Biography
Born around 1919 in Opelousas, Louisiana, Ambrose Sam passed away in November 1995. He stood among the earliest figures to champion the Creole accordion and moved in the same circles as zydeco pioneers Clifton Chenier and Wilson “Boozoo” Chavis. Both his father and his brother Herbert Sam mastered the instrument; the latter cut a short-lived solo stint for Arhoolie Records in the early 1960s. While employed at a bomb factory during the war years, Sam kept performing at neighborhood dances around Lake Charles, Louisiana. He became the first musician to carry the zydeco style to America’s west coast and maintained that he had originally composed Chavis’s hit “Paper In My Shoe.” In the 1970s he moved back to Opelousas to assist on the family farm. His initial recordings appeared in the early 1980s, when six tracks issued under the name Ambrose Sam’s Old Time Zydeco filled one side of Arhoolie’s Zydeco, Volume 2 anthology. Those selections placed him alongside relatives who performed as the Sam Brothers Five.