Swamp Dogg - Love, Loss, and Auto-Tune LP
Swamp Dogg - Love, Loss, and Auto-Tune LP
Joyful Noise
In 1970, Southern soul music maverick Jerry Williams, Jr. made the most radical move of his career. Frustrated with music business politics Williams reinvented himself as Swamp Dogg, an irreverent antihero smashing the conventions of commercial R&B music. Swamp Dogg's debut release Total Destruction to Your Mind featured a post-apocalyptic take on the Muscle Shoals' sound, with lyrics inspired by the revolutionary politics and psychedelic drugs of the late '60s. The music on Total Destruction to Your Mind stood worlds apart from the formulaic pop tunes Williams started cutting in 1954 under the name Little Jerry, and Swamp Dogg hasn't looked back since.
But the music business wasn't ready for Swamp Dogg, nor was the rest of America. His bizarre album titles and wild cover art turned the average consumer off, while his subversive lyrics earned him a spot on Richard Nixon's infamous enemies list. Swamp Dogg was not deterred. He seemed to relish operating from the margins of the music business, consequently becoming one of the quintessential outsider figures in American music. Now, nearly fifty years after his debut release, Swamp Dogg stands on the precipice of another radical reinvention. His latest creation, Love, Loss, and Auto-Tune, is a nine-song collection featuring production by Polica's Ryan Olson and finds Swamp Dogg's bluesy southern soul colliding head-on with 21st Century electronic music production techniques.
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Tags: joyful noise, r&b, soul