Swamp Dogg & Joel Kim Booster

Bullseye with Jesse Thorn

Jesse Thorn

Society & Culture

4.5 • 2.6K Ratings

🗓️ 24 September 2018

⏱️ 63 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

It's a rare honor for a guest to be on Bullseye three times, but Swamp Dogg deserves it. He's a psychedelic soul singer with a career that's now spanned six decades. He's been singing soul and R&B since he was 12. Back then he was Little Jerry Williams and his first single featured his mom on drums. He adopted the name Swamp Dogg in the early 70s and put out a bunch of stone cold classics: Total Destruction To Your Mind, Rat On!, Cuffed, Collared & Tagged. On his latest record, Swamp collaborates with some extremely of-the-moment indie talent to create a wild left turn: it's called Love, Loss & Auto-Tune, and it's out now. Then, Joel Kim Booster. Joel's a writer and comedian. He's written for Billy on the Street, Problematic with Moshe Kasher and Netflix's Big Mouth. And as a standup, he's appeared on Conan, Comedy Central, @Midnight and more. He's also one of the most exciting new comics around. He talks with Jesse about his evangelical, adopted upbringing, his stage persona (which, according to Joel, is "hot idiot"), and why he can't stand to listen to his old material.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Bullseye with Jesse Thorn is a production of MaximumFun.org and is distributed by NPR.
0:12.3	I'm Jesse Thorn. So there is a singer-songwriter, producer, named Jerry Williams. He has made
0:18.2	a ton of stone-cold classic records for over 60 years. And since 1970, he has recorded
0:24.6	them under the name Swampdog. Maybe you've heard of Swampdog. Anyway, back in the 60s,
0:32.2	he put out this song called Baby You're My Everything. It sounds like this.
0:37.2	Baby, baby, baby, baby, you're my heart. You'll receive my heart. You'll receive my heart.
0:44.2	It was a sort of hit, mostly in Vermont, where it turns out listeners thought that Swampdog
1:01.7	was white, which he is not. Some guys booked me up there, right? I was due two shows. When
1:09.7	I finished singing, the promoter called me over and he said, look at me. Here's the rest
1:17.3	of your money, but you don't have to do the next show. We thought it was white. No, I
1:27.8	didn't. But I took the money in love. I mean, wasn't nothing to say. I mean, how do you
1:36.8	argue that? He thought I was white. I thought I was black. It's Bullseye.
1:51.9	Coming up Swampdog, a brilliant musician, a great storyteller, a guy who isn't afraid
1:56.6	to get into his underwear on an album cover or two. I don't know why I have this desire
2:04.1	to be a idiot, to get naked.
2:07.1	Then, Jochen Booster, a brilliant young comic with a compelling, understated and unique
2:12.6	stage persona. My brand on stage and online is Hot Idiot. That's what I'm going for.
2:19.6	And if I can, I think it's a lot like, you have to be a good singer to sing deliberately
2:24.8	off key. And I think you have to be smart to play that well. Finally, I'll tell you about
2:32.1	a breathtaking, unfathomable work of art. It grew up in a backyard, right here in Los
2:37.4	Angeles. That's all. Coming up on Bullseye. Let's go.
2:45.4	It's Bullseye. I'm Jesse Thorn. My first guest this week is Swampdog. It's his third
	...

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