Delta Swamp Rock Sounds From The South Volume 2: At The Crossroads Of Rock, Country And Soul

New on Soul Jazz Records, the second volume of Delta Swamp Rock continues to journey into the heartland of the American south, exploring the musical links between country, rock and soul music in the 1960s and early 1970s.

Deep in the 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.

Southern rock rose up in the 1970s on 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. This gave rise to a new identity for white southern working-class youth.

The roots of this revolution were to be found 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 together with the greatest rhythm and blues vocalists of the day - Aretha Franklin, Wilson Pickett, Etta James and many others - away from the segregated environment found just outside the studio walls.