You can count on Swamp Dogg to always do the unexpected. Whether crafting album covers that have baffled listeners for decades, pairing autotuned vocals with sleek indie soul, or going country, songwriter, producer, and raconteur Jerry Williams blazes his own path. So tellingly his new documentary, Swamp Dogg Gets His Pool Painted eschews typical music doc tropes in favor of psychedelic animation, oddball shorts, poignant interviews, and yes, an overarching artistic project of painting Swamp Dogg’s signature rat image in the pool at his San Fernando Valley home: “That pulled me in, the fact that I was going to finally get my white rat and so forth in the pool.”
Category: Swamp Dogg
Transmissions :: Swamp Dogg
Our guest week on Transmissions is Jerry Williams Jr., but if you know your musical cult heroes, you probably know him by the name Swamp Dogg. Since the early ’50s, he’s lived as a true record man—writing songs, producing artists, self-releasing music, and putting out major label flops that have gone on to achieve lost classic status. He’s always walked the line between R&B and country, making a joke of the music industry’s intentional segregating of white and black audiences. His latest is called Sorry You Couldn’t Make It, and it pairs him with producer Ryan Olson, Bon Iver, Jenny Lewis, and the late John Prine. Over the many years, Swamp Dogg has embraced auto-tune, twang, and ambient flourishes. He joins host Jason P. Woodbury to discuss it all.