What It Is – Is Swamp Music – Is What It Is  

It’s country funk. The Byrds put something in it, Ray Charles added a lot. It’s a pound of R & B, and an ounce or three of country. The music has Cajun swamp miasma, a touch of Longhair’s New Orleans blues rhumba, some of the Taj’s recreations or Cow Cow Davenport’s buck dance thing. It has been shaped by Otis Redding’s horn thinking, Steve Cropper’s and Reggie Young’s and Chips Moman’s fantastic section guitar work—part lead and part rhythm on the same tune. It has Tommy Cogbill’s structured variations of the rhapsodic Motown bass lines. It has Roger Hawkins’ gut-stirring, beautiful snare hit. Jim Stewart and Rick Hall and Chips and Tom Dowd picked up where Sam Phillips left off and poured it into Sam & Dave and Clarence Carter. It’s a lot of gospel changes and very, very rarely 12-bar blues." --"What It Is – Is Swamp Music – Is What It Is" (1969) by Jerry Wexler.