Search - Sam the Sham & Pharaohs :: The Best of Sam the Sham & the Pharaohs: 20th Century Masters - The Millennium Collection

A dozen tracks from the two-hit wonders, Sam the Sham and th

Lawrance M. Bernabo | The Zenith City, Duluth, Minnesota | 08/04/2005

(4 out of 5 stars)

"The thing about listening to the best of Sam the Sham & the Pharaohs is that you have done that by the time you get to the third track on this Millennium Collection done for the 20th Century Masters series. "Wooly Bully" made it to #2 on the Billboard singles chart in 1965 and the next year "Li'l Red Riding Hood" did the same. Although the group had another seven songs that made it to the charts (six of which are included in this twelve-track collection), none of them made it to the Top 20. "Ju Ju Hand" got to #26 and "Ring Dang Doo" to #33 in 1965, while in 1966 "Red Hot" came in at #82 and "The Hair on My Chinny Chin Chin" made it all the way to #22. In 1967, "Black Sheep" (the missing one) went to #68, "How Do You Catch a Girl" topped out at #27, and "Oh That's Good, No That's Bad" went to #54. I am surprised that when you have such a limited number of songs that can be labeled hits that one would be missing, but there is no reason to believe it is any great loss. The only songs that reek of desperation is "Pharaoh A Go-Go," which is a blatant effort to sound as much like "Wooly Bully" as musically possible, the same way "The Hair on My Chinny Chin Chin" echoes "Li'l Red Riding Hood." Still, for a two-hit wonder, Sam the Sham and the Pharaohs certainly stake out their territory and stick to it and if you remember that we are talking the mid-1960s and think of them more as competition for the likes of the Dave Clark Five and the Troggs instead of the Beatles and the Beach Boys you can have a better appreciation of their music.



Sam the Sham was really Domingo Samudio, who got the name because because of doubts about his abilities to be a lead singer in a rock group. Formed in Dallas, the Pharaohs consisted of Ray Stinnet on guitar, David Martin on bass, Butch Gibson playing saxophone, and Jerry Patterson on drums. In terms of music history the group has a small claim to fame in that "Wooly Bully," written about Samudio's cat, introduced Tex-Mex rhythms to popular rock 'n' roll. The problem was that their two big hits defined them as a novelty act (which was certainly reinforced by songs like "I Couldn't Spell !! *@!"), and despite the name that did not set well with Sam the Sham, who broke up the group in 1967 and tried unsuccessfully to find musical legitimacy on his own. In retrospect "Wooly Bully" is one of those rock classics where everything wrong comes out right, and if that is your musical legacy you are ahead of the game. The only concern here is whether you already have those first two tracks, because if you do that decreases the need for picking up this collection. But if you like the fun aspects of rock and roll that emerged in the American response to the British Invasion, not to mention music where the beat drives the songs, then Sam the Sham and the Pharaohs are a Sixties garage band worth listening to again."

More like Sam the Sham & the awsome

John M. Henderson | Calgary, Alberta, Canada | 10/02/2004

(5 out of 5 stars)

"I was looking for a Sam the Sham and the Pharaos CD high and low about a year before this CD came out. I finally found one and listened to it all the time. There were about thirty songs and after a while I would just skip through the CD to the good ones. This 20th Century Masters CD has all the good songs without any of the songs that are just okay. Plus it's allot less money."