton, and helped Austin to become “The Live Music Capital of the World.”

This is a series of lectures was recorded and resides both in the collection of the Fine Arts Library and online at the university’s digital repository, Texas ScholarWorks.

Music Royalty from Fine Arts

The Best of Sir Douglas Quintet (1966). From the Fine Arts Library's HMRC.
The Best of Sir Douglas Quintet (1966). From the Fine Arts Library’s HMRC.

The Best of Sir Douglas Quintet is a classic album from an Austin transplant musician that came to the Libraries as part of the KUT Collection last year, when we received the beloved Austin radio station’s back catalog of 4000 LPs and 60,000 CDs.

Formed by Doug Sahm and his friend Augie Meyers in 1965 at the suggestion of record producer Huey Meaux, the Sir Douglas Quintet presented a Texas-regional rock and roots sound that belied their rather British-sounding name — a name chosen specifically to connect the band to the ongoing British Invasion period of music occurring at the time. Their unique Tex-Mex style rock was influenced by the cross-cultural currents of south and central Texas, where the sounds and traditions of Mexico, Germany, Acadian-Creole and the African-American south commingled.

The band actually garnered a top-20 hit with “She’s About a Mover,” but broke up after members were arrested on marijuana possession charges at the Corpus Christi airport. The arrest led Sahm to move to San Francisco, but Sir Douglas Quintet eventually re-formed with a new lineup, releasing the successful single and album Mendocino in 1969.

Bob Dylan was even a fan of the band, once stating, “Look, for me right now there are three groups: Butterfield, The Byrds and the Sir Douglas Quintet.”

Once added to the Fine Arts Library the music in the KUT Collection will more than double the library’s existing audio recordings, with the LPs being added to this Historical Music Recordings Collection.

Please help to make this collection available for research, study and enjoyment by supporting the Fine Arts Library.

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