How to Play the Harmonica: and Other Life Lessons, by Sam Barry; Foreword by Dave Barry by Sam Barry

$9.99

Paperback

All you need is love, says the song. But that’s ridiculous. You need a room, too, and a harmonica. What were the Beatles thinking?

Still, I miss those times when pop artists wrote songs that meant something, and none more so than Sam the Sham and the Pharaohs, a quintessentially American band led by singer and organist Domingo “Sam” Samudio, best known for their hit "Wooly Bully." You’ll notice in the video that Samudio is dressed like a lounge singer who happens to be wearing a turban, and the band is dressed in pseudo-Arabic garb. Apparently they thought this was what the ancient Egyptians dressed like, which is, of course, the way to dress if you are doing rock songs with a Tex-Mex beat and lyrics like these:

Uno, dos, one, two, tres, quarto!

Matty told Hatty about a thing she saw

Had two big horns and a wooly jaw

Wooly bully, wooly bully

Wooly bully, wooly bully, wooly bully

Hatty told Matty, “Let's don’t take no chance

Let’s not be L-7, come and learn to dance”

Wooly bully, wooly bully

Wooly bully, wooly bully, wooly bully

Matty told Hatty, “That’s the thing to do

Get you someone really to pull the wool with you”

Wooly bully, wooly bully

Wooly bully, wooly bully, wooly bully

On Sunday I played this song with our good band (i.e. not the Rock Bottoms Remainders), Los Train Wreck, at the Marin chapter of the California Writer’s Club centennial celebration at Book Passage in Corte Madera. It was a fun event. Among the many highlights was author David Corbett singing “Wooly Bully.” Authors love to sing. My theory is that it is very freeing for writers, who are generally introverted and who often work on projects for years, to do something so outgoing and immediate.

But to get back to the inherent meaning of “Wooly Bully:” apparently the words were considered suggestive enough that the song was banned on some radio stations. But then, in the first half of the sixties almost anything warranted censorship. In fact, at one point our national anthem was banned from many radio stations for these suggestive lyrics:

Whose broad stripes and bright stars, thro’ the perilous fight,

O’er the ramparts we watch’d, were so gallantly streaming?

And the rockets’ red glare, the bombs bursting in air

However, I think that unlike the “Star Spangled Banner,” “Wooly Bully” was misunderstood. I think the Pharaohs’ hit was an impassioned plea for social justice, as was their later song, “Ring-Dang Doo Good Stuff.”

In spite of these socially-conscious intentions, “Wooly Bully” is really fun to play, sing, and dance too—much more fun than “Eve of Destruction.” David Corbett sang the heck out of it, and those writers were grooving all over Book Passage. The moral of the story? Don’t be L-7—support your local independent bookstores! They are where it’s at, man!