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
. However, the touches of
funk
are fairly mild on what's for the most part a competent, straightforward, yet unremarkable
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
wrote the tracks on which he appeared, and there are also a couple of
Clifton Chenier
covers. There are touches of
blues
, but these are only touches to a good-time, commonplace assortment of
tunes. With one exception, that is -- the opener,
"SAM (Get Down),"
is very much '70s
dance
-
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