Delta Swamp Rock (2023 Reissue)

Delta Swamp Rock is an interstate southern road-trip through the United States of America where country, rock and soul met at the crossroads - an exploration of the musical and cultural links between the cities of Memphis, Muscle Shoals and Nashville in the 1960s and 70s.

At the start of the 1970s, a new type of music emerged out of the southern states of Alabama, Tennessee, Georgia, Mississippi and Florida. Southern rock, the creation of young blue-collar white Americans, blended rock, soul, country and blues music together to present a new vision of the south – a post-civil rights southern identity complete with a celebration of the regions natural landscape and its way of life.

The Allman Brothers and Lynyrd Skynyrd epitomised the definitive southern rock groups – a mixture of blues-rock and country with a southern rebelliousness and attitude. Unfortunately both The Allman Brothers and Lynyrd Skynyrd were to be struck by tragedy, which would affect the movement’s rise and fall.

The backstory to southern rock is the fact that a number of the people involved in its creation had been central to the production of southern soul music in the 1960s mainly in Memphis, Tennessee, and the small town of Muscle Shoals (population around 10,000) deep within the bible-belt, liquor-free, deeply segregated state of Alabama, creating 100s of R&B hits on an almost daily basis.

Here in Muscle Shoals, with its proximity to Memphis and Nashville, an all-white group of in-house musicians, (famously referred to by Lynyrd Skynyrd in the song ‘Sweet Home Alabama’ as the ‘Swampers’), created countless classic soul records for the likes of Aretha Franklin, Wilson Pickett, Etta James, Clarence Carter and more during the 1960s.

This album charts the rise and fall of southern rock from its funky swamp roots in southern soul to its phenomenal success in the first-half of the 1970s, including its influence on Nashville’s ‘outlaw’ country and tracing it right back to the arrival of rock and roll in the 1950s - the first meeting of black and white American music at the crossroads.

Side A
1. Lynyrd Skynyrd – The Seasons (4.09)
2. Barefoot Jerry – Smokies (2.14)
3. Joe South – Hush (3.47)
4. Bobbie Gentry – Papa, Won’t You Let Me Go To Town With You (2.34)
5. Area Code 615 – Stone Fox Chase (3.17)
6. Cher – I Walk On Guilded Splinters (2.32)

Side B
1. Cowboy – Please Be With Me (3.48)
2. The Allman Brothers – Ain’t Wastin’ Time No More (3.40)
3. Link Wray – Be What You Want To (4.29)
4. Boz Scaggs – I’ll Be Long Gone (4.08)
5. Lynyrd Skynyrd – Comin’ Home (5.29)

Side C
1. Bobbie Gentry – Seasons Come, Seasons Go (2.52)
2. Leon Russell – Out In The Woods (3.37)
3. Tony Joe White – Polk Salad Annie (3.42)
4. Barefoot Jerry – Come To Me Tonight (4.43)
5. Dan Penn – If Love Was Money (3.29)
6. Linda Ronstadt – I Won’t Be Hangin’ ‘Round (2.59)

Side D
1. Waylon Jennings – Big D (2.30)
2. Big Star – Thirteen (2.37)
3. Bobbie Gentry – Mississippi Delta (3.06)
4. Travis Wammack – I Forgot To Remember To Forget (2.54)
5. Johnny Cash & June Carter – If I Were A Carpenter (3.01)
6. Billy Vera – I’m Leavin’ Here Tomorrow, Mama