Wooly Bully

"Wooly Bully" was the band's first and biggest hit song. It became a worldwide success, selling three million copies and reaching No. 2 on the American Hot 100 chart on June 5–12, 1965. They were kept from reaching the top spot by The Beach Boys' "Help Me, Rhonda"^[5] and The Supremes' "Back in My Arms Again".^[6] "Wooly Bully" went to No. 31 on the Hot Rhythm & Blues Singles chart.^[7] The song also reached No. 2 on the Canadian CHUM Charts.^[8]

The song was the first American record to sell a million copies during the British Invasion and was influenced by the British rock sound which was mixed with traditional Mexican-American conjunto rhythms.^[9][10] It stayed in the Hot 100 for 18 weeks, the longest time for any song in 1965, and was nominated for a Grammy Award. It was named Billboard's number-one song of the year despite never reaching No. 1 on a weekly Hot 100, making this the first occurrence of such an event on the Hot 100.^[11][12] On August 5, 1965, the single was certified as gold by the RIAA.^[13] It was later included on the band's 1965 album Wooly Bully.

"Wooly Bully" is a reworking of the 1962 tune "Hully Gully Now" on the Dallas-based Gay Shel label by Big Bo & The Arrows (vocal by Little Smitty), which was based on Junior Parker's "Feelin' Good". The song was given the green light after Samudio rewrote the lyrics to replace "Hully Gully" with "Wooly Bully" and a few additional lyrical changes. Samudio retained the "watch it, watch it now" refrain from the original version.^[14]

The lyrics of "Wooly Bully" were hard to understand; in consequence, some radio stations banned the song.^[15] The lyrics describe a conversation between "Mattie" and "Hattie" concerning the "Wooly Bully" (a creature which Mattie describes as "a thing she saw [that] had two big horns and a wooly jaw" – that is, an American bison) and the desirability of developing dancing skills, although no attempt is made to synthesize these divergent topics. The warning "Let's not be L-7" means "Let's not be square", from the shape formed by the fingers making an L on one hand and a 7 on the other.^[16] Sam the Sham underscores the Tex-Mex nature of the song by counting out the rhythm in Spanish and English ("Uno! Dos! One, two, tres, cuatro!"), and the characteristic simple organ riffing, with a tenor saxophone solo in the middle. According to Samudio, "The count down 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."^[17]

In 2009, the original 1965 release of the song on the MGM label by Sam the Sham and the Pharaohs was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame.^[50]