Uno, dos, one, two, tres, quarto…

Let’s not get into a discussion about what exactly ‘Pop’ is here, let’s stick with ‘Popular’ and cut straight to the tune in question (as you’d expect, treatise on Pop are mostly dull as ditchwater and the antithesis of what we are focusing on today). I want to talk about a strange little song, by a strange Mexican American, backed by a strange band who travelled show to show in a hearse – ‘Wooly Bully’ by Sam the Sham and the Pharaohs is a perfect slice of 60’s Pop and I love it.

Matty told Hatty about a thing she saw. Had two big horns and a wooly jaw…

Like all astonishing Pop Wooly Bully is deceptively simplistic. At just a tad over two minutes this oddball number is brief certainly, yet effortlessly executes it’s Pop goals across a tight, almost off-kilter, 15 bar structure. There’s no filler here, just a couple of minutes of fervent, stabbing Farfisa organ interlocked with a metronomic backbeat alongside Sam’s cracked and guttural hollering; there’s just time for a growling, sleazy, sax solo and we are on the home stretch. Remember, ten minutes of ill thought out avant-garde chicanery will always be a far easier reach than three minutes of verse-verse-chorus-verse-chorus-bridge-chorus consummate Pop - and even that handy structure crib won’t really help you pen a classic. It’s like knowing that the much-guarded secret recipe to Coca-Cola has just three constituents but for the life of you mixing it still proves impossible.

Wooly bully, wooly bully, wooly bully, wooly bully, wooly bully…

It was a hit. A respectable number 11 over here but a massive, three million copies sold, bonefide, super HIT in the States. It was in fact the best selling song of 1965, sitting in the US top 100 for an impressive 18 weeks and peaking at number two (foiled in it’s advance on the top slot by The Beach Boys’ ‘Help Me, Rhonda’). Indeed, the best selling US song of 1965 was not (I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction, not Unchained Melody, not Like A Rolling Stone, not I Got You Babe, not My Girl, not Ticket to Ride - it was Wooly Bully. This was the first American record to sell a million copies during the British Invasion and was even nominated for a Grammy; pretty good going for a semi-meaningless, novelty track.

Hatty told Matty, “Let’s don’t take no chance. Let’s not be L-seven, come and learn to dance…

They look bonkers. Turbans, capes, pharaoh costumes (a look pinched from Yul Brynner in The Ten Commandments) and Go-Go dancers – it’s an enchanting and heady mix. Someone said ‘if you want it to sell, it must be unique’ a phrase never more apposite than in great Pop, but we like our Pop music a little unhinged too don’t we? A little freakish perhaps? Nietzsche said “One must still have chaos in oneself to be able to give birth to a dancing.” In one of the lyrics that we can actually decode, Wooly Bully lays it’s cards right on the table “Let’s not be L-seven” – clearly stating let’s not be square or bland.

Wooly bully, wooly bully, wooly bully, wooly bully, wooly bully…

It’s all pretty much nonsense. Of the title, Sam himself said… “The name of my cat was ‘Wooly Bully’, so I started from there. The countdown part of the song was also not planned. I was just goofing around and counted off in Tex-Mex. It just blew everybody away, and actually, I wanted it taken off the record. We did three takes, all of them different, and they took the first take and released it.” Indeed, top notch Pop can be thoroughly nonsensical as long as it forces you to yell along. Oh, and it may well be a risqué track too – some American radio stations banned it outright after detecting something unhealthily lustful within the lyrics.

Matty told Hatty, “That’s the thing to do. Get you someone really to pull the wool with you…

Wooly Bully by Sam the Sham and the Pharaohs is the best party song ever written. Yes, this is my idea of perfect Pop.

Wooly bully, wooly bully, wooly bully, wooly bully, wooly bully…

Originally published at www.distantcity.co.uk