SWAMP DOGG RELEASES LONG-TIME COMING COUNTRY ALBUM

“Sorry You Couldn’t Make It” was released last March – 50 years after Swamp Dogg’s first album, “Total Destruction to Your Mind,” a work filled with Southern funk, protest lyrics and an eccentric soul sound.

The musician Jerry Williams chose Swamp Dogg as his moniker in 1970. In the album booklet for another, later album, he explained, “I became Swamp Dogg in order to have an alter ego and someone to occupy the body while the search party was out looking for Jerry Williams.”

Williams says he failed to receive royalties on more than 50 top hits he had helped to write under his real name.

At nearly 80 years old with over 65 years of experience in the music industry, “Sorry” has solidified his place in country, however. His sound has historically challenged genres over the years. Not exclusively funk, soul, R&B, or country, sticking to any one style is something he gave no mind to in the past.

“I wanted to sing about everything and anything and not be pigeonholed by the industry,” Williams added in that same booklet (for “Best of 25 Years of Swamp Dogg”).

This time, though, the artist wanted to produce a straightforward country album.

The first track, “Sleeping Without You Is A Dragg,” sets the tone for the album. In an interview with NPR, Williams told of his wife’s death in 2003. That loss inspired the most recent recordings and his 2018 album, “Love, Loss, and Auto-tune.” Yet, he wanted to write a country album to explore his grief, as he’s been quoted: “That’s what country consists of – broken hearts.”

It includes “Please Let Me Go Round Again,” performed in a duet with country music legend John Prine, the pair having been friends since the 1970s. The last song on the album is one of the last studio recordings of Prine, who died a month after the album’s release from complications related to COVID-19.

Prine was just one of the few talented musicians who collaborated on Williams’s latest album. Justin Vernon from Bon Iver has a heavy presence of guitar and vocals, backed by a guest appearance from Rilo Kiley’s Jenny Lewis. Ryan Olson, the founder of the supergroup Gayngs, produced the album. Olson and Williams had worked together previously on Williams’s “Love” album.

The heart of the 2020 album, “(Don’t Take Her:) She’s All I Got,” made famous by the outlaw country musician Johnny Paycheck, reached the top of country charts in 1972. Williams

originally co-wrote this song with R&B singer and songwriter Gary U.S. Bonds, in 1970. Releasing his own version on his newest country album is a tribute to his career and Southern past.

Williams has gathered a cult following over the decades. Some fans consider his initial, “Total Destruction” album to be one of the best underground soul works recorded, stretching the genre and making his own unconventional and authentic sound known.

It is unlike the eclectic performer to do anything twice. No two Swamp Dogg albums are alike. Whatever he decides to do next will be highly anticipated, and likely something we’ve yet to hear from the artist.