Swamp Dogg's 1970 full-length, Total Destruction to Your Mind, updated soul music with post-psychedelic, Southern-fried guitar, and made its destructive point with acerbic lyrics about racism, rednecks, consumerism and the end of the world. Swamp Dogg is the pseudonym — the souldonym, really — of veteran producer, singer and songwriter Jerry Williams Jr., who had achieved a few successes of his own in the '60s while producing hits for the likes of Gene Pitney and Charlie and Inez Foxx. Total Destruction to Your Mind was the work of a dissatisfied man, and a glimpse into one possible future for the soul music Williams had helped to create in the 1960s.
Along with 1971's Rat On!, Swamp Dogg's Total Destruction is getting a long-overdue reissue. Alive Naturalsound Records has released spiffy remastered versions of the two albums on CD and vinyl, and it could be that a new generation of music fans will come to appreciate the work of a brilliant, prolific soul auteur. Born in Virginia in 1942, Williams has also had a close connection with Nashville for decades — with co-writer Gary U.S. Bonds, Williams penned a classic country song, "She's All I Got," which went on to be a 1971 hit for Nashville soul singer Freddie North, as well as a smash for country vocalist Johnny Paycheck.
Produced by Williams for Mankind, a Nashville soul label, North's version of "She's All I Got" is true country-soul crossover. Cut in Music City with producer Billy Sherrill after the North version had made the charts, Paycheck's version is stone country. The song has been recorded by around 90 artists, including Conway Twitty, Norma Jean and Floyd Cramer. A decade later, Williams came to Nashville and cut an idiosyncratic country album for Mercury. It didn't see the light of day until Williams himself released it on CD some years later.
