Dan Del Santo and World Beat Music

He has been dead now for a quarter-century, but I am certain that people in Austin and beyond still remember Dan Del Santo. A larger-than-life figure, he hosted a Friday night world beat (a term he popularized but falsely claimed to have invented) music show on KUT-FM for 10 years, wrote more than 800 songs and was a veteran band leader. He also ran drugs, which led to his exile and eventual death in Mexico.

Born and raised in Poughkeepsie, New York, his father—a school bus driver—was a big bluegrass and country music fan. His mother, who favored blues, was a hopeless alcoholic who went insane. It fell primarily to Del Santo to care for her; there was, needless to say, a lot of familial drama. That may have been one reason for him and a fellow Eisenhower College student named Terry Lickona to take an 1,800-mile trip to Texas in 1974. Having heard about Willie Nelson’s July 4 musical “picnic,” they were among 100,000 or so people who gathered at Texas World Speedway in College Station for a three-day extravaganza featuring Nelson, Waylon Jennings, Jimmy Buffett, Doug Sahm, Leon Russell and several others. This event, in the opinion of music writer Joe Nick Patoski, “helped spark the rise of progressive country music and recognition of Austin as a music hub.” Lickona and Del Santo were a couple of no-name northerners in that mob at the racetrack’s infield, but in time they would grow in significance. They went back to Poughkeepsie, wrapped up their affairs and returned to Texas—this time to stay.

Del Santo started at or near the bottom, so to speak. He was selling flowers and busking on the Drag before he could think of joining a band. Then dressed in a black cowboy hat and cowboy boots, he was a hanger-on of the progressive country/anti-Nashville/outlaw bunch in which Nelson was preeminent. That did not last too long, however. By 1976, he had formed Dan Del Santo and His Professors of Pleasure, which was a good fit in Austin’s vibrant music scene. With him on guitar and vocals, they played at, among other sites, Club Foot, the Split Rail, the Continental Club, Liberty Lunch, Antone’s, Armadillo World Headquarters and KLRU’s Austin City Limits. Lickona had been busy himself, turning ACL into a prominent TV program.

That’s Life in the Big City, World Beat and Strength to Strength were three of the band’s albums. By the early 1980s, things were picking up for Del Santo. His music absorbed influences from African, Cuban, Middle Eastern, ska, jazz and reggae rhythms—no more cowboy stuff for him. In fact, he had taken to wearing performative African garb (designed and made at home by his common-law wife Anne Sherwood) onstage. Few said it then, but I will say it now: Del Santo, an Italian guy, a White guy, from upstate New York, was engaging in what is today called cultural appropriation. At any rate, Del Santo and his mates sometimes went on the road, playing at music festivals from New Orleans to London. I saw them many times at an outdoor venue, Symphony Square, and was enthralled most of all by Del Santo’s guitar work, his deep voice and the way he growled, shouted and whooped; he was a dominating stage presence.

Aided by his friendship with Lickona, he got a new gig. For a full decade, he was behind the mic for his “World Beat” show on KUT-FM in which he played non-Western music of all kinds. He used this platform not only to spread the word about such alternative musical genres, but politics. Del Santo had become an unabashed leftist if not a revolutionary, singing and speaking harshly about American culture, American life, American power. “Money Is Their Life Here in America,” “CIA, Strong-Arm Thugs of the USA” and “Da Police” are examples. He also campaigned on behalf of prominent Nigerian musician Fela Kuti, insisting that he had been imprisoned unjustly. And perhaps he had, as that country’s government was pretty corrupt. After Kuti (who had no fewer than 27 wives) was released, he was convinced that Del Santo’s advocacy had made a difference and gave a 1986 concert at the since-razed City Coliseum—with Del Santo’s band as the opening act. I was there for that memorable three-hour concert. Another Nigerian artist whom he boosted was King Sunny Ade, who appeared at Liberty Lunch in 1989. Again, I attended. I can tell you that both events were visual and auditory revelations.

Del Santo and I both lived in south Austin’s Travis Heights neighborhood, and that is how we met. The setting could not have been more prosaic. We were standing in line one day in 1990 or 1991 at the H-E-B grocery store at South Congress and Oltorf, waiting to check out. I gave him a shake, and we talked a little about his journey from Poughkeepsie to central Texas. He was calm, friendly and not at all pretentious. He gave no clue that his life was in tumult. The law had been watching him for a long time, and he was finally busted in Norfolk, Virginia where he had been arranging to transport more than a ton of high-grade marijuana across the country. After posting bail, he was released on his own recognizance and returned to Austin.

Awaiting trial, Del Santo made a momentous decision, fleeing south of the border. Without so much as a fare-the-well to Sherwood or their three young children, he split. Del Santo spent nine years as a fugitive in Oaxaca, Mexico. It is unclear how he chose Oaxaca or whether he had connections with that city down near Guatemala, but he made it his home with a new squeeze, Gloria Verastegui. Del Santo, much too extroverted to stay below the radar for long, was soon the leader of a band calling itself Perros del Sol (“Dogs of the Sun”). Word of his presence filtered back to Austin partly because John Taliaferro—formerly my editor at Third Coast magazine—happened to be in Oaxaca once and saw him playing!

Although Lickona’s friendship with Del Santo had soured, he was nevertheless willing to help. He met with Dick DeGuerin, a big-time attorney, and they explored DDS’s legal situation. DeGuerin seemed to think a deal with the feds could be worked out in which he would plea down, serve a relatively short sentence at a country-club prison and be a free man once again. Lickona and Del Santo had what must have been a bittersweet meeting in Oaxaca in late September 2001. Del Santo had been in two car accidents, was in severe pain and was taking copious painkillers. He listened to Lickona’s proposal but rejected it out of hand; a Del Santo song from 1981 was entitled “I Will Never Return.” This was just two or three weeks after the Mohammedan terrorist attacks of 9/11, and he was gloating about it like he was the president of Osama bin Laden’s fan club.

Del Santo died of esophageal bleeding on October 12 of that year, at the age of 50. After cremation, his ashes were spread by Verastegui at the small ranch they owned in Oaxaca. With the possible exception of Lickona, Sherwood knew him best. She said in an interview for the documentary “The Last Sunset” that, his considerable success notwithstanding, Del Santo was insecure and conflicted because he felt that he deserved a much higher level of stardom and all that went with it. She contended that not only had her ex run drugs but, in earlier times, guns for the Black Panthers. Be that as it may, Del Santo did a selfish and cowardly thing by leaving her and their three kids so he could hie away to Mexico.

Del Santo and Lickona’s journey in the summer of 1974…

What drew Del Santo and Lickona to Texas originally…

Del Santo (far right) in C & W attire with a band during his days in Poughkeepsie, NY…

Terry Lickona…

Del Santo (far left) with Floyd Tillman, Willie Nelson and two others, warming up before an ACL appearance…

The cover of one of his albums…

Liner notes for one of Del Santo’s albums…

Del Santo, Sherwood and their three children–Rose, Dominique and Lex–circa 1985…

A pensive Del Santo…

With Fela Kuti at 1986 Austin concert…

Obituary in the Austin American-Statesman…