''Total Destruction to Your Mind'' is the debut album by the American musician

Swamp Dogg Jerry Williams Jr. (born July 12, 1942), generally credited under the pseudonym Swamp Dogg after 1970, is an American soul and R&B singer, musician, songwriter and record producer. Williams has been described as "one of the great cult figures of ...

(Jerry Williams, Jr.), released in 1970. It is considered to be a cult album, a classic, and a neglected masterpiece. It was rereleased in 2013, along with 1971's ''Rat On!'' Some of its songs have been recorded by other musicians, including

Jimmy Cliff James Chambers OM (born 30 July 1944), known professionally as Jimmy Cliff, is a Jamaican ska, rocksteady, reggae and soul musician, multi-instrumentalist, singer, and actor. He is the only living reggae musician to hold the Order of Merit, t ...

Eric Ambel Eric "Roscoe" Ambel (Born August 20, 1957) is a New York City–based guitarist and record producer, originally from Batavia, Illinois. He has worked with a wide range of artists including Nils Lofgren, The Brandos, Steve Earle, the Yayhoos, ...

, and the Isley Brothers with

Santana Santana may refer to: Transportation * Volkswagen Santana, an automobile * Santana Cycles, manufacturer of tandem bicycles * Santana Motors, a former Spanish automobile manufacturer Boats * Santana 20, an American sailboat design by W. D. Sch ...

. ''Total Destruction to Your Mind'' was among the albums that inspired

Ben Greenman Ben Greenman (born September 28, 1969) is a novelist and magazine journalist who has written more than twenty fiction and non-fiction books, including collaborations with pop-music artists like Questlove, George Clinton, Brian Wilson, Gene Simm ...

's novel ''Please Step Back''; after emailing with Greenman, Swamp Dogg recorded a song that used the protagonist's lyrics. ''Total Destruction to Your Mind'' had sold more than 500,000 copies by 1992.

Production

After years as a minor, and conventional, songwriter and singer, Williams adopted the Swamp Dogg persona due to disgust with the music industry, and in order to write about more personal topics; the inspiration came to him while looking through old

Atlantic The Atlantic Ocean is the second-largest of the world's five oceans, with an area of about . It covers approximately 20% of Earth's surface and about 29% of its water surface area. It is known to separate the " Old World" of Africa, Europe an ...

albums in

Tom Dowd Thomas John Dowd (October 20, 1925 – October 27, 2002) was an American recording engineer and producer for Atlantic Records. He was credited with innovating the multitrack recording method. Dowd worked on a veritable "who's who" of recordings ...

's office. ''Total Destruction to Your Mind'' is regarded as an attempt to combine the rock music of the late 1960s with Stax Records-esque soul music, as well as protest with comedy. Recorded at Capricorn Studios, in

Macon, Georgia Macon ( ), officially Macon–Bibb County, is a consolidated city-county in the U.S. state of Georgia. Situated near the fall line of the Ocmulgee River, it is located southeast of Atlanta and lies near the geographic center of the state of Geo ...

, the album was produced by Williams. Swamp Dogg later claimed to have recorded some of the songs after ingesting LSD. "Mama's Baby, Daddy's Maybe" is about taking a paternity test. The title track references " I Am the Walrus"; "The World Beyond" was written by Bobby Goldsboro.

Critical reception

AllMusic AllMusic (previously known as All Music Guide and AMG) is an American online music database. It catalogs more than three million album entries and 30 million tracks, as well as information on musicians and bands. Initiated in 1991, the databas ...

concluded that "perhaps Dogg's obsession with drugs, sleazy sex, and cultural satire kept the album from being embraced by soul fans, and this genuinely odd blend also keeps Swamp Dogg's debut from blowing the minds of latter-day listeners, at least upon the first listen." ''

The New Yorker ''The New Yorker'' is an American weekly magazine featuring journalism, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons, and poetry. Founded as a weekly in 1925, the magazine is published 47 times annually, with five of these issues ...

'' labeled ''Total Destruction to Your Mind'' "a crazed, brilliant blast of protest soul that compared favorably with the best work of Sly Stone, Curtis Mayfield, and Funkadelic." ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...

'' determined that it is "a soul album that, from its first hard, wild groove, announces itself as a classic."

Robert Christgau Robert Thomas Christgau ( ; born April 18, 1942) is an American music journalist and essayist. Among the most well-known and influential music critics, he began his career in the late 1960s as one of the earliest professional rock critics and ...

, in 1992, deemed the album "in-your-face black rock." In 2018, '' Pitchfork'' called it "an irreverent, rollicking spin on the southern soul music of Muscle Shoals Sound Studio." Reviewing the 2013 rerelease, ''

The Sunday Times ''The Sunday Times'' is a British newspaper whose circulation makes it the largest in Britain's quality press market category. It was founded in 1821 as ''The New Observer''. It is published by Times Newspapers Ltd, a subsidiary of News UK, whi ...

'' called Swamp Dogg "the missing link between Otis Redding and Frank Zappa."

Track listing

# "Total Destruction to Your Mind" – 3:24 # "Synthetic World" – 3:23 # "Dust Your Head Color Red" – 2:48 # "Redneck" – 2:47 # "If I Die Tomorrow (I've Lived Tonight)" – 2:50 # "I Was Born Blue" – 2:58 # "Sal-A-Faster" – 2:48 # "The World Beyond" – 3:39 # "These Are Not My People" – 2:36 # "Everything You'll Ever Need" – 2:51 # "The Baby Is Mine" – 2:48 # "Mama's Baby, Daddy's Maybe" – 4:08

References

{{reflist Swamp Dogg albums 1970 debut albums