If you don’t want to listen to a slept-on early 70s soul platter from a man named Swamp, pictured riding a Secret of NIMH-sized white rat on his album cover, then you and I are qualitatively different human beings. This is Swamp Dogg Williams, a musician who I had not heard of until David Marchese dropped this spectacular 5,000 word Spin profile earlier this week. The best articles are not only entertaining, but they teach you something you new. Not only did the piece put me up on the the existence of the recently re-issued Rat On and Total Destruction, two low-profile, high-personality masterpieces from the Nixon years. It also serves as a glance at a vanished era of the industry and another tributary in the alternative history of music. We focus on the Ray Charles’ and Marvin Gaye’s for good reason. But equally interesting are the stories of the forgotten greats, those who smoked through the cracks of history, threw Eyes Wide Shut orgies in upstate New York, and used the word “motherfucker with the meticulousness of Miles Davis. Swamp Dogg is one of those deities. Who else could write a line like “Friendship is like acid, it burns as it slides away?”
So learn you some things, buy the records, and download some foetid and free funk below the jump. Get weird, ride the rat to the swamp. Etc.
Download:
MP3: Swamp Dogg – “Creeping Away”
MP3: Swamp Dogg – “If I Die Tomorrow”
