THE GREATEST SONGS OF THE 1960s THAT NO ONE HAS EVER HEARD
974) Sam the Sham and the Pharaohs — “Black Sheep”
Sam the Sham does his best Dylan (see # 126, 823) impersonation, complete with an Al Kooper-like (see #642, 705, 804) organ accompaniment. Yes, Sam the Sham and the Pharaohs! And the song even reached #68 in ’67! It’s a rollicking, wry and wonderful song, one of the first written by country music songwriting legend Bob McDill (30 country #1 hits!). Classic Rock History says:
They started out the lyrics not with “Black sheep, black sheep, have you any wool?” but instead with, “Black Sheep lays around drinking wine all day.” The song concludes with, “Black sheep died a wealthy man, with five gold watches, six gold rings…” Although [it] is a somewhat humorous play on words, it does evoke an image of someone who is wealthy, but older and very lonely.
https://www.classicrockhistory.com/top-10-sam-the-sham-and-the-pharoahs-songs/
Michael Jack Kirbyt says it has “a folk[y] groove with a hook straight from the original nursery rhyme” and adds that “[w]hile not technically novelty songs, Sam the Sham’s hits weren’t completely serious either, but all of them were and still are fun to listen to”. (https://www.waybackattack.com/samthesham.html)
As to Sam the Sham, Classic Bands tells us that:
Domingo Samudio was born . . . to a Spanish speaking couple of Mexican decent. . . . [H]e took up guitar and formed a high school group with some friends [including] Trini Lopez . . . . After graduation, [he] joined the Navy . . . . [where] he began to act as an M.C. at dances and learned to crack jokes and cut up on stage. Back in the States, Domingo enrolled at the University of Texas in Arlington . . . . [He] played Rock ‘n’ Roll at night with a band he called The Pharaohs. . . . [who] only recorded one record which failed to sell. They broke up in late 1962 before Sam left the music business to work in a carnival. . . . [Then, h]ocking everything he had, he bought an organ and three days later accepted a job with a band called Andy And The Nightriders in Louisiana. “We became a popular roadhouse band . . . playing mostly gun and knife clubs.” When [the] leader . . . left the group a short time later, Domingo took control . . . and decided to re-name it. “By that time, 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.” The band featured a lot of comedy in their act and wore turbans and Egyptian garb on stage. . . . [E]arly [recordings] failed. In the Summer of 1964, they went into the studio with a song that used the words “Hully Gully”. When told by the record company that they couldn’t use that phrase, Sam said, “Okay, let’s kick it off and I’ll make something up.” . . . There was a saying around here, when anybody did good it’s like ‘Wooly Bully for you,’ like ‘big deal.’. . .” The single was originally released on the tiny XL label and was later picked up for distribution by MGM. It went on to sell over three and half million copies in the United States alone . . . . soar[ing] to #2 . . . . The Pharaohs would reach the Billboard Top 40 twice more in 1965 with “Ju Ju Hand” (#26) and “Ring Dang Doo” (#31). . . . In late 1965 . . . [the entire band] left . . . over musical and financial disagreements. Sam was forced to hire a whole new set of touring musicians. . . . [T]his line-up enjoyed another huge hit record with the novelty tune “Lil’ Red Riding Hood”, which peaked at #2 . . . . MGM kept pressuring him to produce another formula hit single, which led to a period in which the group abandoned their hard rocking sound in favor of adaptations of nursery rhymes, cartoon characters and other juvenile topics. A song called “The Hair On My Chinny-Chin Chin” somehow reached #22 in the Fall of 1966. Personnel changes continued . . . . Sam reached the Billboard Top 40 one last time in January, 1967 with “How Do You Catch A Girl”, which reached #27.
http://www.classicbands.com/samsham.html
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