“I was just a terrific motherfucker,” Swamp Dogg declares in the 2024 documentary Swamp Dogg Gets His Pool Painted. It’s hard to argue. What else can you say about a singer, songwriter, producer, and impresario who produced soul legend Irma Thomas, protested the Vietnam war with Jane Fonda, and mentored foundational west-coast hip-hop figure Alonzo Williams? He’s recorded with the likes of John Prine, Jenny Lewis, and Willie Clayton, and he frequently collaborated with the late Guitar Shorty, his housemate of 18 years and an inspiration to Jimi Hendrix. Last year, he added “author” to his CV when he released a cookbook and memoir called If You Can Kill It I Can Cook It.
Even that list doesn’t do justice to the full force of Swamp Dogg. Born Jerry Williams Jr., he made his first recording, “HTD Blues (Hardsick Troublesome Downout Blues),” in 1954 at age 12. He began performing and releasing music regularly in his teens, and right from the start he baffled the industry with his genre bending. As he told NPR’s Jesse Thorn in 2018, “[A promoter] thought I was white; I thought I was Black.” Swamp Dogg has spent the past several decades fusing R&B, funk, country, soul, and whatever else is lying around into his own weird bayou story songs. It’s all deep soul American music no matter the combination of sounds.
Swamp Dogg is now 83, and his distinctive light voice sounds a little more ragged on his most recent release, 2024’s Blackgrass: From West Virginia to 125th Street (Oh Boy). Fiddles, banjos, and all, the album is still quintessential Dogg, whether he’s talking lasciviously about the “Mess Under that Dress,” advising young women to become an “Ugly Man’s Wife,” or duetting with Margo Price on the classic “To the Other Woman (I’m the Other Woman),” which he originally produced for R&B singer Doris Duke in 1970. “Country and blues together—that’s the shit,” he muses in Gets His Pool Painted. Chances are running out to see Swamp Dogg prove it in concert, so don’t miss this one.
Swamp Dogg Marijuana Deathsquads open. Fri 1/9, 9 PM, Metro, 3730 N. Clark, $37.84 in advance, 18+