Photo by Matthew Dilmore.
Jerry Williams Jr. (Swamp Dogg) has announced his 25th studio LP, I Need A Job... So I Can Buy More Autotune, out Febrary 25 via Don Giovanni Records. With the news comes the album's lead single, "Soul To Blessed Soul."
Williams has been making soul music since the mid '50s and recording under the Swamp Dogg moniker since 1970. He turns 80 in July. Through the years, he's reinvented himself too many times to count, but always with the same twinkling sense of humor — a quality not often associated with his generally earnest genre.
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"Swamp Dogg should be the only person allowed to use Auto-Tune," Steffanee Wang wrote in The FADER's premiere of Williams' July 2018 single "Answer Me, My Love" — a Nat King Cole cover that led her to imagine "what it would sound like if robots could sing love songs." Shortly thereafter, he released Love, Loss, and Auto-Tune, a record inspired by Kanye West's 808s and Heartbreaks, presenting his vocals in the same electric cloak Ye used to alter the course of modern music for years to come.
While 2020's Sorry You Couldn't Make It found Williams returning to his natural voice, his upcoming album's title suggests his Auto-Tune dreams are more than one album deep. On "Soul To Blessed Soul," the effect is employed tastefully, adding a subtle tremolo to his earthy tones. Listen below.
