Swamp Dogg - 1972 Cuffed, Collared, & Tagged

Of the early albums of Swamp Dogg this is easily the one most often overlooked, maybe the tame cover is responsible. The music and songs remain smart, edgy, funny and angry. Listen carefully to the lyrics of Sam Stone, this song could have come from the pen of Gil Scott-Heron or Bob Dylan (it comes from John Prine). The radio wasn't ready for this song in 1972, the story was too strong, too real...in this era of a whole new wave of broken young men returning home to little hope, it could have been written yesterday.

Dogg follows with perhaps the strangest post apocalyptic pop ballad ever sung, 'Complication No. 5' (well it IS a somewhat limited catagory!). A funkified Lady Madonna follows and the Beatles lyrics fit seamlessly into spirit of this album. 'You Say You Trust Your Mother' offers another powerful commentary of the state of man in America followed by a funky good time nod to friend and influence Sly Stone.

 "I'm gonna be the first one at the graveyard, baby, I want to see the beautiful groove...I'm gonna throw the first shovel of dirt right down on you and make sure you know!" One of the best pissed-off breakup song lines ever from 'Your Last Dirty Trick' which opens side 2 - more good stuff follows but the most notable is 'Captain Of Your Ship', a song with some hit potential to my ear if done by someone like Pickett. Easy to see why the 'industry' would hate on this.

Swamp Dogg - Rat On! 1971

Yeah, yeah I know - bracketing the previous 3 posts with a pair from the Swamp Dogg makes me a sick puppy. No problem, I'll own that. 

Is there another album cover that regularly shows up on both best album cover lists and worst album cover lists? (I even have a t-shirt!) I imagine there probably is another candidate out there but I seriously doubt that album could hold a candle to this one musically. Plain and simple, this is a terrific album start to finish! The songs are smart, funny and infectious - listen a couple times through and tell me you don't find yourself singing along - I wish I could tell you my friends and I were hip enough to discover this one in it's day.... but it was 20 years later when I first heard it.


"The cover of this LP--Swamp Dogg riding a white rat, hands raised and fists clenched in triumph--lets you know that you're not in for any ol' R&B record, even before the needle hits the grooves. It's a satisfying continuation of the eclectic soul-singer-songwriter mix of his debut. Vocally, Swamp Dogg sounds like a cross between General Johnson (of Chairmen of the Board) and Van Morrison; as a songwriter, he's his own man. With the exception of Sly Stone, no other soul men of the period were investigating controversial topics with such infectious musicality and good humor. He takes on promiscuity with unbridled frankness in cuts like "Predicament #2," and bemoans the eternal delay of American justice for minorities in "Remember I Said Tomorrow," and twists Irving Berlin's "God Bless America" into a protest song (and also, bizarrely, covers the Bee Gees' "Got to Get a Message to You"). None of this endeared him to industry insiders, and Swamp Dogg was dropped by Elektra after the album's release." AMG

I suppose it shouldn't be all that surprising that the "industry" didn't have the sense of humor or the insight to see just how phenomenal this material was, but what a shame...had this gotten airplay in the 70's I would have been all over it like a cheap suit and I don't think I would have been alone. Still, despite being only sporadically in print, in 40 years as "cult" albums "Total Destruction..." has eventually gone gold and I have to think "Rat On!" can't be far away by now. As I sit listening this morning for the 3rd time in a couple days, I am struck by just how fresh this record sounds even today.

Swamp Dogg - Total Destruction To Your Mind

Jerry Williams, Jr. (born 12 July 1942) is an American soul music artist who is better known by his pseudonym Swamp Dogg.

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.A native of Virginia, Williams began his career recording under the name Little Jerry, releasing a jump blues single called "HTD Blues" in 1954 when he was just 12 years old. For the next decade-and-a-half, he was an R&B journeyman working under the name Little Jerry Williams in the early '60s, then leaving the "little" behind in the mid-'60s, having a minor hit in 1966 with "Baby, You're My Everything." By that point, Williams had made serious inroads into the industry. He was working A&R and he was writing and producing singles, usually for unknown artists but occasionally for big names like Gene Pitney. Eventually, he earned the attention of Jerry Wexler and Phil Walden and began working behind the scenes at Atlantic Records in 1968, engineering and producing singles for the label. He also worked as a writer, and as the decade came to a close, he had written "She's All I Got" with Gary "U.S." Bonds, a song that wound up bringing him royalties for decades.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

Doris Duke - I'm A Loser

This is one of those that grows on you, Doris was badass and so is the band.


"Deep soul diva Doris Duke was born Doris Curry in Sandersville, GA, in 1945. After stints in a series of gospel units, including the Raspberry Singers, the David Sisters, and the Caravans, by 1963 she was settled in New York City, working as a session vocalist in addition to backup duties at the legendary Apollo Theater. Under her married name of Doris Willingham, she cut her debut solo single, "Running Away from Loneliness," for the tiny Hy-Monty label in 1966; "You Can't Do That" followed two years later on Jay Boy. Despite solid reviews, neither record made a commercial splash, and she returned to her session career, often commuting to Philadelphia to record with the production team of Kenny Gamble and Leon Huff. When former Atlantic Records producer Jerry "Swamp Dogg" Williams Jr. struck out on his own, he signed the singer and renamed her Doris Duke, recording the 1969 LP I'm a Loser at Capricorn, Phil Walden's studio in Macon, GA.

Though considered the finest deep soul record of all time by no less than soul expert Dave Godin, I'm a Loser was rejected by dozens of labels before it finally surfaced on Wally Roker's Canyon label. Although the first single, "To the Other Woman," cracked Billboard's R&B Top Ten, Canyon soon spiraled into financial disaster, destroying the album's commercial momentum. Duke spent the next several years in creative limbo, finally reuniting with Swamp Dogg for 1975's Mankind label release A Legend in Her Own Time -- their partnership ended acrimoniously prior to its release, however, and the record received scant attention. Duke next resurfaced on the British label Contempo with Woman, a much-acclaimed set released stateside on the Scepter imprint. After 1981's Manhattan set Funky Fox, she retired from music, and at the time of this writing her whereabouts and activities are unknown." AMG