Sir Douglas Quintet – She’s About a Mover

I’ve known this song since the 1980s, when I heard it many times on oldies channels at work. This Doug Sahm-written song has stuck with me through the decades. I thought about it recently when I ran across an ’80s or ’90s live version that he and keyboard player Augie Myers played. 

This song is a blend of Tex-Mex and garage rock, one of the best examples of 1960s garage rock. It’s bigger than the chart position suggests. It paved the way for the Tex-Mex sound to seep into rock, a little taste inside a pop single. Sixty years on, it still works.

It was 1964, the height of Beatlemania, and producer Huey P. Meaux had an idea. The British Invasion was cleaning up the charts, so why not package a bunch of Texas guys to look like they’d just flown in from England, but still sound like San Antonio? He slapped the name Sir Douglas Quintet on Doug Sahm’s new band, dressed them in matching suits, and let people assume they were another English import.

The band cut this song in Houston’s Gold Star Studios in late ’64. It was a fast, live-in-the-room recording session. Sahm had the riff for a while, but the groove came together when the drummer, Johnny Perez, locked into that hypnotic drum beat, pushing the song forward.

Augie Meyers’ organ was the hook. Huey Meaux knew the song’s repetitive, almost trance-like quality would make it stand out on the radio. The song peaked at #13 on the Billboard 100 and #15 in the UK in 1965. The song was named the number one Texas song by Texas Monthly. 

Doug’s voice has a Ray Charles-like sound, and they ended up with 3 top 40 songs and 4 songs in the Billboard 100.

I usually try to add live versions of the song in the era it came from, but I could not pass this one up…it’s just TOO good.  Doug Sahm and Augie Meyers are doing their thing in Austin, Texas, in 1975. I can’t stop listening to this version. Sahm had a great stage presence. 

She’s About a Mover

She was walking down the street
Looking fine as she could be, hey, hey
She was walking down the street
She’s looking fine as she could be, hey, hey
You know I love you, baby
Oh hear what is say, hey, hey

She walked right up to me
Said, “Hey, big boy, what’s your name?”
She walked right up to me
Said, “Hey, big boy, what’s your name?” Hey, hey
We had love and conversation
Oh yeah, what I say, hey hey

She’s about a mover
She’s about a mover
She’s about a mover
She’s about a mover
Hey, hey

She’s about a mover
She’s about a mover
You know I love you, baby
Oh yeah, what I say, yeah, hey

Now, she walked right up to me, talkin’ about me
She said, “Hey, big boy, what’s your name?”
Well, she walked right up to me
Said, “Hey, big boy, what’s your name?”
We had love and conversation
Oh yeah, what I say, hey hey

She’s about a mover
She’s about a mover
She’s about a mover
She’s about a mover, hey

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Author: Badfinger (Max)

Power Pop fan, Baseball, Beatles, Alternative music, old movies, and tv show fan. Also anything to do with pop culture in the 60s and 70s... I'm also a songwriter, bass and guitar player. Not the slightest bit interested in politics at all.

61 thoughts on “Sir Douglas Quintet – She’s About a Mover”

  3. The hypnotic organ riff (even in the instrumental breaks it stays pretty much the same) reminds me of “96 Tears” by ? and the Mysterians. On the original recording I could imagine the bass line played on a guitarrón – though the video makes it clear they want you to think they’re British. And I can’t pass up mentioning Sahm’s later work in the Texas Tornados, when he and Augie Meyers teamed up with Freddy Fender and Flaco Jiménez to erase any doubt that they were from San Antonio.

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    1. I just watched them on the David Letterman show…they introduced Flaco and thanks to you I knew of him.
      It’s Sahm’s live version that really hypnotized me…I kept going back to that version everytime. I just started to watch the original concert with him. They have another song called When the Rains Came that is really good. The guy had a lot of charisma

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    2. I don’t know if you’ve heard it or not, but the Texas Tornados did “96 Tears” on the Live From Austin, TX album. I had bought it off Bandcamp and hadn’t listened to it for a while, and there it was, the last song.

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    1. Oh yea….there is some Ray Charles in there…this is another time that I like the live version better. This song was meant to be played live.

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      1. Sorry guys to butt in…I just found another one…The Rains Came…I think I like that one better than this one. It was top 40 at #31…. I’m going to listen to that full concert…I wanted to anyway. That live cut just won me over.

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      2. Thanks. That one I didn’t remember. Just listened to it and it rang no bells. The organ solo sounds like a roller rink. I just listened to “Nuevo Laredo” which adds steel guitar and mariachi-sounding trumpets to the Sir Douglas sound. If anyone doubts they broke new ground, I think that song is important. Augie Meyers is still around. I wonder how many Vox Continentals he’s gone through in 60 years? Does he have a garage full of them for parts, like folks with old cars?

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      3. I saw an interview with Augie Meyers…on how he met Doug Sahm. They were around 12 and Augie’s parents owned a store and they started to go through baseball cards and found out that the other played.
        You know what? I bet he does have all kinds of parts to that organ after playing them so long. No telling how many the man went through!
        Here is a short piece of him talking about meeing Sahm.

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      4. Love the baseball card story! And that he came to play piano (later organ) instead of guitar because of polio affecting his left side. (Now that’s something you have to as old or older than I am to remember if you’re from the US.) I just read that the first gig the Texas Tornados played was at Slim’s Nightclub in San Francisco in 1989. Why wasn’t I there? (Maybe still recovering from the earthquake.) Slim’s was owned by Boz Skaggs. I saw Sun Ra and his Arkestra there on Hallowe’en night 1988 – a night I’ll never forget.

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      5. Yea I was lucky I missed the polio epidemic. Well I’ll be digging into both of their careers now.
        Wow…yea I remember that earthquake because being a Dodger fan I was rooting against the Giants and then live on air it happened.
        Too bad you missed that one! Sounds like a cool place.

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  6. Totally had no recollection of this song until it hit the chorus, then it sounded a bit familiar. Odd juxtapositioning between sound and look- a good idea though I don’t know how well they pulled it off

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    1. After getting into this I started to listen to Doug Sahm’s other things…I really like this guy. In a band with Freddie Fender called the Texas Tornados and they did some great stuff in the 80s and 90s.

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  8. Absolutely love this song. They had quite a bit of competition back then as you said so being able to make a mark is an accomplishment for sure. I have listened to this song so many times but I have never watched that video. That’s gold right there!

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  9. Cool song, Max. I was a bit reminded of The Beatles’ “She’s a Woman,” probably in part because you mentioned Sir Douglas Quintet’s deliberate “British Invasion look.” And, yes, there’s also a bit of Ray Charles in here, reinforced by the line, “Oh yeah, what I say, hey hey.” That live clip from the ’80s and ’90s is so good!

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  10. Wow!

    I never heard of anyone talking about Sir Douglas Quintet!

    I have this in my collection, and if you haven’t already, you should listen to Mendocino, the title track.

    I promise – that’s probably the strongest earworm you’ll hear all year.

    😂

    Colin

    On Sat, 16 Aug 2025, 13:46 PowerPop… An Eclectic Collection of P

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    1. I’ll give Mendocino another spin today though in your honor Colin! I’ve only heard him doing it with The Texas Tornados. There is another song called “The Rains Came” as well that you probably have.

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  12. yes was always aware of Mendocino forever, then I bought a best of and found this tune among others…funny thing, a friend actually has a vacation home in Mendocino….and knowing him, that song had a lot to do with the choice

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    1. I really am liking these guys. I’m finding more and more that I like…and their other projects as well.
      So I guess he was a fan!

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      2. …or Nirvana. I do know that some people have moved to Maine because of Stephen King…of the way he describes it in some of his books.

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  13. So the singer in both videos is the same person? Dayum, he aged well lol. I do remember this song but knew nothing about the background of it. It reminds me a little of EZ Rider song. So funny how they tried to Beatlefy the group to do well on the charts.

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  16. ‘Mendicino’ was the one that clicked over here. ‘I thought ‘Mendicino’ was the name of the girl in the song for so long. I shoulds listened to the lyrics.I’ve heard it is a lovely place.

    As far as moving to some place because it sounds good…there’s a lil’ place in Kalamazoo County that hasn’t had a rash of people rushing to come to it, so far😉. But who knows, go there once you might just want to come back again?

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    1. “I’ve Got a Gal….” I haven’t heard that in forever! Yea Mednicino is the one I’ll post next when I hit them again. It was something about Doug Sahm that made me want to watch that dang live video over and over again. I gotta find that complete concert.

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  18. Yep, they pulled a good one with that name, a bunch of Tex-Mex musicians from San Antonio. I saw them at a summer evening street dance in Alamo Plaza in San Antonio, not long after their record dropped. That was before everyone carried a switchblade and a gun, so it was pretty safe. That cheesy Vox Continental Organ made them sound so very British, until they opened their mouth to sing. Years later, Doug and Augie started a band called the Texas Tornadoes with Flaco and Freddy Fender; they were damn good, too. Another “not so British” band out of South Texas, The Dukes Of Edinburg, not Scotland, but Edinburg, Texas, that is.

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    1. Phil, I could not stop watching that live clip of Doug and Augie. I do want to hear more music from him. I’m going to check out the Tornados some more.
      I guess faking being British was the thing to do then.

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      1. It was for a while. Two of ZZ Top, then known as American Blues did it. They were in a fake Zombies band that toured and actually did well. The Zombies knew nothing about it since they had disbanded. They even used fake English accents. Quite a farce, but they pulled it off for a while.

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      3. Yeah, Dusty Hill and Frank Beard were in that band, based out of Dallas, around 1968, then went on to form ZZ Top in 69. Dusty wrote about it in an interview I read, that’s how I found out about it. I saw the band Argent in Port Aransas Texas in 1969 at the Dunes Dance land on the beach. Ron Argent was the main player, and he had been a part of the Zombies back in the mid sixties. I thought they were fake until I talked to the band on their break. All from England and very British. Weird that they were playing in Texas in a beach club.

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