Bruce covered the song 13 times in full and 2 times as a snippet:

 

1982-09-19 - THE STONE PONY, ASBURY PARK

Cats on a Smooth Surface

 

1982-10-03 - THE STONE PONY, ASBURY PARK

Cats on a Smooth Surface

 

1983-07-10 - THE STONE PONY, ASBURY PARK

Cats on a Smooth Surface

 

1983-07-16 - THE HEADLINER, NEPTUNE

Midnight Thunder

 

1984-08-28 - CAPITAL CENTRE, LARGO, MD

 

1984-09-20 - PENNSYLVANIA DECADE, PITTSBURGH, PA

Iron City Houserockers

 

1984-10-19 - TACOMA DOME, TACOMA, WA 

1985-01-24 - PROVIDENCE CIVIC CENTER, PROVIDENCE, RI 

1985-03-28 - SYDNEY ENTERTAINMENT CENTRE, SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA 

1987-04-12 - THE STONE PONY, ASBURY PARK

 

1987-12-05 - THE STONE PONY, ASBURY PARK

Cats on a Smooth Surface

 

2008-08-30 - THE ROADHOUSE AT THE LAKEFRONT, MILWAUKEE, WI

 

2009-05-08 - BRYCE JORDAN CENTER, PENN STATE UNIVERSITY, UNIVERSITY PARK, PA

 

•  Snippets

"Wooly Bully" is a popular song originally recorded by novelty rock 'n' roll band Sam the Sham and the Pharaohs in 1965. Based on a standard 12-bar blues progression, it was written by the band's frontman, Domingo "Sam" Samudio. It was released as a single in 1964 and was picked up in 1965 by MGM. The song was recorded at Sam C. Phillips Recording Studio at 639 Madison Avenue in Memphis, the successor to Phillips' original Sun Studio. "Wooly Bully" was the band's first and biggest hit. It became a worldwide success, selling three million copies.  "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 Sam rewrote the lyrics famously replacing "Hully Gully" with "Wooly Bully" and few additional lyrical changes. Sam retained the 'watch it, watch it now" refrain from the original version. The lyrics of "Wooly Bully" were hard to understand, and some radio stations banned the song. 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") 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. 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. According to Sam: "The name of my cat was 'Wooly Bully', so I started from there. 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."