Okay, that is the short info line....now...how do we even begin to discuss the Swamp Dogg?? A genuine southern funk/soul genius? Yeah, I'll buy that --- crazed, angry, funny, sweet, and funky as a mutha...--- Yeah, all that too --- a bizarre-ass blend of Zappa, Clarence Clemmons and Sly? --- that works as far as it goes --- a political poet ala Gil Scott-Heron? -- sometimes THAT too, Starting to get curious? -- a nearly unknown soul
artist who nonetheless found his way onto the Nixon enemies list and somehow lives in a mansion with his own limo? Oh Hell Yes! All of this and much more is waiting for you when you board the Swamp Dogg mystery tour! The AMG bio for this guy is good, but too long so I'm just using the first half for now...
"Raunchy, satirical, political, and profane, Swamp Dogg is one of the great cult figures of 20th century American music. The creation of Jerry Williams, Jr., an R&B producer and songwriter of the '60s, Swamp Dogg fit no tidy category. In sheer musical terms, Swamp Dogg is pure Southern soul, anchored on tight grooves and accentuated by horns, but the Dogg is as much about message as music. Williams incorporated all the mind-bending psychedelic ideas of '60s counterculture -- drugs, sex, radical politics, social politics -- into the framework of deep soul, establishing his blueprint on 1970's Total Destruction to Your Mind, then spinning out variations over the next several decades, never having hits (although Total Destruction to Your Mind apparently went gold at some point), but earning a rabid cult following while raking in royalties through his behind-the-scenes work, which included penning the country standard "She's All I Got," popularized by Johnny Paycheck.
Also at the end of the '60s came Williams' first LSD trip and, with it, a properly blown mind that led him to create Swamp Dogg. Inspired by Frank Zappa's satire and politics but determined to still sing soul, Williams' Swamp Dogg was filthy and political, wrapped up in a cheerfully vulgar package...quite literally so, as he's seen sitting in his underwear on a pile of garbage on his 1970 debut, Total Destruction to Your Mind. All of Williams' studio skills are on display on Total Destruction -- the grooves are tight, not sloppy, the songs precisely written -- and although what he was singing about was firmly outside the mainstream, his deep southern soul sounded commercial, so it became an underground hit...." AMG, Stephen Thoms Erlewine