Who — or What — Is ‘Wooly Bully’?
‘200 Greatest 60s Rock Songs’ Book Excerpt
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Despite their robes and headdress, Sam the Sham and the Pharaohs were part of the Tex-Mex musical tradition of Doug Sahm and Freddy Fender. Sam is Domingo Samudio, a Dallas, Texas rocker whose first and biggest hit was 1964’s “Wooly Bully.”
Samudio told Classic Bands how his name and the band were created.
“Everyone was calling me ‘Sam,’ short for Samudio, and what I was doing, fronting the band and cutting up, was called ‘shamming.’ We got the rest of the name from the movie The Ten Commandments. Old Ramses, the King of Egypt, looked pretty cool, so we decided to become the Pharaohs.”
“Wooly Bully” started as a dance song about the Hully Gully, but Pen Records lawyers advised Samudio to change the lyrics. Samudio replaced the title with his cat’s name, Wooly Bully.
The memorable countdown of the song, “Uno, Dos . . . One, Two, Tres, Quatro!” was a happy accident between Samudio and bassist David Martin. Samudio told Jeff Jarema in Here ’Tis magazine, “I used to goof off. We’re talkin’ Tex-Mex . . . David and I. We’re half-Spanish and half-English. We’d gone to the same high school and we’d just shuck ’n’ jive back ’n’ forth, half-Spanish and half-English.
“So, I counted it off in Tex-Mex. I didn’t intend for that to stay there, and Stan Kesler, the producer, said, ‘Man, that’s wild. Let me leave that on there.’ I said, ‘Naw, man, don’t leave that on there,’ and we argued, and he won the argument. I’m kinda glad he did.”
Three takes of “Wooly Bully” were recorded, but the first — countdown included — was released. The lyrics were difficult to understand; some radio stations banned the song, thinking it was suggestive. When Samudio sings, “Let’s not be L-7” he means, “Let’s not be square,” which is the shape made by the fingers when making an “L” on one hand and a “7” on the other.
“Wooly Bully” became a №2 hit, selling three million copies, the first American record to sell a million copies during the British Invasion.
Frank Mastropolo is the author of the 200 Greatest 60s Rock Songs series and Fillmore East: The Venue That Changed Rock Music Forever. For more on our latest projects, visit Edgar Street Books.
