618: If You Can Kill It, Swamp Dogg Can Cook It

0:28This episode is brought to you by Resi and American Express. I had fixed the kitchen up, so I had a speaker in each corner of the kitchen. I had a strobe light, which I had to take that out because it was making my little Cocker Spaniel, making him go crazy. I didn't realize that. It just brought me life with those blinking lights going on and off. It was a part. Incredible. This is Taste. I'm your host, Matt Rodbard. Jerry Williams Jr. has performed under the pseudonym Swamp Dog since 1970 and has been described as one of the great cult figures of 20th century American music. And it was an absolute honor to welcome the R &B singer, songwriter, and record producer into the studio.

1:15We talk about him visiting restaurants on the road while touring in the Jim Crow South and working with iconic artists like Patti LaBelle, Doris Duke, and Dr. Dre. We also talk about his new cookbook, which is a real treasure. It's called If You Can Kill It, I Can Cook It, and I absolutely love it. I hope you enjoy my conversation with the one and only Swamp Dog.

1:43Swamp Dog, welcome to This Is Taste. What an honor to have you in the studio. Well, thank you very much. I'm honored to be here. I cannot wait to talk all about your new cookbook. If You Can Kill It, I Can Cook It With Salt. What did that name come from? Without Salt. Without Salt. Correction, Without Salt. That's better. What were you getting at with that title? Just wanted to say something that would attract people's attention immediately. Didn't have time. You know, good merchandising. You don't supposed to have to beat around the bush. You know, people lose interest or forget about what you're trying to do.

2:23Yeah, yeah, yeah. The mission statement is right there. I mean, I got a chance to preview it. It's amazing. Pioneer Works put it out. It's a great book because it combines your history with music starting in the 1950s. Right. And so for fans of your music, you're going to get wonderful stories. But then you got the recipes. Yeah. Love that. Yeah. How did you, when you were thinking about all the recipes in your life, how did you get to that list of recipes? Well, I just thought about the things that my grandmothers and aunts and cousins, that they baked, cooked, broiled, whatever. and I just pulled from there.

3:14Most of my recipes were tried and used by my family. Yeah. And I was the only child, so I'm in a house full of strong women and I learned how to cook. I learned how to do a lot of things that women do. Yeah, yeah. No, I wasn't good at, I don't know if I was good at it or not, football and basketball, because the kids would take my ball and use it and wouldn't let me play. Oh, they could play the keep away. That pissed me off. I should go back and get them. Go back and get them. Well, you know what? You're the one who's producing records. You're the one who's recording records. You've got this great documentary we'll talk about.

4:11So if they're still with us, they're jealous. We'll say that. Eat your hearts out. Eat your hearts out. What's it like growing up in Virginia? What's on the menu at your home when you're with your family, checking out the kitchen? Oh, chicken pot pie. But it's not like the pot pie that you buy, you know, Sarah Lee or whoever it is, and throw it in the oven there for 20 minutes. it's really a stew usually with chicken but now we got so many vegans and all that kind of stuff and no telling what you put in there but it's just a dough you know you cook a chicken boil the chicken and then you add these strips of dough that you seasoned and put them in the pan one by one.

5:14It's delicious. And it's time. It takes time. Yeah. Making great pot pie like that. Yeah. From scratch. Yeah. Always had cabbage, fried cabbage. I love fried cabbage. I think I'm going to have another cookbook called If You Can Kill It, I Can Cook It Again. Ha ha, you got the title already. That's really good. So when you're frying cabbage, because cabbage, it can be boring. But then you put it in coleslaw and it's great. Or if you fry it, it's even better. What's that like? I fry it usually in bacon drippings. But now I'll use olive oil or canola oil or something like that. But then, I mean, to really make it scrumptious, you need bacon drippings.

6:01You need bacon drippings in it. But I like you have alternatives with the olive oil. but sometimes you just got to go baking. I want to ask you, you know, your career is illustrious and we could, you know, there's a documentary about it and I'm linking to it in the show notes. It's in theaters at this recording, but it will be on VOD at some point. You joined Atlantic Records in 1969 as a producer, as an executive, and you'd had a long career of performing and you still obviously continue to perform. But when you're at this Atlantic Records job, What's food like in 1969 when you're working in the industry?

6:38You're taking people out. You're in Midtown. You're like less than 10 blocks from our office. The main place that I ate and most of my record buddies, a place called Tommy Smalls. Tommy had the best cook in the world. and when he left the next one was the best in the world I mean I'm trying to remember which street it's on off of Broadway is it in Midtown? yeah near the offices yeah yeah called Thomas Mars he was also known as Dr. Jive he was a disc jockey but in the higher echelon of disc jockeys very recognized and you could break records quick. What's food like when you're on the tour? Let's go back a little longer to the early 60s.

7:36I mean, you met George Jones. You worked with legends in the industry. When you're on the road touring, what's food like back then? It's almost like that now, the same. You get so hungry, you just eat about anything. Whatever you can get at that time. You can't really be that choosy about what you want to eat. You eat what's available as little as you can of fast foods, but you end up eating some time. Yeah. So back in the 60s, we have Taco Bell now and In-N-Out, but back then, what's it like? No, we didn't have those. What's it like? You carried your own food a lot of times. Yeah. Somebody would cook up some chickens and eat potatoes, fried potatoes, and you'd have them on the bus or whatever way you were traveling.

8:44What are you drinking? Coca-Cola's, Nehi's orange and Nehi grape. I don't even know if they still make those. I love Nehi. Nehi. I know the name. Yeah. That's a good one. Yeah, I loved it. They make good soda. And Cokes, they always made a real good soda. Yeah. Even when they took the cocaine out of it. You remember the days when they had a little more spikier experience? I was wondering why Grandmama and all of them was like so up. You know, like, I'll do it. I'll get it. I'll cook it. It wasn't just caffeine in there. No, it wasn't. I want to ask you a serious question. For many of our listeners, you've lived through history and they may not have heard this from a traveling musician, but what's food like traveling in the Jim Crow South, in a segregated South, in a South where racial relations are horrible and you felt the brunt of it?

9:46I'd like to hear what that was like. It was awful. People like me, when I say people like me, people that were born in the South, raised in the South, we really didn't make waves. It's the people that were raised in New York and Chicago. I'm not saying it was good, by no means. But they were outraged. We're like, we weren't. Hey, as a matter of fact, it was almost a step up. we knew to go around the back of the restaurant immediately as we got off the bus. You know, we didn't even attempt to go through the front door. We'd be tempted, come on, we just felt gone. And, you know, they rebelled and still ended up having to go through the kitchen and or wait outside for their stuff to be brought out.

10:40It was not a good thing because you could feel the hate and then you become angry. You could feel all of that. It was not good. It was not good at all. The places that we got to eat were really good, were the black-owned, and even where the segregation was vast, we had some great black restaurants. some great cooks. Like now, at least we're not dealing with segregation and all that. It was very trying. Well, thank you for sharing that. It's just so important to repeat this retelling of history. We forget these things, time travels, and we should never forget what you endured. But you resolved and you became Swamp Dog.

11:38Yeah. You became Swamp Dog. You traveled the world playing music. And I'm going to ask you a bunch of questions about the recipes because the recipes tell stories about specific musicians. But before we get to that, you write this incredible introduction and you make the you make the claim that you're writing the greatest cookbook ever. And that, you know, Julia Child, Graham Care, Betty Crocker, James Beard and many others are going to be they're going to be jealous of this. What's it like in 1972 when you're thinking about writing a cookbook? I started writing the book mainly because I was suffering with high anxiety and, yeah, nerves was all frazzled.

12:22I was having a hard time because I was moderately successful. And I thought success was going to mean more or mean something. but what I thought was fantasy. It didn't happen like that. You know, you're doing well, so you do well. But, you know, I was thinking that the world would become my oyster, that people would bow down when I walked by, you know, like royalty or something. And that's not it. You know, it's a chance to clear your mind of all of the BS and live a normal life, not have to tell a bunch of lies, not have to reveal anything that you really don't want to reveal. That's what you would call a living success, a type of living success.

13:25That's all. Money doesn't do it because I bought a lot of things. And each thing was supposed to make me feel better. And it didn't. It's like you give a child something at Christmas and they play with it for like 15 minutes. And you never see them play with it again. Yeah. I would be in the kitchen alone. My wife was in there a lot because she was actually a chef, but they called them first cooks at women. That is, they called them first cooks. They would not allow them to be called chefs, but she was a chef. And she showed me how to do little things that, hey, you just don't know. Like when you read the cookbook and they say, now fold in the whatever.

14:23Yeah. So how do you fold liquids? You know, how do you? She could tell me how. She had that skill? Yeah. She knew all of those little inside things, you know, how to keep the kitchen going while you're cooking. I'd be making two or three different things at a time, you know, but like, hey, keep your pots clean at all times you know yeah you don't know work clean yeah you don't know when you're gonna have to go back to it and all that so it's incredible story about your wife i want to go back and just ask you a follow-up about just cooking and how that resolved the anxiety this idea of solo cooking when all that noise was happening the success the not success was eating at you but you ended up in the kitchen cooking what was that feeling like and while you were cooking?

15:14Well, I had fixed the kitchen up. I had a designer, for lack of a better word, come in and turn my kitchen around. At that time, there was like quadraphonic sound, which lasted about 30 minutes. So I had a speaker in each corner of the kitchen. I had a strobe light, which I had to take that out because it was making my little Cocker Spaniel, making him go crazy. I didn't realize that. We had 380 Christmas lights in the ceiling, but they had the plastic over them, and they just blinked at all times. This is why I love the kitchen so much. Now, we put an 8-track rack in, took out, had made place for the drawers.

16:18And one of the places where we had the drawers was like under one of the ovens. It had two ovens there in the kitchen. And that rack mount 8-track player was in there. I built a bunch of things in the kitchen that wasn't particularly for the kitchen. But it just brought me life with those blinking lights going on and off. It's Swamp Dog. It's like a party in your kitchen. And it was like that. You're cooking and it's a party. Right. That's what it was. It was a party. That's incredible. Talk about having people over. Yeah. Are you cooking for musicians at the time? I mean, some of your artists, your friends.

17:05And DJs here in New York. Well, just people I was associated with when they come in town. There's a lot of them in my book, like Ernie Lena, who was the first black major record distributor in Chicago. Well, actually, anywhere. He was the first one. You can see him in the kitchen. Now, I actually learned my waffle making from him. That's the reason I named it after him. Yeah. Because, oh, this guy could cook. Oh, man, he could cook. Yeah. Yeah. You had a lot of people over, and I can't imagine those parties. If those walls could talk, Swampo. Yeah, yeah. From February 20th to March 7th, dive into Canada's biggest culinary festival, Montreal en Lumière, an exclusive partnership with the McCord Stewart Museum and its exhibition, On the Menu Montreal, a restaurant story.

18:06The 2026 festival invites food lovers on a flavorful journey through time. Montreal's top restaurateurs will reimagine 65 years of the city's iconic astronomy, crafting inventive, nostalgia-inspired dishes with a modern twist. Prepare your palate, world-renowned chefs, including several Michelin-star talents, will team up with over 80 of Montreal's finest local chefs to create unforgettable, one-of-a-kind menus. The full program is available at MontrealOnLumiere.com, presented by Lotto Quebec in collaboration with National Bank. Hi there, it's Matt, co-host of the show. We are currently running a This Is Taste listener survey, and we'd love to hear from you.

18:49Do you have a guest request? A restaurant you wish we'd visit to talk about on three things? What about a lesser-known cookbook author who deserves a spot in our studio chair? You can let us know by clicking the link in our show notes to complete the survey. It will only take a couple minutes, I swear, and will help us continue to make the best show possible. That's the This Is Taste listener survey link in our show notes. I'm going to go into some specific recipes because I like memories of colleagues and friends in the industry. I love the T-Bone Walker steak. It has the Beaumont seasoning on it.

19:27Why was that important? Tell me a little bit about this steak. Well, there was a restaurant a couple doors from the Capitol Theater in Portsmouth, Virginia. And I went to see T-Bone Walker play at the theater a couple doors down. I saw him later in the restaurant. It was a black restaurant. They had great soul food. and he was in there eating. And I loved his music. I loved the way he dressed, everything. And that's my dedication to him. But we were, I was a kid. We weren't friends or nothing like that. But he did talk to me when I walked up to him and said, Mr. Walker, I really love your music.

20:30I really love your blues, you know. And he was cordial, very cordial. I met some that weren't cordial. I always just wanted to be around those musicians, touch them, talk to them. They were great people. And you, at that point, you knew you had an ability with your voice. I didn't realize. Other people knew it, but it's not something I took for granted. I've always been nervous. I'm nervous now before I go on stage. I'm 119 years old, and I'm nervous before I go up there. Sometime on the way to a gig, I wish the club would burn down before I get there. But you're glad it didn't. You're playing tonight.

21:25You're playing an award show tonight. Yeah. You're nervous about going on stage. No, because I only got three minutes. Yeah. Okay? So that's not even time for my nerves to get. It's good. Yeah. You got two recipes in here with Meat Loaf. One is a tribute to Little Milton. The other is a tribute to Tone Loke. Those are kind of different ends of the musical spectrum, but Meatloaf joins them together. Tell me a little bit about these artists. Tell me about the artists, you know, too. Well, it was... Oh, Tone Loke was, yeah, Wild Thing. Yeah, Wild Thing. Yeah. Yeah. I didn't like that record. Really?

22:06No. Until my wife bought it and must have played it 800 times the first day. By the time the third day rolled around, that's not bad. You know, it's pretty good. And it was, and she pushed it. That's another, she was another reason that we went into rap productions and so forth. It was that Tone Lope record. It actually, that recipe actually should be attributed to my wife. Yeah. my wife's love of the Tone Lope record. It wasn't mine. Let me just follow up. You ended up working with rap artists early on. Yeah. What was that experience for a music in a genre that maybe initially you weren't so into, but you ended up working in studios with these?

23:06Yeah. Yeah. We had we had one of the biggest one, biggest rap records on our label, which was MC Breed and the DFC doing Ain't No Future in Your Fronting. Yeah. Yeah. So eight million twelve inches on that. That's incredible. Yeah. Oh, amazing. I remember that. You know, that's his history here. Yeah. And my wife kept pushing me to get deeper into the productions of rap and so forth. But due to the fact when disco was really doing great, I had two records, one by ZZ Hill, one by Freddie North, that went, they sold just as good as the rap record. So I refused to go into rap She said, well, I'm going to do it She started managing some rap acts and so forth And I thought just because what I was doing Which was like R &B slash Southern Soul That I could make it through the storm But I found out later I couldn't And then I was saying things like I hate rapping, ain't nothing, blah, blah, blah.

24:37And then when I did finally get in, after I found out it was like going to be a staple,

24:47I got into it.

24:52But what I produced was a little outside of what it was supposed to be. I didn't like rap. because you had to have a certain amount of time for the beginning. You had to take a break. I don't care what was happening with the music. You had to take that drum percussion break in the middle. It had to be a certain speed, you know, and it was like, I don't know, formula music or something like that. Yeah, much of the early rap was. I mean, that was on the beats. And I refused to do it because I didn't feel it. And then when I did decide to do it, it sounded like crap, you know, because I wasn't in there learning with everybody else, you know.

25:53And I was hating when I really was feeling sorry for myself for not getting in at the time. Yeah. And that's where my hate came. But it all leveled out. You started, I mean, you worked with a very young, relatively unknown artist named Andre Young. Yeah. Who became Dr. Dre. Dr. Dre. What was that like, working with that group? That group? That group? What's the group? I'm sorry. The World Class Wrecking Crew. Yeah, the World Class Wrecking Crew. pioneering group. Yeah. You worked on those records. Yeah. That's amazing. And the act, I was managing the act. Oh, you were on the road managing those guys?

26:33You know, yeah, well, I went on the road a couple times, but I did actually everything from my house office. Yeah, yeah. They were on the road. Yeah. And they actually, when I had my first meeting with them, I asked him what do you guys want to do what are you looking forward to and they said hey we want to be able to make at least$10 ,000 a night then they were all underage I had to play all kind of tricks to get them on shows and so forth they said that we want$10 ,000 a night I said okay I said now you're going to have to work for it it's okay fine so I would book anywhere from two to three, mostly usually three gigs in one night at like $3 ,500 a night.

27:37But they would go from like

27:44Sulfur, Louisiana. They would be there. they would do a show like Lafayette down there. Yeah, exactly. It's Lafayette. Like it's seven o 'clock that night. Then I would have them in.

28:05Baton Rouge. Houston. Houston. Yeah, Houston. You could drive over there. Yeah. It's Houston, right? Yeah. Yeah. For like a 930 show. and then Tyler, Texas. Yeah, Tyler, yeah. Yeah. And I had rented a bus, a plane, once we had a helicopter. And we were making anywhere from$3 ,500 to$5 ,000 a show. The promoters didn't care for my method because they always had the Wrecking Crew booked as a headliner. I had them going on like at 7 o 'clock at night. Yeah. And they would leave and go on to the next gig. And so the promoters hated that. But I said, hey, I don't know what to tell you. You want the Wrecking Crew?

29:08These are the terms. This is the time. this is the way it's got to be, and it would be in the contracts. But Dre, who, you know, turned out to be a billionaire, he was very laid back. He's still laid back. He was just a very, very creative guy who was heavy into what he was doing and making his beats and so forth. Yeah. So then it's paid off. Sure did. Tell me about Muscle Shoals recording there. What's the food like down at Muscle Shoals in the studio? Actually, the food was all right. You would think you get this great food, but that's not all. That's not through the entire South. A lot of people down there can't cook.

30:02You know, we always think that, oh, Alabama. Yeah, they can cook. You know, they can't even give you a glass of water. Muscle Shoals, there really weren't any eating places that was worth a damn. Yeah. There were, and there's very few fast food places. There was one place we used to eat after the sessions at night, and it was the only place that was open. It was called Piggly Wiggly. Yeah. Yeah. They might still be there. But they had pretty good food. And even if it wasn't, there wasn't any alternatives. That's what you had. I mean, you're there to record music. Right. You're there. I mean, maybe food plays a role.

30:54Yeah. Who did you record with at Muscle Shoals? What was that like? Oh. I took, let me see. I had Ruth Brown, Swamp Dog, nationally, and I'm trying to think. Yeah. Oscar Tony Jr., Arthur Connelly. No, I did Arthur in Macon at Capricorn Studio. Yeah. Because that belonged to Phil Walden, who was managing Arthur Connelly. So I did that there. trying to think of some of the artists that Doris Duke, which I had to the other woman. I'm the other woman. Yeah. Wolf Moon. No, Wolf Moon was in Macon. It was between Macon and Muscle Shoals, but I did most of my stuff in Muscle Shoals. Yeah. And the musicians, they moved to Muscle Shoals.

31:49One of the greatest bass players in the world was Robert Popwell. He went on. I got him a gig with... I don't try to hold people back. Aretha Franklin wanted him. So I said, man, go. You know, like Aretha already big overnight. You might say, although she'd been around a while on Columbia. But he ended up as one of the members of the Crusaders. If you look at their last couple of albums, there's Popwell on the album cover with them. and Pete Carr, who we call Beaver, I had met him in Macon, Georgia and recorded with him. But then he went to Muscle Shoals and we did Charlie Whitehead, who was Ross Spit.

32:40These are great memories of these names. You write in the book about just the names. You have a really nice moment in the book where you talk about judging an artist by their name. The naming of an artist at that time, it was not just important, it said something about the artist. Yeah, but also, one of my ploys would always get an artist who, when I said their name, it's all, yeah, I've heard of her. I heard of him. but and you have like with Doris Duke right away everybody says yes we know Doris Duke but she's the heiress I forgot what she's the heiress from tobacco fortune or some kind of fortune and um that's why they knew it because her name was always in the news yeah but Doris Duke, the one I had, she was named Doris Willingham.