Swamp Dogg
BIOGRAPHY
“I’m coming in on my final approach,” testifies the artist formerly known as Jerry Williams Jr. on the last song of his S-Curve Records debut, the aptly named Swamp Dogg Contemplates the Afterlife (S-Curve Records), highlighted by name checks for Sam Cooke’s “A Change Is Gonna Come,” Otis Redding’s “(Sittin’ On the) Dock of the Bay” and Chuck Willis’ “Hang Up My Rock ‘n’ Roll Shoes.”
And while all three of those classic hits were released posthumously at the time, the soon-to-be 84-year-old performer/songwriter/producer/entrepreneur and master musician is very much alive and kicking. Swamp Dogg nailed the landing on an album that makes a case for the man’s Grammy-worthy Americana credentials as a Zelig-like figure in modern music history, equally adept at blues and country – his oft-stated roots -- but also encompassing gospel, funk, soul, R&B, bluegrass and, of course, rock ‘n’ roll. Co-produced by Swamp Dogg with S-Curve founder Steve Greenberg, and the latter’s longtime collaborators Mike Mangini and Sam Hollander, the album’s 10 new tracks feature eight originals and two covers (Jenny Lewis’ “Acid Tongue” and John Prine’s “Please Don’t Bury Me”), and is slated for release on all digital formats June 20 – with vinyl LP and CD to follow.
The project was an unabashed labor of love for Grammy-winning music veterans Greenberg, Mangini and Hollander, who have worked their magic for everyone from Joss Stone, Andy Grammer and the Baha Men to Tom Jones, the O’Jays, Betty Wright & the Roots, Jonas Brothers, We the Kings and Hanson.
Greenberg has known Swamp Dogg personally for more than 30 years, when Swamp first made a cameo appearance on a record Steve produced back then. “This is the great Swamp Dogg album I’ve always dreamed of making with him,” he said, and after the release of the critically acclaimed 2024 documentary, Swamp Dogg Gets His Pool Painted, Greenberg figured the time was finally right. “If not now, when?” Assembling an all-star cast of session musicians (including Swamp’s live-in keyboardist Moogstar), the album was recorded at Brooklyn’s premier Mission Sound studios with guitarist Sherod Barnes, bassist Jerry Barnes, drummer Steve Wolf, trumpet player Jesse Klirsfeld, organ/piano player Raymond Angry and saxophonist Morgan Price.
“Our rule in making the album was, it had to be fun,” said Greenberg. “The only reason we did this was for the love of the artist and his music.”
The genesis of the record – its themes of looking back on an incredible life and looking towards what’s next -- began with the title, Swamp Dogg Contemplates the Afterlife, another classic in the manner of previous album monickers like Total Destruction to Your Mind (1970), I’m Not Selling Out/I’m Buying In (1981), I Called for a Rope and They Threw Me a Rock (1989) and his most recent release, Blackgrass: From West Virginia to 125th Street (2004).
“It didn’t start out as a concept album but, apparently, it is now,” concluded Swamp Dogg with a healthy note of sarcasm about confronting his own mortality.
“Notice how it starts with ‘Searching for Heaven’ and ends with ‘Final Approach,’” notes Greenberg. “That was on purpose. It’s a record steeped in memories and nostalgia, contemplating endings, but very much set in the present moment.”
The cover of Prine’s “Please Don’t Bury Me” has its origins when Swamp Dogg was the “token” black A&R executive and staff producer for Atlantic Records in New York, urging the label not to drop the singer/songwriter, even going so far as covering his “Sam Stone,” an anti-war tale of a drug-addicted veteran returning home, a crossover hit for him in 1972. Swamp’s latest version of a Prine song is a mirthful view of what might happen to the temporal vessel after breathing one’s last breath and seems as if it were written with him specifically in mind, especially the “kiss my ass goodbye” coda.
“Acid Tongue,” the other cover, is a lysergic-charged philosophical take on love, life and luck, written by Jenny Lewis, who had dueted on Swamp’s bluegrass album. The song was suggested by Greenberg, though Mr. Dogg was initially resistant to the idea. When he ultimately recorded it, the artist grew to embrace its fatalistic message. Says Swamp, “I didn’t write it, so I had to be talked into doing it, but now I’m feeling it’s one of the best things on the album.”
A special note must be made of the guest vocal by Gary U.S. Bonds, heard on “Waka, Waka, Waka,” a Jerry Williams, Jr. original about the end of a relationship that references their own 50-plus year falling-out over a personal matter. The two had been neighbors in Swamp Dogg’s native Portsmouth, VA during the time Bonds recorded his string of wild hits, including “Quarter to Three,” “Dear Lady Twist” and “School Is Out,” co-writing several songs together during that time. Bonds would be rediscovered by Bruce Springsteen and Stevie Van Zandt twenty years later in 1981 when they produced his comeback album Dedication and the hit single “This Little Girl.” Channeling the sound that grownups make in Peanuts cartoons, “Waka, Waka, Waka” represents their rapprochement in no uncertain terms with Swamp chiming in to call Gary “the best friend I ever had.”
“Getting the two of them back together again was a major highlight of making this album,” acknowledged Greenberg, who recorded Bonds’ vocals separately before the Swamp and Bonds’ two-hour reunion by phone. “All they did was reminisce and tell funny stories about stuff that happened 60 years ago. It was a great moment.”
Other standouts include “Searching for Heaven,” which suggests that it’s possible to find paradise right at home among those with whom you share love, as well as “Knock, Knock (Memories),” a song that deals with reckoning with one’s past that perhaps weighs heavily on the present. He deals with having been done wrong in that very past in the cleverly titled “A Million Tears Ago”, co-written by Hollander, that recalls Swamp’s long-ago anti-war stance and has echoes of “Cry to Me,” the Solomon Burke song that the Rolling Stones successfully covered. “Unhappy Song,” which Greenberg co-wrote alongside Swamp, Michael Mangini and Donniele Graves, is the result of a less-than-successful relationship ending in despair, recalling Otis Redding’s ability to mimic horn arrangements vocally in his earlier “The Happy Song (Dum-Dum)” and corollary “Fa-Fa-Fa-Fa-Fa (Sad Song).” Rounding out the collection is “Daddy’s Little Girl,” a heartbreaking Van Morrison-ish chronicle of a family torn asunder by the scourge of gun violence, while Swamp Dogg admits that the funky “Hot to Trot” is an overt dance track heavily influenced by Larry Williams of “Dizzy Miss Lizzy” renown.
For more than six decades, Jerry has been a notable producer and songwriter for and collaborator with such notables as Gene Pitney (“She’s a Heartbreaker”), Johnny Paycheck (“She’s All I’ve Got”), Irma Thomas, Dee Dee Warwick, Margo Price, Z. Z. Hill, Freddie North, The Commodores, Arthur Conley, Bon Iver, Vernon Reid, John Prine and Jenny Lewis. Swamp Dogg is the alter-ego he invented for himself in 1970 (long before that other Dogg) in the midst of a recording career that saw him debut as “Little Jerry” at the age of 12, giving way to “Little Jerry Williams” and, leaving “Little” by the wayside, Jerry Williams. As Swamp Dogg, Williams has recorded and released no fewer than 27 studio albums on an array of notable labels, including Island, Elektra, DJM, Takoma, Volt, Point Blank, Oh Boy and now, S-Curve, for Swamp Dogg Contemplates the Afterlife. And while the new album offers Swamp Dogg’s well-earned perspective on a life well-lived, it also provides convincing evidence that perhaps the best is yet to come.
Concludes Greenberg about working with a true cult legend: “Let’s hope Swamp Dogg can continue making records until he’s 120. He’s a national treasure.”
Swamp Dogg Contemplates the Afterlife
Producers:
Steve Greenberg
Mike Mangini
Sam Hollander
Swamp Dogg
Engineers:
Michael Mangini
Oliver Strauss
Musicians:
Sherod Barnes - Guitar
Jerry Barnes - Bass
Steve Wolf - Drums
Moogstar - Keyboards
Raymond Angry - Organ/Piano
Swamp Dogg - Piano
Jesse Klirsfeld - Trumpet
Morgan Price - Saxophones
Mixing: Mike Mangini
Mastering: Chris Gehringer
Studio: Mission Sound, Brooklyn
1. Searching for Heaven
Writer: Jerry Williams
2. Acid Tongue
Writer: Jenny Lewis
3. Knock Knock (Memories)
Writers: Jerry Williams, Delayne Stegall
4. Waka Waka Waka (feat. Gary U.S. Bonds)
Writer: Jerry Williams
5. A Million Tears Ago
Writers: Jerry Williams, Sam Hollander, Donniele Graves
6. Unhappy Song
Writers: Jerry Williams, Steve Greenberg, Michael Mangini, Donniele Graves
7. Please Don’t Bury Me
Writer: John Prine
8. Hot To Trot
Writers: Jerry Williams, Donniele Graves
9. Daddy's Little Girl
Writers: Jerry Williams, Alison Stegall, Delayne Stegall
10. Final Approach
Writers: Jerry Williams, Sam Hollander, Donniele Graves
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