Swamp Dogg's 81-year journey to country success culminates in his new album 'Blackgrass'
Jerry "Swamp Dogg" Williams is 81 years old and punctuates his conversations with time-worn wisdom, colorful four-letter words and a comprehensive, learned knowledge of nearly eight decades of the music industry.
A peerless African American creative force, 2024 finds him making a bluegrass album, "Blackgrass: From West Virginia to 125th St," inspired by Harlem's swagger during an era that followed one in which millions of Black Americans relocated to northern cities during the "Great Migration."
"Bluegrass music came from Black people," the performer tells The Tennessean. "The banjo, the washtub, all that stuff? It started with African Americans. We were playing it before it even had a name."
If half the artists he's worked with in his storied career and on this album had never touched or been inspired by Black acts who played Harlem's Apollo Theater, the truths to which the album arrives would be stranger than fiction.
Thankfully, that's not the case.
To wit, the 12-song album features a bluegrass band comprised of timeless favorite Jerry Douglas, modern-era hit-maker Sierra Hull, Noam Pikelny (the Punch Brothers), Billy Contreras (fiddle player for Ricky Skaggs), Chris Scruggs and Kenny Vaughan (Marty Stuart's Fabulous Superlatives). Special guests include an eclectic who's who of Americana, country and rock, including Margo Price, Vernon Reid, Jenny Lewis, Justin Vernon, and the Cactus Blossoms.
A country legacy — without a country album release
While working as an A&R, producer and songwriter for Atlantic Records during the Jerry Wexler and Phil Walden era of the late 1960s and early 1970s, Williams — while also working in Muscle Shoals with acts including Patti LaBelle, the Commodores, and the Drifters — also noticed that outlaw-style country acts like Johnny Paycheck were having success with his music ("She's All I Got" reached No. 2 on country's sales charts). This, while also listening to copious amounts of John Prine (he counts Prine's 1972 hit "Sam Stone" as "one of the greatest songs I've ever heard"), Red Foley, George Jones and bluegrass icons such as Bill Monroe, Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs.
"I just love how all of that music sounds, first and foremost," says Williams.
Williams, who himself had also been a soul performer for two decades at that point, predicted that the breakout success of RCA-released Charley Pride, Capitol-signed Stoney Edwards, Linda Martell on Shelby Singleton's Plantation Records and CBS Records-distributed Stax pushing O.B. McClinton would assuredly lead to more Southern-born Black artists (like himself, born in Portsmouth, Virginia) infiltrating country music's mainstream.
As history remembers, similar spikes have occurred every decade since the 1970s but have not been broadly sustained in the genre.
Whenever WIlliams' country interests have flagged, he's emerged again in R&B. Eras have seen him work as everything from an early producer of Dr. Dre's World Class Wrecking CRU and a music publisher to hitting the road as a touring act after Kid Rock sampled a disco track he recorded in 1977.
However, since 2020, he's finally begun to busy himself as an Americana and country artist.
That's seen him not just work with artists affiliated with Skaggs and Stuart. He also worked with Prine in 2020, before his COVID-19-related passing, on "Sorry You Couldn’t Make It," an album that Prine's Oh Boy Records released.
Upon recording his latest album — and three releases into his long-awaited country career — Williams has thoughts about the state of Black artists finally emerging in the genre, himself included.
"Otis Redding could've sung the s--- out of any ballad that's hit No. 1 in country music," Williams says. "So, I will do my best to bring back his style instead of imitating George Strait. Even more, seeing how authentic artists like Merle Haggard and Buck Owens supported Charley Pride, I'm trying to get the same kind of support for my records right now.
'Blackgrass'
Swamp Dogg's latest sounds like it's playing from a mysterious old still-working jukebox untouched by time in the back of a rural dive bar.
Or, it's the type of music that punk rock supplanted at Hilly Kristal's Lower East Side New York City dive bar named after country, bluegrass and the blues.
Imagining a world where it's Black, '70s country acts like Edwards, Martell and McClinton on CBGB's stage instead of the Ramones and Talking Heads — therein lies the potency of this release.
Looking for an array of organically soulful voices performing over peerless bluegrass artistry (diving occasionally into countrypolitan and Western swing stylings)? It's here.
The songs they're singing and playing?
"Mess Under That Dress" and "Ugly Man's Wife" are bluesy, rollicking bluegrass tunes. However, the Jenny Lewis collaboration "Count the Days" involves lush string orchestration. The banjo's plucked strings add a percussive swing to offer mid-'70s doo-wop flair. "Rise Up" gets Living Colour's Vernon Reid involved in adding acid rock to the mix.
"Murder Ballad" closes the album with the story of "a son of a bitch who killed his mother and father and wants to die," says Swamp Dogg, flatly.
"For whatever reason, people love giving serial killers attention in the press."
Swamp Dogg finally arrives at country success
At present, Williams is making as much music inspired by Hank Williams Jr. as the Drifters' Ben E. King.
He unstifles a laugh when asked to describe the greatest value for his most unexpected moment of a largely unexpected career.
He's the same man who, while writing his own artist bio in 2006, offered that the reason why he named his recording alter ego "Swamp Dogg," is because "(anything a dog does is never) out of character. You understand what he did; you curse while making allowances for him, but your love for him never diminishes."
To The Tennessean, he offered the following:
"I'm glad to be a Black artist making country music right now. Throughout history, Black people have been so many things that I forget which one I was comfortable calling myself this morning. Maybe someone can read this article and tell me some more about myself."
This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Jerry Williams: 'Swamp Dogg' on newest album 'Blackgrass'
