Swamp Dogg

Born Jerry Williams, Jr., Swamp Dogg first encountered bluegrass music on the radio growing up in Portsmouth, VA, in the 1940s. Though he would go on to spend much of the ’50’s and ’60s immersed in the world of soul, funk, and R&B—both as an artist and as a A&R man/producer working with the likes of Patti LaBelle, The Commodores, and The Drifters—roots music would remain an important fixture in his life.

“I loved George Jones, Flatt & Scruggs, all of it,” he explains. “One of my songs even went all the way to #2 on the country chart when Johnny Paycheck recorded it.”

By that time, Williams had already traded in his birth name for the Swamp Dogg moniker, partly as an act of rebellion against the confining racial and commercial politics of the music industry, and partly as an embrace of his natural inclination towards irreverence and eccentricity. “I needed an alter ego because I wanted to say some things,” he would later tell NPR. “I wanted to be able to talk about sex, religion, politics; I wanted to sing about everything.” And sing about everything he did. Beginning with 1970’s Total Destruction To Your Mind, Swamp Dogg would go on to release a string of more than two dozen albums ranging from the radically subversive to the downright ridiculous, developing an underground following in the process that would make fans of everyone from DMX to John Prine. Though most of his records (with their oddball titles and even more bizarre artwork) would go woefully underappreciated in their own time, critics and audiences alike would eventually come to see Swamp Dogg for the visionary he was: The New York Times praised his “salty, earthy Southern-soul storytelling;” Rolling Stone hailed his catalog full of “classics that have influenced generations of younger musicians;” The Independent dubbed him a “psychedelic soul original;” The Fader declared him a “legend;” Pitchfork called him “one of pop’s great cult acts;” and Vice crowned him “the unsung king of soul music.”

“Black music has had so many different labels put on it over the years that sometimes I’m onstage and I don’t know what the Hell it is that I’m singing,” Swamp Dogg says with a laugh. “The only thing I know how to do is be myself.”

And nobody does that better than Swamp Dogg.