From Louisiana, this African-American group ranged in age from 17 to 11 at the time of this 1979 recording, with father
Herbert Sam adding vocal and accordion on a couple of tracks. The cover of this album gets your hopes up for some kind of cool hybrid between
zydeco and
soul, as visually this five-brother band does indeed resemble
the Jackson 5 gone
zydeco. However, the touches of
funk and
soul are fairly mild on what's for the most part a competent, straightforward, yet unremarkable
zydeco set.
Leon Sam seems to be the group's figurehead, singing in a husky voice that could belong to a man quite a few years his senior and writing most of the material, though
Herbert Sam wrote the tracks on which he appeared, and there are also a couple of
Clifton Chenier covers. There are touches of
blues and
soul, but these are only touches to a good-time, commonplace assortment of
zydeco tunes. With one exception, that is -- the opener,
"SAM (Get Down)," is very much '70s
dance soul-
funk with some similarity to
Chic's
"Le Freak," indicating that perhaps the brothers varied their sound and repertoire according to the circumstances in which they were performing. ~ Richie Unterberger
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