Soul Jazz Records’ new, much-anticipated second volume of ‘Delta Swamp Rock’ is a further guide to the sounds of the South, a journey into the heartland of the American South, exploring the musical links between country, rock and soul music in the 1960s and early 1970s.

Featuring Gregg Allman, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Tony Joe White, Bobby Gentry, Joe South, Area Code 615 and many more.

Deep in the heartland, southern towns and cities of America – Muscle Shoals, Nashville, Memphis and Macon – select groups of (largely unknown) session musicians made musical history on an almost daily basis.

In the early 1970s southern rock rose up with the huge commercial success of Southern-based groups The Allman Brothers, Marshall Tucker, Lynyrd Skynyrd and others. Like the twisted roots of rock and roll, southern rock put country, rock and black music into a melting pot to create a unique sound that also gave rise to a new identity for white southern working-class youth.

The roots of this revolution were to be found deep in an obscure corner of Alabama, in the sleepy town of Muscle Shoals, where, in the previous decade, a group of white in-house studio musicians worked with the greatest rhythm and blues vocalists of the day – Aretha Franklin, Wilson Pickett and Etta James, amongst many others – away from the segregated environment found just outside the studio walls.

As well as the deluxe slipcase CD edition there is also a similarly deluxe heavyweight double gatefold vinyl edition, complete with full sleevenotes and super-loud pressing.

What the press have said:

“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’. 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