May 23, 2025
by Carla Hay
“Swamp Dogg Gets His Pool Painted”
Directed by Isaac Gale and Ryan Olson
Culture Representation: Taking place in California’s San Fernando Valley, the documentary film “Swamp Dogg Gets His Pool Painted” features an African American and white group of people cast of characters discussing the life and career of singer/songwriter Swamp Dogg.
Culture Clash: Swamp Dogg (whose real name is Jerry Williams Jr.) has had ups and downs in his career, including hit songs and being dropped by Elektra Records in the 1970s for his extreme left-wing views on the Vietnam War.
Culture Audience: “Swamp Dogg Gets His Pool Painted” will appeal primarily to people who are fans of Swamp Dogg, music from the late 20th century, and documentaries about unconventional entertainers.
“Swamp Dogg Gets His Pool Painted” is a unique documentary reflecting underrated singer/songwriter Swamp Dogg: eccentric, rambling, creative, and unpredictable. Some viewers won’t like this nonconformist storytelling style, but others will appreciate it. The movie gets its title from the fact that the swimming pool at Swamp Dogg’s house is being painted while he tells his story during this biographical documentary, which blends archival footage with footage filmed specifically for the documentary. By the end of the movie, the artwork painting in the swimming pool is revealed.
Directed by Isaac Gale and Ryan Olson, “Swamp Dogg Gets His Pool Painted” is narrated by musician/visual artist Greg Grease. The movie had its world premiere at the 2024 SXSW Film and TV Festival. “Swamp Dogg Gets His Pool Painted” jumps back and forth between being a retrospective and being a present-day chronicle of what Swamp Dogg was doing with his life at the time this documentary was filmed.
Swamp Dogg was born as Jerry Williams Jr. on July 12, 1942, in Portsmouth, Virginia. He’s not a household name, but he’s written about 2,000 songs and worked with 500 artists, according to Grease’s narration in the documentary. Swamp Dogg has co-written some well-known hits, including Gene Pitney’s 1969 song “She’s a Heartbreaker” and “She’s All I’ve Got,” a 1971 song originally recorded by R&B singer Freddie North and made more famous by country singer Johnny Paycheck.
Black artists who make music tend to be stereotyped as only capable of working in certain genres, such as R&B, funk, dance, hip-hop, jazz and blues. Unlike many of his peers, Swamp Dogg defied those stereotypes by also working in country music as well as R&B and funk. His unconventionality didn’t catapult him to superstar status, but he’s been a well-respected artist precisely because of being so authentic to himself.
“Swamp Dogg Gets His Pool Painted” begins by showing the pool painter arriving at the Swamp Dogg’s house in California’s San Fernando Valley. Also living at the house are Swamp Dogg’s musical partners Moogstar and Guitar Shorty, who also give their insights and commentary. The documentary shows some of the trio’s jam sessions and songwriting collaborations, which aren’t spectacular but aren’t terrible either.
Swamp Dogg and Moogstar have a relationship that’s similar to the musical partnership that George Clinton and Bootsy Collins had when they were band members in Parliament-Funkadelic. Moogstar has a persona that’s reminiscent of Collins because Moogstar dresses flamboyantly and often talks in “trippy” ways, like he’s on another planet. Guitar Shorty, a longtime venerated blues musician, is not as talkative as Moogstar. But since Guitar Shorty is in the same age group as Swamp Dogg, Guitar Shorty’s has a valuable perspective of certain eras that he lived through long before many other people in the documentary were born.
Swamp Dogg gives a brief overview of his earliest years in the music business. In 1954, when he was 12, his first recording “HTD Blues (Hardsick Troublesome Downout Blues)” was released on the Mechanic record label in 1954. Back then, he used the stage name Little Jerry Williams and continued to record under than name into his teenage years and 20s. In 1964, he had a minor hit with “I’m the Lover Man,” a song which he wrote. His breakthrough song as Little Jerry Williams was “Baby You’re My Everything,” which reached No. 32 on the R&B single chart in 1966.
Throughout the late 1960s, he continued to work as a solo artists and as a songwriter and producer for other artists, including Patti LaBelle & the Blue Belles, Dee Dee Warwick and Doris Duke. It was during this period of time that he also began collaborating with Gary U.S. Bonds (real name: Gary Anderson), who’s had a prolific career as a singer/songwriter. By the end of the 1960s, Williams wanted a change and reinvented himself.
Williams changed his name to Swamp Dogg in 1970. The 1970s were a decade that also marked his transformation as an outspoke political activist. He began to experiment more with the then-emerging genres of funk and psychedelic soul. But this experimentation also included getting scathing criticism for his 1971 album of cover songs “Rat On!,” which was a sales flop.
In the documentary, Swamp Dogg speaks with fondness of joining the “Free the Army” tour, an anti-Vietnam War tour that also featured left-wing progressive Jane Fonda and Dick Gregory. The documentary makes this statement: “His radical political views got him placed on the FBI’s watch list and dropped from Elektra Records.”
Swamp Dogg candidly shares that the 1970s were a decade of his greatest commercial success and most destructive personal excesses. He spent a lot of time back then recording in Muscle Shoals, Alabama. “I became a millionaire down there,” Swamp Dogg comments. “I was eating Zoloft like you eat M&Ms.”
All the drug-taking made him paranoid that people were out to trick him and kill him, Swamp Dogg says. It was a period of time when he bought nine cars that he didn’t need. Swamp Dogg reflects on his tendency at the time to want to show off with material possessions: “I wanted to be grand, but that’s not what it’s all about.”
Swamp Dogg, who says he is accustomed to having strong women in his family, gives credit to his wife Yvonne for being a steady presence in his life and keeping him from getting too out of control. The couple got married in 1963. Yvonne became his business partner, who managed many his dealings in the volatile music industry. Yvonne died in 2003, but the documentary has some archival footage of her.
Swamp Dogg’s daughter Dr. Jeri Williams (whom he calls his “main daughter” out of his five daughters) is interviewed in the documentary. She says she “feels sort of bad” that he put some of his career to the side to help raise her and her siblings. She compares her father to being a like a CIA operative with secrets, because she says that there are many things in his life that she doesn’t know about and he won’t discuss.
“Swamp Dogg Gets His Pool Painted” shows the expected array of clippings from magazine and newspapers, as well interviews and appearances on radio and TV, for the “blast from the past” parts of the documentary. Not surprisingly, some of the footage is grainy, which fits this scrappy, low-budget documentary just fine. There are slightly amusing mentions and clips of Swamp Dogg’s 2021 appearance on “The People’s Court” (a reality TV show for small-claims court cases), when musician Lloyd Wright sued him $1,425, for non-payment of 19 musical tracks. Swamp Dogg lost his case on “The People’s Court” and didn’t seem bothered by it in the show’s post-judgment interview with him.
Aside from Swamp Dogg’s confession to having a drug problem in the 1970s, he doesn’t get too revealing in the documentary about any of his personal shortcomings or scandals. The documentary is quirky in telling some things that we really didn’t need to know about Swamp Dogg. For example, Swamp Dogg says that he got a vasectomy in 1996. He claims it was Yvonne’s idea.
The documentary shows Swamp Dogg getting some celebrity admirers as visitors while his pool is being painted. They include actor/comedian Johnny Knoxville, “SpongeBob SquarePants” creator Tom Kenny, animator Mike Judge (best known for “Beavis and Butt-Head”), visual artist Art Fein and songwriters Jenny Lewis and John Prine. Lewis and Prine collaborated on some of the songs on Swamp Dogg’s 2020 album “Sorry You Couldn’t Make It.” Toward the end of the documentary, there’s footage of a backyard barbecue party for Swamp Dogg’s house, with some of these famous guests in attendance.
Some famous entertainers have the type of personality where a “hangout” documentary is a better fit for them, compared to a “tell all” exposé. Swamp Dogg is one of those artists. A great deal of “Swamp Dogg Gets His Pool Painted” is nostalgic. But the overall feeling is that Swamp Dogg isn’t stuck in the past and is still living life to the fullest in the present.
Magnolia Pictures released “Swamp Dogg Gets His Pool Painted” in Los Angeles on May 2, 2025, and in New York City on May 9, 2025. The movie will be released on digital and VOD on July 1, 2025.
