The Creation of "Texas Music": Doug Sahm's Atlantic Sessions and the Progressive-Country Era

Abstract

San Antonio native and progressive-country music icon, Doug Sahm, worked as a musician within the Mission City's ethnically diverse, working-class neighborhoods from the age of six, first as a multi-instrumentalist in the local country music scene and later as part of the area's blues and conjunto scenes. A third-generation German-American, Douglas Wayne Sahm was born on November 6, 1941. By his 30th birthday, he was widely recognized as a principal figure in the formation of a "Texas music" that brought together the vernacular styles of the Lone Star State's African-American, Anglo-American, and Tejano populations in order to articulate a Texan countercultural identity in the wake of the Civil Rights and Chicano movements, conflicts about the Vietnam War, and widespread economic change throughout the Sun Belt.