Swamp just posted this on KTF, thought you might like a look, hope Swamp doesn't mind.
You can see him in concert HERE too, great stuff!
The article is from the Guardian.....
Swamp Dogg bites back Andrew Purcell meets the best failure in the United States
Andrew Purcell
Friday June 15, 2007
Guardian
The best failure in the United States "When I felt like I needed profanity, I used profanity," Swamp Dogg begins. And as he cheerfully swears his way through his 50 years in showbusiness, it's easy to see why he remained a cult figure while his peers went mainstream. He wrote like Sly Stone and sang like Van Morrison, but took so many diversions he never arrived.
"They can't find a hole for this pigeon," he says. "But I don't feel rained on. I don't feel bad. I still consider myself the most successful failure in the United States, and that's really not bad at all."
"Little" Jerry Williams recorded his first single at the age of 12 in 1954, with his stepfather on guitar, his uncle on bass and his mum on drums, and spent his teens working the soul circuit as a cherub-faced hollerer and piano man. By 1970, he had written platinum hits for Gene Pitney and Solomon Burke, and produced the Commodores, the Drifters, Doris Duke and Lulu - but his singing career had stalled.
"I'm not a down-and-out R&B singer," he says. "I'm not a used-to-be because I never was. I am so glad now that I didn't become a great R&B hit in the 60s, because I may still be in the fucking 60s, running around singing Baby You're My Everything and I'm the Lover Man."
Hired by Atlantic Records, he soon hit the soul ceiling. "I thought Atlantic hired me because I was super-duper, I was just so fucking good. But they hired me because they were in a corner. NAACP [National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People] and CORE [Congress of Racial Equality] insisted that they put a black on staff and I was it. They just hired me, and then they didn't give me anything to do.
"I had the chance to rub elbows with [legendary Atlantic producers] Tom Dowd and Jerry Wexler. But I found out that in corporate America, everyone guards the restroom key. They would go there and open the door for you, but they wouldn't lend you the key. The day [Atlantic boss] Ahmet Ertegun's secretary, Noreen, called me to her office and said, 'Jerry, I got something for you' it was almost like a ceremony. When I put the restroom key in my pocket, I felt like the richest motherfucker in the world."
Squatting in Tom Dowd's office, picking through Atlantic's B-roster, he came up with an alter ego to record the unreleasable songs he was writing. The result was Total Destruction to Your Mind, a socially conscious funk album as powerful and strange as There's a Riot Goin' On, minus Sly Stone's cocaine paranoia. "The name meant a lot," he says. "Just that Dogg on my name was enough to let people know that I was different. It also put them on alert that they could expect just about anything. Swamp Dogg would give it a fucking try."
Swamp Dogg demonstrated against the Vietnam war with Jane Fonda and found his way on to Richard Nixon's enemies list. He appeared on album covers riding a rat and tap-dancing on the boardroom table. He sang God Bless America (For What?) and got sued by Irving Berlin. He never sold many records.
His new album, Resurrection (which features Williams being crucified on the cover), is a familiar mix of the profound and the profane, anchored by rolling boogie piano, like George Clinton playing Amos Milburn. Lyrical potshots include They Crowned an Idiot King, America Is Bleeding, In Time of War Who Wins and the extraordinary title track, a rambling state-of-the-ghetto address.
"What I'm trying to say is, you're never beaten. That's what Resurrection is about - just get your shit together and stop waiting for somebody else to get your shit together for you. I lift myself up. I may not be as high up as I want to be, but at least I'm up," he says. "And one day, I hope to have enough money to hire Al Green and his band for my birthday party."
· Resurrection by Swamp Dogg is available on import. He plans to tour the UK this autumn
· This article was amended on Friday June 15 2007. We missed the last two numbers off the year of Swamp Dogg's first single. This has been corrected.
