Sambo was born in Rusape, where he lived until attending Cyrene Mission boarding school in the 1940s (his work in the exhibition The Stars Are Bright is dated 1945).
As a jazz guitarist who played regularly in township shebeens, he often depicted the emerging urban party scene.
In 1965 the former Cyrene headmaster, Ned Paterson, hired Sambo as an art instructor at Nyarutsetso school in Salisbury.
Sambo, hanging out at Job Kekana's art school in Rusape, began painting male and female nudes using the live models that were hired there.
After gaining a reputation with a series of risque murals painted at various drinking establishments in the Salisbury area, a stream of White buyers flocked to his father's store to buy his works.