Creem
April 1973
Hi, welcome to 1973! (You’re probably used to it by now, but this was written in January.) It’s going to be a banner year for rackkanrill (heavy reggae influence on the horizon), starting out with the release of a whole batch of great new album covers. Grin’s All Out is just stunning, the Guess Who goes down in history, and Claudia Linnear’s Phew—well, she must be the most gorgeous woman who ever cut a record (best picture is on the inside—makes Freda Payne look like Mrs. Miller—a sure winner on the Vogue charts). Best of all may be Gilbert Shelton’s cartoon on the front of the new Doug Sahm extravaganza. Check out that high-steppin’ hillbilly in the purple shirt—yes sir, that’s Bob Dylan, just a-pickin’ and a-grinnin’, getting his chops down in preparation for session work (they’ll say “he just dropped in,” but don’t you believe it) with Rita Coolidge, Delaney Bramlett, Marjoe, and the Rowan Brothers.
As I said, the cover is fine (pic of Bob on the back, too). The album may be Sir Doug’s dullest, but let’s not push these guys too hard. Music is its own reward. The people who made this platter had a fine time doing it, and that’s all that really matters, right?
Oh, we might get picky and say that David “Demon” Bromberg (a beatnik Mickey Dolenz, ’cept he don’t sing as good) infects every cut he touches with his emotionless, mindless, pointless dobro-doodle, and that not only is his music a perfect example of not knowing what to leave out, heought to be locked out. We could fret that the sound of the album is as homogenized as that city-slick peanut butter The Greening of America came down so hard on, which means that Charles Reich wouldn’t like it—something to consider, these days—but then, Charles is a nice guy, and this is a nice record. We might be caught fessin’ up that the only tracks to rise out of the sink are standard Texas blues, and only because their form, not their execution, is distinctive—nothing here to compare to the barroom funk of The Return of Doug Saldaña. I wouldn’t want to be the one to say it, but the disc does feature the worst harp and the least expressive and least audible singing Bob Dylan has ever recorded. And when the lights are low, we might cop to the likelihood that Bob’s original contribution to the LP, “Wallflowers,” shows that he has absorbed his John Prine influences very well, and has succeeded in writing and whining a tune that could by no stretch of the imagination have the slightest effect on anybody.
But there’s no sense to any of this. These guys have given us a lot, more than we can ever repay. It’s up to us to give it back. Because wherever music is, spring can’t be far behind.
Doug Sahm, Doug Sahm and Band (Atlantic, 1973).