Happy Birthday Swamp Dogg!

Celebrating the birthday of Jerry "Swamp Dogg" Williams with a 1969 gem cut for Cotillion and two other overlooked gems.

Eli 'Paperboy' Reed's new album, "Getting There," produced by Swamp Dogg!

Eli 'Paperboy' Reed called upon the studio expertise of producer Swamp Dogg for his new album Getting There... he should've asked him to design the sleeve too! 

Here's the scoop from Yep Roc Records...

Yep Roc is proud to announce Eli Paperboy Reed's new album, 'Getting There' – produced by the one and only Swamp Dogg! – will be out on September 11th. The first single, “Getting There,” is out now — and the full album is available for pre-order right here: https://elipaperboyreed.lnk.to/gettingthere

Reed says, "We recorded the album at Restoration Sound in Brooklyn, and making this record with Swamp was one of the great experiences of my musical life. It’s soul music, country music, gospel music, rhythm & blues — all the stuff I love — filtered through where I am now and guided by one of the true originals." Check out Eli's behind-the-scenes clip right here.

Listen to the title track “Getting There” following the tracklisting below. 

On his latest collection, Getting There, Eli Paperboy Reed explores a more grown-up kind of love, contemplating what it takes for two people to go the distance through good times and bad. Produced by legendary R&B iconoclast Swamp Dogg, the album is a joyful dose of timeless soul and roots music, but it’s also a deeply mature work of lyrical craftsmanship, one that reckons with the vagaries of love in the long term as it illuminates the myriad throughlines connecting soul, gospel, and R&B music with folk, country, and rock and roll. Add it all up and you’ve got an infectious take on the work that follows the fireworks, an ode to the extraordinary endurance of the ordinary, everyday love that makes the world go around.

Eli 'Paperboy' Reed - Getting There

1. Every Once in a While

2. Asking for a Friend

3. Getting There

4. Like We Used To

5. I Can’t Even Walk (Without You Holding My Hand)

6. How Can I Forget

7. Eli Paperboy Reed, Zaniah - Love You More

8. Knock Knock Memories

9. Sore Loser

10. Eli Paperboy Reed, Swamp Dogg - One Man’s Trash (Is Another Man’s Treasure)

11. Everyone Else

12. Hardworking People

13. The Questions

Swamp Dogg Gets His Pool Painted documentary screens @ Hot Docs Cinema, Friday

The much-anticipated Jerry Williams doc Swamp Dogg Gets His Pool Painted screens at Hot Docs Cinema on Friday at 5:15 pm. 

Here's the scoop...

If you were to swap the quartet of white women who share a house in Miami in The Golden Girls for a trio of Black men jamming, tripping and co-habiting in the San Fernando Valley, you’d get Swamp Dogg Gets His Pool Painted! Legendary cult singer/songwriter and producer Jerry Williams aka "Swamp Dogg" has transformed his home into an artistic playground and “bachelor pad for aging musicians," where he and his roommates Moogstar and Guitar Shorty enjoy their retirement while continuing to experiment with music and sound. 

With over 50 years in the recording industry, Swamp Dogg has written, arranged, performed and produced more than 2,000 songs, worked on nearly 500 albums with hundreds of artists, and released 26 albums of his own. Despite this prolific output, he continues to create, because fun—not fame—is the name of the game. This wonderfully bizarre and inspiring reminiscence weaves Swamp Dogg and his friends’ current output, their friendships and funny non sequiturs together with past accomplishments and accolades in a music doc unlike any other.

Swamp Dogg Gets His Pool Painted screens at Bloor Hot Docs Cinema on Friday (May 3) at 5:15 pm. For more info, check the Hot Docs site right here. 
 

 

Another side of Swamp Dogg

Jerry Williams Jr. also wrote and produced many soul gems for women artists including Irma Thomas, Doris Duke & Patti LaBelle. 

If Beyoncé's going country, Swamp Dogg had to go bluegrass!

Swamp Dogg is joined by Margo Price and Jenny Lewis on Blackgrass: From West Virginia To 125th St is out May 31.

Here's the scoop from Swamp Dogg...

"Not a lot of people talk about the true origins of bluegrass music, but it came from Black people. The banjo, the washtub, all that stuff started with African Americans. We were playing it before it even had a name. I’m trying to touch on every kind of music I grew up loving and listening to. This is my way of letting people know that I’m not just a soul singer or whatever they think I am. I’m so much more.

"I'm proud to announce Blackgrass: From West Virginia to 125th St, my first record with Oh Boy Records that will be released on May 31. Check out the album’s first single and opening track 'Mess Under That Dress.'" 

Pre-order/save here: https://orcd.co/blackgrass. Have a listen below. 

Blackgrass: From West Virginia To 125th St 

 

Produced by Ryan Olson (Bon Iver, Poliça) and recorded with an all-star band including Noam Pikelny, Sierra Hull, Jerry Douglas, Chris Scruggs, Billy Contreras, and Kenny Vaughan, the collection is a riotous blend of past and present, mixing the sacred and the profane in typical Swamp Dogg fashion as it blurs the lines between folk, roots, country, blues, and soul. The tracklist is an eclectic one—brand new originals and vintage Swamp Dogg classics sit side by side with reimaginings of ’70s R&B hits and timeless ’50s pop tunes—but the performances here are thoroughly cohesive, filtering everything through a progressive Appalachian lens that nods to tradition without ever being bound by it. Special guests like Margo Price, Vernon Reid, Jenny Lewis, Justin Vernon, and The Cactus Blossoms all add to the excitement, but it’s ultimately the 81-year-old Swamp Dogg’s delivery—sly and playful and full of genuine joy and ache—that steals the show. The result is a record that’s as reverent as it is raunchy, a collection that challenges conventional notions of genre and race while at the same time celebrating the music that helped make Swamp Dogg the beloved iconoclast he’s known as today.

SIDE A

1. MESS UNDER THAT DRESS

2. UGLY MANS WIFE

3. CURTAINS ON THE WINDOW

4. HAVE A GOOD TIME

5. THE OTHER WOMAN

6. SONGS TO SING

SIDE B

7. COUNT THE DAYS

8. GOTTA HAVE MY BABY BACK

9. YOUR BEST FRIEND

10. THIS IS MY DREAM

11. RISE UP

12. MURDER BALLAD

Hear John Prine join Swamp Dogg for "Memories"

"Memories" is off Swamp Dogg's new country album, Sorry You Couldn't Make It, out now on Joyful Noise Recordings. 

Watch Swamp Dogg's short film about Sorry You Couldn't Make it

Director Isaac Gale gives us a fly-on-the-wall view of Swamp Dogg making his new country album Sorry You Couldn't Make It in Nashville. 

Here's the scoop...
Jerry Williams’—aka Swamp Dogg—first love was country music, listening to it as a Navy family kid growing up in Portsmouth, Virginia. “My granddaddy, he just bought country records out the asshole,” Swamp remembers. “Every Friday when he came home from the Navy yard he’d stop off and get his records, like ‘Mule Train’ by Frankie Laine, or ‘Riders in the Sky’ by Vaughn Monroe.” His first time performing on stage, in fact, was a country song at a talent show when he was six years old: “I did Red Foley’s version of ‘Peace in the Valley.’”

While the 77 year-old Williams’ most enduring persona is the psychedelic soul superhero Swamp Dogg—a musical vigilante upholding truths both personal and political since 1970’s immortal album, Total Destruction To Your Mind—he will tell anybody who will listen that he’s considered himself country this entire time. “If you notice I use a lot of horns,” Swamp says. “But actually, if you listen to my records before I start stacking shit on it, I’m country. I sound country.”

Swamp began his professional singing career as Little Jerry Williams back in the ‘50s before working as an A&R man for Atlantic Records in the late ‘60s. His biggest hit is actually a country song: 1970’s “Don’t Take Her (She’s All I Got).” Written with his best friend Gary U.S. Bonds, the track is country in that woeful, underdog-baring-their-soul sort of way that for some reason only country songs really ever allow themselves to be. Freddie North covered it first and made it a Top 40 pop song, but Johnny Paycheck took it all the way to #2 on the country charts in 1971.

Following 2018’s critically acclaimed, Ryan Olson-produced Love, Loss, And Auto-Tune—his first LP to debut on 11 Billboard charts (including at #7 on 'Heatseekers’) and his first chart ink since his 1970 song “Mama's Baby - Daddy's Maybe”—Sorry You Couldn’t Make It allows Swamp to finally dive into the sound he grew up playing. With the support of Pioneer Works Press, they recorded the album at Nashville’s Sound Emporium with Olson as producer once again, and backed by a crack studio band led by Derick Lee, a keyboard virtuoso who worked as the musical director of BET’s Bobby Jones Gospel Show for nearly four decades. Nashville guitar firebrand Jim Oblon combusts his way through lead duties, while frequent collaborator Moogstar and special guests Justin Vernon (Bon Iver), John Prine, Jenny Lewis, Channy Leaneagh and Chris Beirden of Poliça, and Sam Amidon join the action throughout.

A band of 14 players, including Vernon, Lee, Beirden, and Moogstar, among others, provides the background for Swamp’s devastating new take on “Don’t Take Her (She’s All I Got).” Lead single “Sleeping Without You Is A Dragg” is one of Swamp’s most heartfelt songs to date and features Vernon on piano as well as backing vocals by Lewis and Leaneagh. He duets with country-folk legend Prine on two songs (“It’s the first time I seen John since the sixties!” laughs Swamp): the indelible, psychedelic ballad “Memories” and the reflective “Please Let Me Go Round Again.” Originally written and demoed in his forties, “Please Let Me Go Round Again” is a plea for one more chance at life, sung with acute emotional connection. Listen to Swamp Dogg's "Memories" with John Prine below.



These are narratives about love, of missing the one you love, of compassion, family and friends, and even the kind of love that transcends death. “I was looking for a new way for Swamp Dogg to go,” he explains. “Apart from me singing and writing most of the songs, I didn’t participate—in other words, I told ‘em, ‘Don’t ask me, I wanna see what happens without my influence.’ It was hard for me to do, ego-wise.”

Sorry You Couldn’t Make It sees Swamp come full circle, and closes what has felt to him like unfinished business. “They didn’t have any blacks in country until Charlie Pride came along,” he says. “But in time, all things change and that's what has happened to country music.” Surveying today’s Nashville reality, Swamp sees opportunity: artists as divergent as Darius Rucker and Lil Nas X are converging in a genre that he once worried might never give him his shot. “I'm anxious because it's like I've taken all my money and put it on one horse,” he says. “But I believe in this horse.”

Watch Isaac Gale's 13-minute documentary narrated by Lambchop's Kurt Wagner below. Get a limited-edition splatter wax copy of Swamp Dogg's Sorry You Couldn't Make It album with a bonus 3-song 7" while supplies last right here.

Hear Swamp Dogg's new country single feat. Jenny Lewis & Justin Vernon

Listen to "Sleeping Without You Is A Dragg" off Swamp Dogg's new country album, Sorry You Couldn't Make It out March 6th. 

Legendary soul singer/songwriter and producer Swamp Dogg has just announced that his new album Sorry You Couldn’t Make It, produced by Ryan Olson (Poliça), will be released on March 6th, via Joyful Noise Recordings and Pioneer Works Press. First single “Sleeping Without You Is A Dragg”—featuring piano by Justin Vernon (Bon Iver) and backing vocals by Jenny Lewis and Channy Leaneagh (Poliça)—is out now. Watch the  lyric video directed by Jacob Graham below. 

The follow-up to 2018’s critically acclaimed, Olson-produced Love, Loss, And Auto-Tune—Swamp Dogg’s first album to debut on 11 Billboard charts (including at #7 on 'Heatseekers’) and his first chart ink since his 1970 song “Mama's Baby - Daddy's Maybe”—Sorry You Couldn’t Make It allows Jerry Williams, aka Swamp Dogg, to finally dive into the sound he grew up playing: country. With the support of Pioneer Works Press, they recorded the album at Nashville’s Sound Emporium backed by a crack studio band led by Derick Lee, a keyboard virtuoso who worked as the musical director of BET’s Bobby Jones Gospel Show for nearly four decades. Nashville guitar firebrand Jim Oblon combusts his way through lead duties, while frequent collaborator Moogstar and other special guests John Prine, Chris Beirden of Poliça, and Sam Amidon join the action throughout.

While the 77 year-old Williams’ most enduring persona is the psychedelic soul superhero Swamp Dogg—a musical vigilante upholding truths both personal and political since 1970’s immortal album, Total Destruction To Your Mind—he will tell anybody who will listen that he’s considered himself country this entire time. “If you notice I use a lot of horns,” Swamp says. “But actually, if you listen to my records before I start stacking shit on it, I’m country. I sound country.”  

A band of 14 players, including Vernon, Lee, Beirden, and Moogstar, among others, provides the background for Swamp’s devastating new take on his biggest hit, 1970’s “Don’t Take Her (She’s All I Got).” Written with his best friend Gary U.S. Bonds, the track is country in that woeful, underdog-baring-their-soul sort of way that for some reason only country songs really ever allow themselves to be. Freddie North covered it first and made it a Top 40 pop song, but Johnny Paycheck took it all the way to #2 on the country charts in 1971. He duets with country-folk legend Prine on two songs (“It’s the first time I seen John since the sixties!” laughs Swamp): the indelible, psychedelic ballad “Memories” and the reflective “Please Let Me Go Round Again.” Originally written and demoed in his forties, “Please Let Me Go Round Again” is a plea for one more chance at life, sung with acute emotional connection.  

These are narratives about love, of missing the one you love, of compassion, family and friends, and even the kind of love that transcends death. Sorry You Couldn’t Make It sees Swamp come full circle, and closes what has felt to him like unfinished business. “They didn’t have any blacks in country until Charlie Pride came along,” he says. “But in time, all things change and that's what has happened to country music.” Surveying today’s Nashville reality, Swamp sees opportunity: artists as divergent as Darius Rucker and Lil Nas X are converging in a genre that he once worried might never give him his shot. “I'm anxious because it's like I've taken all my money and put it on one horse,” he says. “But I believe in this horse.”

Swamp Dogg – Sorry You Couldn’t Make It 

1.Sleeping Without You Is A Dragg

2.Good, Better, Best

3.Don’t Take Her (She’s All I Got)

4.Family Pain

5.I Lay Awake

6.Memories (feat. John Prine)

7.I’d Rather Be Your Used To be

8.Billy

9.A Good Song

10.Please Let Me Go Round Again (feat. John Prine)

Check out Swamp Dogg's video for "I'll Pretend" and "Answer Me, My Love" audio clip

"I'll Pretend" and "Answer Me, My Love" are off Swamp Dogg's new album Love, Loss, and Auto-Tune out Sept 7.