There is a copyright for each song on vinyls or CDs, and the contents of them, especially those of compilations, are determined by copyrights the company holds at the time. If the company lost them, the re-publishing of the obscure, aside from the famous, depends on whether there is someone who happens to be eagar to make an approach to somewhere else. Roughly titled "R&B All-time Hits" which I had rent from a library was such one and my first and last encounter. This compilation should disappear by now, since anyone can rent free of charge from a library where the custody is weaker than a specialized toll rental one. The list contains many tunes I had never heard before, and moreover, it seemed to me that there is no relation among them, such as "they are produced by the one person" or "they are cut from the one label". However, thanks to the easier access to such informations by the internet, I have finally found a person who had a common term among the tunes especially of the '70s : he is Swamp Dogg a.k.a. Jerry Williams Jr..
According to the profile on his own site, there are comments on his achivements such as "the first black in-house stuff producer for the corporate Atlantic who did works with Patti Labelle and so on" or "I convinced Lionel Ritchie of the Commodores to sing". He called such big names, however, most of his activity has always been at small labels. He first cut his side in the 50s and also in his teens, and he was said to have provided his tunes to others or produced them or recorded commercials or done A&R jobs at several labels in the '60s. In the name of Little Jerry Williams he cut I'm the Lover Man, which appears on "The Best of Loma Records", reminds me of the carefree Duke of Earl of Gene Chandler. At Musicor=Dynamo label he provided a rocker She's a Heartbreaker to shrill-voiced Gene Pitney, who was famous for Bert Bacharach=Hal David tunes including Only Love Can Break a Heart (they appear on some compilations like "Anthology"). Charlie Foxx, who wrote this with Jerry, has his own biggest hit Mockingbird with his sister Inez, and he also has the second biggest hit (1-2-3-4-5-6-7) Count the Days (on "The Dynamo Duo") written with Yvonne, the wife of Jerry Williams. (This tune was practically produced by Jerry Williams though his name doesn't appear there.) "Little Jerry Williams Anthology", the compilation ranging from '54 to '69, you can hear his own highest chart-hit Baby You're My Everything or Atlantic-affiliated Cotillion sides like Shipwrecked. These are mild string-ridden pops from the east-coast, and you can find some with his own tricky lyrics. It is rather interesting to me that such sides from small labels in the '60s are the products of struggles in imitating the corporate labels or trying something eccentric.
In the late '60s Jerry Williams moved his stage from the east-coast to the south, and began calling himself Swamp Dogg. The south including Muscle Shoals was in its prime for recordings at the studios, where the characteristic muddy atmosphere of southern soul was made together with that of the blues or country. At the labels such as Canyon, Mankind or Fungus each of which lived a short life, Swamp Dogg hired the native musicians and put his unique and sometimes strange essence, which was derived from his career in the east-coast show-biz world, to his products with the help of men like former hit maker Gary U.S. Bonds. His strangeness is prominent in soul-tinged blues singer Z. Z. Hill's "The Brand New Z.Z. Hill". The one half of this 'the first Blues at the Opera ever' contains skits of a man and a woman between songs written by Swamp Dogg team, and you may relax with the other half consists of others' tunes like Faithful and True co-written by the great soul song-writer Dan Penn or country singer Waylon Jennings' The Chokin' Kind. It was the age when someone said "I hit upon a good idea" and without delay anything novel was allowed to be released to the world, I suppose. Freddie North, with a clumsy but fine voice, sings steadily on "Friend", including modest but keen tunes like She's All I Got or Sidewalks, Fences and Walls. Swamp Dogg productions shone brightly the best in the early '70s, but afterwards it seems to me that they are kind of in the dark because he followed the fashion at times. I was surprised when I first heard the King Solomon Burke singing the pure disco Please Don't You Say Goodbye to Me produced by Swamp Dogg (appears on "Let Your Love Flow" also including other disco tunes whose beats the King is riding on). And "Blame It on the Dogg", another compilation in his association since '68 to '79, contains ones which was left out of selection for originally released albums, such as Heren Curry's Shu-Doo-Pa-Poo-Poop (Love Being Your Fool), fine soul tune in the disco era.
Although he often produced singers who had a deep and soulful timbre, Swamp Dogg himself had that of a rock'n'roller who throttles his valve and raises his voice. Southern recordings of "Total Destruction to Your Mind" and "Rat On"(on "The Excellent Side of Swamp Dogg vol.1"), "Cuffed Collared Tagged & Gassed" with Philadelphia orchestration added to southern sounds and "Gag a Maggot" (on "vol.2") "Greatest Hits?" (on "vol.4") at Miami's TK studios. All four albums fight a good fight against the corporate labels, which say "blacks don't like difficult ones" and ignore them in a commercial point of view on the one hand and talk much about white new-comers with message songs on the other. The range of his repertoire and style is wide : from the sharp cynicism of his own composition on Synthetic World, God Bless America for What or Choking to Death from the Ties that Bind, Buzzard Luck, to his sultry renditions of Joe South's Redneck or John Prine's Sam Stone : from rock'n'roll featuring his own pounding piano to southern soul, bluesy southern rock. His disciple-like fellow Charlie Whitehead (he was given the pseudonym 'Raw Spitt' at first) interprets his tunes with his slightly husky and soulful voice. Beginning with the title tune, Charlie's compilation "Songs to Sing" is in the smoke of message-influenced but earnest southern soul. Swamp Dogg, now the owner of his label, is still active in Los Angeles. Here I don't dig deeper into his recent productions, however, I find many of his albums bearing eccentric designs on the sleeve, in the sense of humor in his own way : a man of the underwear in a lumber room, or a man riding on a rat, or a man wearing a gas mask, or a man surrounded by junks, or a man who is sandwiched by nurses and is bound to a bed on his recent album, etc. As for me, I think he should do a little better effort to the sleeve design, however, this might be his province. When I happened to see his live several years ago in Europe on YouTube, I found him playing keyboards and singing Total Destruction of Your Mind, and I remembered Sly Stone of Woodstock except for his rotund figure. I think this suggests his vital power, not full of wit but soundly avaiable for anything. (2006/10/04)(2010/01/20)