Their take on "Haunted House," originally recorded by Johnny Fuller in 1958, was released on the small Dingo label but ended up competing unsuccessfully with a version by Simmons, who scored a hit with the song just before Halloween in 1964. The band's first single was a remake of the 1957 Chuck Willis gem "Betty and Dupree," on the Tupelo record label, owned by Jumpin' Gene Simmons. After several personnel changes, the group was set with Ray Stinnet on lead guitar, Butch Gibson on saxophone, David Martin on bass and drummer Jerry Patterson backing up Sam's vocals and keyboards. Influenced by Yul Brynner's portrayal of Pharaoh Ramses in the 1956 blockbuster The Ten Commandments and impressed by his jaunty Egyptian robes, Samudio fronted a new group called The Pharaohs in the early '60s and took the tongue-in-cheek stage name Sam the Sham.
In the early 1950s, Domingo Samudio was in a group with a few of his high school friends, including Trini Lopez. The big breakthrough hit had come about after several years of trial-and-error. Nationally the record hit number two in June 1965 and was one of the year's biggest sellers the band also picked up a Grammy nomination in the not-surprisingly specific category of Best Contemporary Rock and Roll Performance by a Group (Vocal or Instrumental). If the same thing helped get Sam the Sham on the charts, so be it. It also didn't hurt that some of the lyrics are nearly unintelligible after all, The Kingsmen's "Louie Louie" had been a major hit in spite of (or because of) its FBI-investigated dirty words. The line 'let's not be L7' may be where the symbol "L7" (translation: square, as in un-hip) reached its peak as a popular slang term. Wooly Bully, strangely enough, was the name of Sam's cat, and he just made up the rest of the song from there. It was simply a hot, uptempo Tex-Mex party song. And who cared if no one really knew what, if anything, "Wooly Bully" meant?
In reality, Sam the Sham and the Pharaohs were authentic, a raw and rockin' band, the nitty gritty, a seriously funtime assemblage. Those first three traits wouldn't really qualify as deceptions the last might, but come on, we were all in on the joke! If there was even a hint of a sham, it was in promoting the band as having "The Memphis Pharaoh Sound".since they were actually from Dallas, Texas and had spent minimal time in Tennessee. He and the guys in his group weren't Egyptian as their costumes would suggest, nor had they any middle eastern background.
#WOOLY BULLY LYRICS PROFESSIONAL#
I've heard the question about Sam the Sham's professional name come up more than once: was he really a sham? He's admitted to his vocal limitations, that he can't play more than five chords on the organ and has a tendency to clown around onstage.
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