VARIOUS – Delta Swamp Rock – Sounds From The South: At The Crossroads Of Rock, Country And Soul (2023 Reissue w/ 12 Page Zine) – 2LP – Gold Vinyl

2LP – Limited Edition Gold Coloured Vinylcomplete with extensive original sleevenotes, interviews and exclusive photography, all spread over a 12-page full-size magazine and two bespoke inner sleeves.

Long out of print (10 years!), this new edition of Soul Jazz Records‘ classic Delta Swamp Rock, features a killer all-star line-up of seminal artists who all first blended rock, soul and country together to create a stunning new sound of southern American music in the 1970s.

Featuring the Allman Brothers, Dan Penn, Leon Russell, Tony Joe White, Johnny Cash, Bobbie Gentry, Big Star, Link Wray, Area Code 615 and loads more!

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 movements 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 Nashvilles 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.

REVIEWS:

“An impeccable collection of Southern Rock” – THE GUARDIAN (*****)

“Soul Jazz Records compilations are always worthwhile because of the care and detail they put into these nuggets of musical archaeology. There is not a bad track on Delta Swamp Rock. Southern rock continued the tradition of racial integration through music, that began in Memphis with rock and roll, combining soul, gospel, country and rock to come up with something that was, frequently, groovy in the extreme.” – THE TIMES

“An ambitious document of the tension between conservative musical aesthetics and breakout rock n roll styles that characterised the early 1970s inheritance of blues, soul and Country in the post- psychedelic South.” – THE WIRE

This album comes as a superb limited-edition gold vinyl double vinyl release complete with extensive original sleevenotes, interviews and exclusive photography, all spread over a 12-page full-size magazine and two bespoke inner sleeves. The works!

Tracklist:

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, Wont 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 Aint Wastin Time No More (3.40)
3. Link Wray Be What You Want To (4.29)
4. Boz Scaggs Ill 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 Wont 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 Im Leavin Here Tomorrow, Mama (4:11)