“Now Muscle Shoals has got the Swampers
And they’ve been known to pick a song or two (yes, they do)
Lord, they get me off so much
They pick me up when I’m feelin’ blue, now how ’bout you?
“Sweet home Alabama (oh)
Where the skies are so blue
Sweet home Alabama
Lord, I’m comin’ home to you…”
– Ronnie Van Zant of Lynyrd Skynyrd
Legendary Swamper Jimmy Johnson (left) and Ronnie Van Zandt of Lynyrd Skynyrd (right) pointing at the man of the hour Wayne Perkins, come to save the day and session at Muscle Shoals Sound on guitar fresh from swimming in the Tennessee River: NAJ screen shot
By Glynn “Cowboy” Wilson –
MUSCLE SHOALS, Ala. – A debate still rages in some circles about what exactly constitutes this “Swampers Sound” that Lynyrd Skynyrd sang about on the song “Sweet Home Alabama” on the “Second Helping” album released in 1974. Please forgive my investigative reporting instincts as I take a foray into the business of writing about rock and roll history.
Ronnie Van Zant was not afraid of generating controversy to sell records and concert tickets. Why should I be afraid to take on this story as a journalist? If you know anything about me at all, you know that fear is not an emotion I embrace often. So here goes.
There is still more research to do for the book I’m working on about the life and times of guitar slinger and singer songwriter Wayne Perkins.
Draft Book Proposal: The Story of a Swamper And a Sideman
After three months of digging into these stories, however, both with online research and in person interviews, there are some early conclusions worth reporting on today.
When Ronnie Van Zant wrote this hit song, which made it into the top ten at number eight on the Billboard charts – using an acoustic Ovation guitar he gifted to Wayne Perkins at a concert at Rickwood Field in 1975 – he must have known that taking on Neil Young’s “Southern Man” and “Alabama” would generate interest in the band. He may not have known that we would still be talking about it and debating it in 2025, 48 years after it came out on rock radio.
It’s Only Rock ‘n’ Roll But I Like It: Wayne Perkins, The Rolling Stones and Lynyrd Skynyrd
But here we are. This happens all the time in art. Scholars still do not agree on all the meanings embedded in Shakespeare’s plays, the poetry of Keats or Shelley, the music of Joni Mitchell or the paintings of Leonardo da Vinci. I mean who was this Mona Lisa anyway?
There are all kinds of stories published about all of this. You could spend an entire lifetime reading them online and watching all the videos trying to draw your own conclusions. So let me help you along your way.
After reading, watching and hearing the stories from some of the key players who made the music that emerged from Muscle Shoals, Alabama in the late 1960s and early 1970s, it is now my conclusion that an injustice has been perpetrated on some influential musicians who seemed to get lost in the shuffle when the four main members of what has been called the Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section left Rick Hall’s Fame Studios and opened Muscle Shoals Sound Studio on Jackson Highway on April 1, 1969.
If you Google “The Swampers” or go to the Wikipedia page for the Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section, you will see several versions of the story. The conclusion drawn is that the Swampers nickname should be reserved exclusively for the core group of Rick Hall’s rhythm section then called “Fame Gang Two,” which consisted of four players who left Fame and became partners in the Muscle Shoals Sound Studio on Jackson Highway: Barry Beckett on keyboards, Roger Hawkins on drums, David Hood on bass and Jimmy Johnson on guitar.
But wait. The original group hired by Hall in the early 1960s or “Fame Gang One,” included Norbert Putnam, David Briggs and Jerry Carrigan, who went on to create hit records that brought recognition and stature to this unknown at the time and out-of-the-way studio. They were courted by Nashville studios and left Muscle Shoals to pursue independent careers in Nashville. Should they not also be called “Swampers?”
On the same page, it is reported that the nickname “The Swampers” was coined by English producer Denny Cordell during recording sessions for Leon Russell in the early 1970s because of their “funky, soulful Southern ‘swamp’ sound”. The source cited here is the group’s bio on the Alabama Music Hall of Fame website.
In the feature obituary of Barry Beckett in June, 2009, the national newspaper of record, the New York Times, called the Muscle Shoals sound “indigenous American music, a distinctly Southern amalgamation of rhythm & blues, soul, and country music.” Certainly from about 1968 to the time Skynyrd came out with the song in 1974, a time period considered to be the heyday of music coming out of the magic by the “Singing River” in the Shoals, the influence on American and British music cannot be denied. (Are you listening Rock and Roll Hall of Fame?)
Certainly Billboard writer and Atlantic Records producer Jerry Wexler had a lot to do with funding and promoting this sound and the players who created it. So when I ran into his son Paul Wexler at the Alabama Music Hall of Fame Museum back in January, he had his opinion of what made that “Swampers” sound. He said it was the drummer, Roger Hawkins.
But of course that could not explain all of it, surely. That’s just one informed man’s opinion. Hey, I’m also a drummer. I can relate.
There is little doubt that in his short stay in Fame Studios and Muscle Shoals Sound Studio in and around 1969, Duane Allman should certainly be credited as one of the original “Swampers,” since much of the music that would come to be called Southern Rock may not have happened there if he had not shown up when he did and talked Rick Hall into letting Wilson Pickett record The Beatles hit song “They Jude.”
From Hey Jude to Southern Rock: When Slide Guitar and a Beat from the Swamps Went Mainstream
Eddie Hinton had also been around there playing lead guitar and singing like Joe Cocker, so should he not be included in a list of musicians from that time in that place who helped create that influential sound?
By the time Leon Russell heard about the magic happening in the Shoals and came from Oklahoma to record at Muscle Shoals Sound in the early ’70s, well before the Skynyrd song came out, Eddie Hinton and Duane Allman were already gone from the scene. Who was left? Stephen Foster at Quinn Ivy’s studio in Sheffield, and Wayne Perkins who had moved up the hill to Muscle Shoals Sound and was discovered by Chris Blackwell of Island Records when he brought Jamaican singer Jimmy Cliff to town to tap into the studio magic. Hearing Perkins play guitar with other artists in studio sessions, and then teaming him up with the Smith brothers and signing Smith Perkins Smith to a record deal and financing their trip to New York to buy gear and then to London, Blackwell heard something there he wanted for Island Records.
Wayne Perkins with Leon Russell: Perkins family photo
After Perkins was finally credited in 2001 for the tracks he recorded with Bob Marley, Blackwell helped produce a documentary and wrote a book where he describes the guitar work of Perkins.
“Having a different kind of guitar – a rock guitar with lean, Southern-blues flavor – changed everything,” Backwell says. “How this guitar ended up on ‘Concrete Jungle’ was a happy accident … A white American guitarist named Wayne Perkins happened to be working in the Island studios. He was part of the crack sessions team at the Muscle Shoals studio in Alabama that had backed Jimmy Cliff while I had been there. He had also played behind such legends as Wilson Pickett, the Staples Singers, etc. So impressed was I by the Muscle Shoals guys that I plucked three of them, Wayne and the brothers Steve and Tim Smith….
“Wayne had no experience playing Reggae and had barely heard any. He was more of a Duane Allman type, virtuosic and chivalrous. He nearly joined Lynyrd Skynyrd and, a little while later, was on a short list to replace Mick Taylor in The Rolling Stones, losing out to Ronnie Wood, mainly because he was not English….”
THE STORY of when Skynyrd came to the Shoals the first time, and came back later to record at Muscle Shoals Sound, has been told a few times. But we are about to publish the definitive version of the story, which will shed considerable light on when, where and why Ronnie Van Zant had the direct knowledge to write the song and the line about the “Swampers” in the first place.
On a three week trip to the Shoals in January and February 2025, I ran into Stephen Foster and interviewed him on video. He had strong opinions about the “Swampers” sound and some of the players who should be included in the list. (More of this story will be included in the book).
Watch the video here:
He was also there, along with Perkins, the day Skynyrd showed up for the first time at Quinn Ivey’s studio in 1969 to try out as the road band for Percy Sledge. That didn’t work out, of course, but something big did come of it.
Watch the video here:
In one of several inaccurate stories produced about this by the Birmingham blog Al Dot Com, formerly The Birmingham News, even they included several others in the list: In addition to David Hood, Barry Beckett, Roger Hawkins and Jimmy Johnson, they include Albert S. Lowe Jr. (who recently died), along with Pete Carr, Clayton Ivey, Randy McCormick and keyboard player Spooner Oldham. They also include Will McFarland, who didn’t come along until much later, when Muscle Shoals Sound had moved from Jackson Highway to the studio down by the Tennessee River, in what is now Cypress Moon Studios.
Why is Wayne Perkins not on the list?
I mean he was there in the damn studio when Denny Cordell first coined the phrase, and went on to record and tour with Leon Russell for a couple of years. While Denny Cordell may have said it first, Leon picked it up and started using it to refer to all the studio musicians who supported the stars, like the support crew for cowboys and cooks on a cattle drive. He must have known that the term “Swamper” had other meanings.
As further proof, we conducted another interview with Wayne Perkins in February to get him to clarify his thinking on the subject.
Watch the video here:
When I first shared this story on Facebook, Ol’Man Russell Gulley of Fort Payne weighed in, at first saying it was just the four Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section players. But after we discussed it in the comments, he said:
“I admire all of those players. Consider them friends and family. Once Jimmy Johnson, when asked who were the Swampers, he said that anyone that worked at Muscle Shoals Sound.”
Meaning the studio musicians, which would at least include Spooner Oldham and Wayne Perkins.
Working Title
As for sources of the working title of a Swamper, here’s one mention on the Cowboy Showcase website.
According to an online dictionary, a laborer who assists in hauling ore and rock, coupling and uncoupling cars, throwing switches, and loading and unloading carriers, was called a “swamper.”
According to another Wikipedia page, the term Swamper may refer to a “Yankee, a resident of the swamps of southeastern New England, sometimes called Swampers,” or “an occupational title or slang term which refers to an assistant worker, helper, maintenance person, or someone who performs odd jobs.”
Like a studio musician getting paid by the hour, the day, the session or the week.
So if you combine the working title, and the sound they helped create, you have the Muscle Shoals “Swampers.” Not just four guys who played the basic parts on a bunch of hit songs.
Now, as I said, this research is not yet complete. I’m still digging around on YouTube and other places for other songs by artists who recorded in the Shoals in this time period to further demonstrate these points. But I would urge you to listen to the guitar work on this song recorded by Wayne Perkins, backed in the studio by the Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section. “Just Dropped In – To See What Condition My Condition Was In” is a psychedelic rock song written by Mickey Newbury that was first recorded by Jerry Lee Lewis, backed by members of the Memphis Boys. It is perhaps best known for a version recorded by the Kenny Rogers and the First Edition in 1967, which became a top five hit in ’68. Wayne Perkins covered the song on his Mendo Hotel solo album released in 1996, two years before the Kenny Rogers version was used in the film The Big Lebowsky starring Jeff Bridges, released in 1998.
This to me is a quintessential example of this Southern, swampy sound. It was not just the rhythm section. It was the sound that became known as Southern Rock.
Also listen to the original version of Free Bird recorded at Muscle Shoals Sound that was not released until the “First and Last” album in 1998, and the original version of “Sweet Home Alabama” released in 1974.
Sweet Home Alabama (Original Version)
___
Now, if you are interested in this story, this research, and want to help fund it to see that it is published for the world to see, click on this GoFundMe page, read more about it, and contribute.
Bravo! Well done!