Swamp Dogg: "Total Destruction To Your Mind"

Can’t stop listening to this…Swamp Dogg and his entire vibe, especially on this debut LP, are a sort of underground musical addiction that any deep soul head worth their salt can appreciate.  Swamp Dogg (Jerry Williams, Jr.) has made appearances in this blog before, in the Doris Duke and Freddie North posts, both of which he produced.  “Total Destruction…,” however, is Dogg’s own artistic vision as intended for himself, and what a wonderful, twisted, truly bizarre vision indeed.  The music—recorded with a staggering lineup of Muscle Shoals’ famed Swampers session crew—is like a less-mass-appeal-oriented version of the great Stax and Atlantic soul sides of the time, complete with subtle horn arrangements, early ‘70’s electric piano, and an “it-feels-like-you’re-in-the-studio-with-these-dudes” production aesthetic.  The curveball, though, is Williams’ demented lyric-writing, which strays completely from its contemporary mainstream, instead offering a fascinating, and even sometimes disturbing, look into the psyche of the Swamp Dogg character, with Dogg’s voice sounding like Otis Redding gone totally off the rails, a lilt and a howl in the same breath.  While “Synthetic World” may muse about the present and all its ills, “The World Beyond” is a reflection from a post-nuclear survivor.  This sort of contradiction is on display throughout the album, as tender Southern love ballads nestle up to grimy, surreal funk and soul workouts with strikingly odd concerns and problems at their center.  Getting into this record isn’t so much “total destruction to your mind,” as the title warns, but rather is like discovering a little slice of essential listening that you’ve been missing your whole life.  Swamp Dogg is definitely a hit among those in the know, but deserves wider exposure for his very strange, very wonderful contributions to soul, funk, rock, etc.  Down-home and out-there all at once.