Texas Tornados- Live from Austin, TX

Call it serendipity or genius, but when four legends of Texas music pooled their talents in December 1989, a new sound was born: the Texas Tornados. The band was new but its members were no strangers to center stage. Freddy Fender was a mega-star with his hits Wasted Days and Wasted Nights and Before the Next Teardrop Falls. Doug Sahm and Augie Meyers formed the The Sir Douglas Quintet in San Antonio in the mid- 60 s in a sound that shook up the pop charts with She s About a Mover. Then there s Flaco Jimenez, who, along with his father and brother used their accordions to invent their own music genre. Together this Tex-Mex Revue created a raucous, infectious, danceable sound that ranks as an all-time Austin City Limits favorite

As the ebullient ringleader of this all-star Lone Star quartet, Doug Sahm tells this 1990 Austin City Limits crowd that "it's rock and roll conjunto time!" Such a description barely hints at the raucous vitality of the band's bilingual, Tex-Mex border music. The set (also available on DVD) finds Freddy Fender resurrecting his country smashes "Wasted Days and Wasted Nights" and "Before the Next Teardrop Falls," while the tremulous vocals of some of his earlier, regional hits suggest that he is to Tejano music what Aaron Neville is to New Orleans soul. Conjunto accordion kingpin Flaco Jimenez provides rollicking instrumental accents throughout, while singing with Fender on some of the Spanish-language material. From the rock and roll side, Sahm and keyboardist Augie Meyers reprise their hits from the Sir Douglas Quintet's 1960s heyday, with "She's About a Mover" and "Mendocino" steeped in the same musical roots they share with Fender and Jimenez. Such raucous, festive interplay plainly enjoys a home-field advantage in Austin, where the performance finds the foursome hailed as conquering heroes. (The release serves as a memorial to Sahm, who died in 1999 and to whom the album is dedicated.) --Don McLeese