Swamp Dogg feels he’s back where he started
It took nearly 45 years, but with his new album “The White Man Made Me Do It,” Swamp Dogg says he’s finally delivered the appropriate follow-up to his 1970 cult classic “Total Destruction to Your Mind.”
It’s not that the 72-year-old artist born Jerry Williams, Jr. hasn’t been recording and releasing albums in the years between then and now, it’s just that he feels he hasn’t quite matched the provocative mix of social commentary and down-and-dirty love songs since that 1970 effort.
“I made some good albums in the interim, but I didn’t make what I considered a great album, and ‘Total Destruction’ to me is a great album, and to a lot of fans around the world it’s a great album,” Williams says from the living room of his home in Porter Ranch. “It took me all these years to figure out what I did and how I did it. What state my mind was in. Everything. It was almost like sitting on the psychiatrist couch for years.”
It was “Total Destruction to Your Mind” that put Swamp Dogg on the map. That was the first album that Williams recorded as his alter ego, after first scoring hits in his early 20s as an artist/songwriter/producer under the name Little Jerry Williams and later, simply Jerry Williams. He co-wrote with Gary U.S. Bonds the country classic “She’s All I Got,” a hit for Johnny Paycheck, and served as an A&R executive for Atlantic Records, where he worked with several artists, including Gene Pitney. But by the end of the ’60s, he’d hit the wall in the music business and felt the need to reinvent himself to move forward.
Although “Total Destruction” wasn’t a hit per se, its influence is still felt today. It was the album’s timeless mix of psychedelic soul that prompted Burbank-based Alive Naturalsound Records to reissue it in 2013, along with the 1971 follow-up “Rat On!”
After one of his artists, Lee Bains III & the Glory Fires, covered “Total Destruction to Your Mind” for the label’s 20th anniversary release, Alive Naturalsound owner Patrick Boissel got in touch with Swamp. “I heard ‘Total Destruction to Your Mind’ 30 years or so ago through a friend who owned the album, but I had mostly forgotten about Swamp. It was a happy accident to rediscover his music,” Boissel says. “I discovered that neither ‘Total Destruction To Your Mind’ nor ‘Rat On!’ had been reissued on vinyl since their original release in the early ’70s. I thought it would be a good idea to bring both records back to a new audience. I’m glad that a new generation is getting acquainted with his work.”
The resurgence of Swamp also includes a spot alongside such notables as Jack White, Norah Jones and Fun. on Beck’s recently released “Song Reader” project, in which various artists interpreted a set on songs Beck published as sheet music, but never released as recordings. Swamp’s version of “America, Here’s My Boy” is one of the album’s highlights.
Aside from covering contemporary artists, Swamp has also been sampled by a number of artists, including Kid Rock, DMX and Talib Kweli. He has the platinum and gold records lining the entry way of his home to prove it.
Although Swamp may be advancing in age, he isn’t side-stepping controversy. The title track of the album suggests that racism by white men pushed black Americans to greater achievements. The album also includes the song “Prejudice Is Alive and Well” and arrives at a time when race relations in America are once again big news, following the deaths of unarmed young black men Michael Brown and Eric Garner at the hands of white police officers.
“I have a tendency to be a wee bit clairvoyant,” Swamp says of the timing of the album’s release. He points to a few lines from “Total Destruction to Your Mind” — “They found out how to tax the grass, now watch ’em get the law passed.”
Swamp says, “That was 1969, 1970, but I saw it coming. It was part of a generation change of the baby boomers growing up and understanding it... It took longer than I thought, but you saw what happened. They legalized it.”
As for the title track of the new album, Swamp says, “It’s not a put down on the white man. I’m so glad my parents whipped my ass when I did such and such, because it made me a better person, even though you’re not allowed now. You can’t take your kid and whip his ass in Ralph’s supermarket now. Where I was growing up,” says Swamp who was born in Portsmouth, Va., “Ralph himself would whip your ass and you’d turn out to be a better person. I’m very thankful for all the cruelty and hurt that the white man rained down on us, because it kept us awake and made us know that we’d have to find a better way.”
About half way through the epic song that runs more than seven minutes, Swamp lists several black role models and their accomplishments, including Fred Jones, the inventor of the refrigerated truck; Madam C.J. Walker, the first self-made black female millionaire; and Bessie Coleman, who Swamp notes “received her aviation pilots license before Amelia Earhart and she didn’t get lost.”
Although Swamp also mentions President Obama, Oprah, Jay Z and P. Diddy, he thinks someone really shouldn’t receive role model status until they’re deceased. “Most of the role models we pick out today, they didn’t ask to be role models,” he says. “You need to look at somebody’s background from date of birth to date of death before you can declare them a role model. Look at Bill Cosby right now,” he adds.
“Everybody wanted families like the Huxtables. People wanted to be like Bill Cosby... He was so clean, they wanted him to advertise Jell-O. You can’t get no cleaner than Jell-O. They gave him all these honorary degrees and now, they’re snatching the [stuff] back, before he’s even had a chance to defend himself.”
It all sounds like fodder for a future Swamp Dogg song. After all, “The White Man Made Me Do It,” also includes a song titled “Where Is Sly,” about missing-in-action legendary soul singer Sly Stone. While Swamp Dogg’s legend hasn’t quite reached as high as the Family Stone leader who had a hit with “Everyday People,” perhaps one day someone will be singing a song about him.
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What: Swamp Dogg with special guests Bobby Patterson & Vera Lee
Where: The Echo, 1822 Sunset Blvd., Los Angeles
When: Friday, Jan. 9
More info: (213) 413-8200, theecho.com
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CRAIG ROSEN is a music journalist and previous contributor to Marquee.