The legend of Swamp Dogg runs deep and spans nearly 70 years of consistent musical output. Peter Margasak once summed up Swamp Dogg’s career for Chicago Reader like this: “Over the years, Williams has sung with jazz vibist Lionel Hampton; produced records by the Drifters, the Commodores, and Patti LaBelle; started several record labels; taken a Grammy nomination for country songwriter of the year; written and produced a blues opera; developed Dr. Dre‘s first group, the World-Class Wreckin’ Cru; penned and recorded pointed protest songs like ‘God Bless America for What’, and even cut jingles for Japan’s Suntory brewery.”
Amongst those who’ve heard of him, he’s a cult music legend and singular musical provocateur who has flirted for decades with the idea of getting famous and still managed somehow not to do it. Born Jerry Williams Jr., Swamp Dogg first started performing as Little Jerry Williams. He released his first record, “HTD Blues (Hardsick Troublesome Downout Blues)“, at the age of 12. After years of writing and releasing for various labels and having his songs recorded by other R&B and soul acts, he emerged as Swamp Dogg, unspooling Total Destruction to Your Mind onto the world in 1970. Followed up with 1971’s Rat On!, the albums make a pair of country soul funk lodestones unrivaled in modern music history. Twenty-four more albums have followed, including his latest, Blackgrass: From West Virginia to 125th St.
At the helm here is producer Ryan Olson, the founder of Midwest indie legends Gayngs. Olson’s been a frequent collaborator of Swamp Dogg’s seventh decade, playing multiple instruments on Swamp Dogg’s 2018 release Love, Loss, and Auto-Tune and producing his 2020 release, Sorry You Couldn’t Make It. Here, Olson and Swamp Dogg have created a matchless resident band to support him, consisting of some of the best bluegrass and Americana players currently doing it: banjoist Noam Pikelny, mandolinist Sierra Hull, dobro player Jerry Douglas, fiddler Billy Contreras, two members of Marty Stuart‘s Fabulous Superlatives, Chris Scruggs and Kenny Vaughan.
From the outset, “Mess Under That Dress” might be mistaken for just another traditional bluegrass number. But that’s put to rest when Swamp Dogg enters the mix, singing high and riding the mandolin strums. The harmonies are sweet and playful, as are the trading picking and bowing breakdowns between Swamp Dogg’s assembled. In “Ugly Man Wife”, Swamp Dogg says the only way to truly live the high life is by becoming an “ugly man’s” wife. The Cactus Blossoms help him on the chorus, adding the exact formal counterpoint to Swamp Dogg’s ragged lead vocal.
“Curtains on the Window” continues a fine tradition of great “house-as-character” country songs best exemplified by songs like Willie Nelson‘s “Hello Walls”, John Prine‘s “Storm Windows”, and George Jones‘ “The Grand Tour” and “Burn Your Playhouse Down“. Swamp Dogg walks us through a house that doesn’t want his lover to leave it behind.
Swamp Dogg goes full bandstand crooner on the jazz standards “Have a Good Time” and “Gotta Have My Baby Back”. There are notions of the Count Basie Orchestra here, but it’s all pure ethereal dream pop, as only Swamp Dogg hears it. “Have a Good Time” features Jerry Douglas’ best dobro playing on the album. Pay close attention to Billy Contreras’ fiddle and Rory Hoffman’s sublime accordion interplay in the second half of “Gotta Have My Baby Back.”
Throughout his career, Swamp Dogg’s only peer has probably been George Clinton, and like him, Swamp Dogg has always been a master arranger. On Blackgrass, he gives vocal duties directly to two of contemporary country music’s important voices. Margo Price takes on one of his songs, “To the Other Woman”, while Jenny Lewis does “Count the Days”, which Swamp Dogg once produced for Patti LaBelle & the Bluebelles. He’s notably absent on “To the Other Woman” apart from a clip of a recorded phone conversation where Swamp Dogg’s dispensing wisdom about matters of the heart. On “Count the Days”, you can almost hear Jenny Lewis singing under a period-appropriate beehive haircut.
To hear Swamp Dogg as a straight-up torch-singing soul stylist, see “Songs to Sing” and “This Is My Dream”. “Songs to Sing” is the most prescient song on the record, a timeless protest number so pure that there’s a string section and even a French horn. Completing the album is “Murder Ballad”, which begins with the line “I murdered a man / It was easier than I thought.” As the track progresses, it becomes increasingly difficult to tell if it’s the character speaking or the very act of murder itself. Rory Hoffman’s cello banjo playing on this one is genuinely unsettling, and Swamp Dogg does a kind of unrelenting Vincent Price as Nick Cave thing that’s doomed and lacks any want for redemption.
By its company alone, Blackgrass: From West Virginia to 125th St illustrates Swamp Dogg as the modern-day luminary he’s become for many in modern popular music. At its core, this collection interprets soul, funk, and jazz themes through the lens of bluegrass and Americana forms. But it’s so much more than that. Blackgrass: From West Virginia to 125th St is a timeless collection of American music that could only be created and delivered by the 81-year-old self-proclaimed “original D-O-double G”. If for some reason you’ve not fallen into the legend of Swamp Dogg before, this should be the reason that you do.