At one point in the free-wheeling music documentary “Swamp Dogg Gets His Pool Painted,” the eccentric 82-year-old musician is asked to describe his philosophy on life. “Just be cool, you know?,” Swamp Dogg says. “And it’s fun being yourself. That’s fun like a motherfucker. But you gotta find yourself.”
It’s a fitting summary of a creative life lived exactly on his own terms. A cult figure in certain music circles, Jerry Williams Jr. rose to prominence in the ’70s for his satirical Southern soul records that were equally likely to feature radical political messages or cover art of Williams inside a hot dog bun covered in ketchup and mustard. He adopted the Swamp Dogg moniker to separate his public persona from his previous career as a Muscle Shoals producer who churned out gold records for other artists, though he continued to be a force in the music industry as a record label founder and producer who backed Dr. Dre’s first records. And he continues to innovate into his eighties, experimenting with autotune banjo music from his home studio and touring regularly.
But in Isaac Gale and Ryan Olson’s new documentary, Swamp Dogg’s life of achievements takes a backseat to a more pressing matter: getting his pool painted. In an unspecified location in the San Fernando Valley, Swamp Dogg lives in a suburban enclave of creativity. His house is filled with loving freeloaders, primarily musician friends like Guitar Shorty, who asked to crash with him at one point or another and ended up staying for decades. The house is a hotbed for jam sessions and barbecues, but Swamp Dogg thinks it’s missing one thing. He wants a picture of himself riding a rodent painted on the bottom of his pool so that it can be seen from the sky.
“Swamp Dogg Gets His Pool Painted” begins with Swamp Dogg letting the pool painter into his backyard, but it quickly turns into a sprawling hang session featuring his housemates, neighbors like voice actor Tom Kenny, and his daughter. Swamp Dogg reminisces about his singular career, which eventually gives way to some obligatory archival footage, but the film is just as interested in celebrating the zest for life that the octogenarian currently enjoys. The result is a documentary that’s as charmingly offbeat as its subject, whose greatest work of art might be the ridiculously fun existence he appears to be living out on a daily basis.
Music documentaries have been almost irritatingly omnipresent in recent years, but “Swamp Dogg Gets His Pool Painted” is a refreshing change of pace that should delight even the most genre-fatigued viewer. The film never takes itself too seriously, gleefully pausing mid-interview to show Swamp Dogg answering his phone and politely telling someone that he’ll have to call them back because he’s in the middle of shooting a documentary. It certainly benefits from the fact that its subject will be unknown to many viewers, which frees the filmmakers from the expectation of a hagiographic trip down memory lane and permits them to focus on whatever interests their subject at a given moment.
Of course, the approach is only possible because the man getting his pool painted is so damn charismatic. At 82-years-old, Swamp Dogg doesn’t look a day over 60, and he boasts a razor-sharp mind and an infectious appetite for all of life’s weird pleasures. Watching him meander through his backyard, talking shit with his buddies, exploring new sounds, and dryly calling every inconvenience a “motherfucker” is the kind of offbeat delight that I would have gladly watched for three more hours. Seeing his excitement that a manufacturer has revived the lost art of writing profane messages on socks or proudly show his daughter his sparkly new shoes is more interesting than anything in his recording career, and Gale and Olson wisely sit back and let the current Swamp Dogg absorb the spotlight.
More than any individual song or album, the film seeks to encapsulate the Swamp Dogg vibe. Effortlessly cool, thrilled to be alive, and mildly entertained by just about everything, the man offers what appears to be the perfect blueprint to stay in 2025. We can’t all be Swamp Dogg, but it’s nice to know the world still contains heroes worth looking up to. I sure hope he enjoys his new pool.
Grade: B+
A Magnolia Pictures release, “Swamp Dogg Gets His Pool Painted” opens in select theaters on Friday, May 2.
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