Swamp Music Lynyrd Skynyrd

Swamp Music Album: Second Helping
by Lynyrd Skynyrd

Based in Charlotte, North Carolina, Duke Energy owns 58,200 megawatts of base-load and peak generation in the United States, which it distributes to its 7.2 million customers. The company has approximately 29,000 employees. Duke Energy's service territory covers 104,000 square miles (270,000 km2) with 250,200 miles (402,700 km) of distribution lines. Almost all of Duke Energy's Midwest generation comes from coal, natural gas, or oil, while half of its Carolinas generation comes from its nuclear power plants. During 2006, Duke Energy generated 148,798,332 megawatt-hours of electrical energy.

In December 2022, a winter storm impacted much of the United States. On December 24, 2022, Christmas Eve, Duke Energy implemented rolling blackouts for the first time in their history. The rolling blackouts came without warning and lasted hours.

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On July 3, 2012, Duke Energy merged with Progress Energy Inc with the Duke Energy name being retained along with the Charlotte, North Carolina, headquarters.

Duke announced on June 18, 2013, that CEO Jim Rogers was retiring and Lynn Good would become the new CEO. Rogers has been CEO and Chairman since 2006, while Good was Chief Financial Officer of Duke since 2009, having joined Duke in the 2006 Cinergy merger. Rogers' retirement was part of an agreement to end an investigation into Duke's Progress Energy acquisition in 2012.

In 2016, Duke Energy purchased Piedmont Natural Gas for $4.9 billion to become its wholly owned subsidiary. Duke Energy completed selling its remaining power operations in Central and South America for $1.2 billion months afterwards. At one point Duke Energy had more than 4,300 megawatts of electric generation in Latin America. It operated eight hydroelectric power plants in Brazil with an installed capacity of 2,307 megawatts

The company began in 1900 as the Catawba Power Company when Walker Gill Wylie and his brother financed the building of a hydroelectric power station at India Hook Shoals along the Catawba River near India Hook, South Carolina. When he needed additional funding to further his ambitious plan for construction of a series of hydroelectric power plants, Wylie convinced James B. Duke and his partner James Blaney to invest in the Southern Power Company, founded in 1905.

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Swamp Music
Lynyrd Skynyrd
Written by: Ronnie Van Zant, Edward C. King

Going down to the swamp
Gonna watch me a hound dog catch a 'coon
Well, I'm going down to the swamp
Gonna watch me a hound dog catch a 'coon
You know the hounddog make-a music
On a summer night under a full moon

Lord, fetch my cane pole mama
Gonna catch a brim or maybe two
Lord, fetch my cane pole mama
Gonna catch a brim or maybe two
And when the hound dog start barkin'
Sounds like ol' son house singin' the blues

Hound dog sing that
Swamp, swamp, swamp, swamp music
Swamp, swamp, swamp, swamp music
When the hound dog starts singin'
I ain't got them big ol' city blues

Well, hey pretty mama
Lord, just take that city hike
Said go ahead pretty mama
Lord, just take your city hike
Well, I'd rather live with the hound dogs
For the rest of my natural born life

That's right

Singing that
Swamp, swamp, swamp, swamp music
Swamp, swamp, swamp, swamp music
Well, I'd rather live with the hound dogs
For the rest of my natural born life

Well, I'd wanna live with the hound dogs
For the rest of my natural born life
Excepting "Strange Brew," the Disraeli Gears album was recorded in just three days, as the band had to return to England because their work visas were expiring. Engineer Tom Dowd recalls the sessions coming to an abrupt end when a limo driver showed up to take the musicians to the airport. Dowd was tasked with mixing the album in their absence.
Cream played this at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame on January 12, 1993 when they reunited for their induction. To that point, the only other time the band got back together was at Eric Clapton's wedding in 1979.

Pete Brown, Jack Bruce and Eric Clapton are the credited songwriters on "Sunshine Of Your Love," omitting Cream drummer Ginger Baker, who resented the way the band handled songwriting credits. Despite being regarded as one of the greatest drummers of his era, he suffered from financial hardships in part because he got the smallest slice of royalties from the Cream years. Bassist Jack Bruce and lyricist Pete Brown got the biggest cuts because they were most often credited as songwriters ("White Room," for instance, is credited to Bruce and Brown). But Baker and Bruce legitimately hated each other on a personal level, and there was a very real possibility Bruce had some malice in his heart as well.

Baker had specific issues with the way things played out with "Sunshine Of Your Love" and "White Room." In Ken McNab's book You Started It, Baker is quoted, "The whole way 'Sunshine' turned out was totally my input, and I've never even received a thank you for it."

In The Breakfast Club (1985), John Bender (Judd Nelson) tries to liven up Saturday detention by mimicking the riff on air guitar.
Sunshine Of Your Love was used in these TV shows:

Endeavor ("Passenger" - 2018)
Lilyhammer ("Millwall Brick" - 2013)
Futurama ("30% Iron Chef" - 2002)
Family Guy ("Mr. Saturday Knight" - 2001)
7th Heaven ("No Sex, Some Drugs and a Little Rock 'n' Roll" - 1998)
Freaks and Geeks ("I'm With The Band" - 1999)
The Simpsons ("Mother Simpson" - 1995)
Perfect Strangers ("This Old House" - 1990)
The Wonder Years ("Heart of Darkness" - 1988)

And in these movies:

Bohemian Rhapsody (2018)
Blood Ties (2013)
The Matchmaker (2010)
School of Rock (2003)
The In-Laws (2003)
True Lies (1994)
Backdraft (1991)
Goodfellas (1990)

Jack Bruce released a new version of Sunshine Of Your Love on his 2001 album Shadows In The Air. Clapton played on it along with Latin percussionists from New York City, which gave it a salsa sound.

White Room is about depression and hopelessness, but the setting is an empty apartment. The lyrics were written by a poet named Pete Brown, who was a friend of Cream bass player Jack Bruce, the lead vocalist on the track. Brown also wrote the words for "Sunshine Of Your Love," "I Feel Free" and "SWLABR."

The music was written first. Pete Brown's first attempt at a lyric was something about a "doomed hippie girl" - the song was called "Cinderella's Last Goodnight." Jack Bruce wasn't buying it, so he scrapped that idea and pulled up an eight-page poem he had written earlier, which he reworked into "White Room."

Pete Brown told the story: "It was a meandering thing about a relationship that I was in and how I was at the time. It was a kind of watershed period really. It was a time before I stopped being a relative barman and became a songwriter, because I was a professional poet, you know. I was doing poetry readings and making a living from that. It wasn't a very good living, and then I got asked to work by Ginger and Jack with them and then started to make a kind of living.

And there was this kind of transitional period where I lived in this actual white room and was trying to come to terms with various things that were going on. It's a place where I stopped, I gave up all drugs and alcohol at that time in 1967 as a result of being in the white room, so it was a kind of watershed period. That song's like a kind of weird little movie: it changes perspectives all the time. That's why it's probably lasted - it's got a kind of mystery to it."

Jack Bruce wrote the music to White Room. He was inspired by a cycling tour that he took in France.

The "white room" was a literal place: a room in an apartment where Pete Brown was living. It was not, as some suspected, an institution.
Upon its release, Wheels Of Fire was given a terrible review by Rolling Stone magazine. They claim that "White Room" has "The exact same lines for guitar, bass and drums" as "Tales Of Brave Ulysses." If you listen to both songs, they are somewhat similar, but nowhere near the level they claim. >>
Eric Clapton used a wah-wah pedal on his guitar. He got the idea from Jimi Hendrix.

Clapton's solo earned the #2 spot on Guitar World's greatest wah solos of all time in 2015. The #1 spot? Hendrix' "Voodoo Child (Slight Return)."

Why are the starlings tired? Because the pollution in London was killing them. Pete Brown said: "The 'tired starlings' is also a little bit of a metaphor for the feminine in a way, as well. It was women having to put up with rather a lot - too much pressure on them at the time."

More lyric interpretation courtesy of Pete Brown:

"Goodbye Windows" - "Just people waving goodbye from train windows."

"Black-roof Country" - "That was the kind of area that I lived in. There were still steam trains at one point around that area, so the roofs were black. It was black and sooty. It's got that kind of a feel to it."

On their last tour before the band broke up, Cream opened most of their shows with White Room. When Cream did a reunion tour in 2005, they played it near the end of the sets.
Clapton refused to play this after leaving Cream until 1985, when Paul Shaffer urged him to play it while he was sitting in with the band on Late Night With David Letterman. That same year, Clapton played it at Live Aid.

White Room was released as a single after Cream had broken up. It did better in the US than in England, since Cream had caught on in the States.
In 2000, Apple Computer used this in commercials for their white iMacs. While the song does have the word "white" in the title, the subject matter is not good for selling computers.

Drummer Ginger Baker came up with the iconic 5/4 Bolero introduction but received no songwriting credit for his efforts. This troubled his pride and his bank account. With no songwriting credits, he earned the least amount of royalties. That was the case not only with "White Room" but also the hit "Sunshine Of Your Love" and every other Cream song. Baker suffered financially for the rest of his life and resented Cream for it - particularly bassist Jack Bruce. Their rivalry started the day they met but was greatly exasperated by the royalties issue.

Clapton performed White Room in 1999 for the album Sheryl Crow and Friends: Live From Central Park. Clapton and Crow were an item for a time in the '90s.

Pete Brown said: "It was a miracle it worked, considering it was me writing a monologue about a new flat."

White Room plays during a scene in the 2019 movie The Joker where the title character is sitting in the back of a cop car. The Joker has a smile on his face, as he observes the destruction he has caused in Gotham.

Jack Bruce recorded a new, Latin-influenced version on his 2001 album Shadows In The Air. Clapton played on this as well as his new recording of "Sunshine Of Your Love."

Strange Brew is based on a blues song Cream used to play called "Lawdy Mama." Felix Pappalardi, who produced the album, wrote new lyrics to the song with his wife, Gail Collins, and Eric Clapton worked out the arrangement and also sang lead. Pappalardi, Collins and Clapton are the credited writers on the song.

As for Pappalardi, he went on to form Mountain, a band he also produced. In 1983, he was shot and killed by Collins in a domestic dispute; Collins was found guilty of criminally negligent homicide.

When Cream performed the early version of Strange Brew as "Lawdy Mama," Clapton and bass player Jack Bruce would share lead vocals. The band recorded both "Lawdy Mama" and "Strange Brew" at Atlantic Studios in New York on April 3, 1967. The band had spent the previous week in the city, performing daily at the "Music In The Fifth Dimension" show at the RKO Theater. These shows were organized by the influential disc jockey Murray the K, and provided great exposure for Cream in America. Other acts on the bill for some of these shows: The Who, Wilson Pickett and the Lovin' Spoonful. Cream would complete the Disraeli Gears album when they returned to the United States the next month.
The lyrics refer to a female, which could mean drugs or be a more literal reference to a woman. Either way, she is "killing what's inside of you."

Cream had a very psychedelic sound, Strange Brew song was released in the Summer of Love, where it fit in quite well.

To craft "Strange Brew," producer Felix Pappalardi added Eric Clapton's vocal to a take of the band's recording of "Lawdy Mama," which appears as a bonus track on the 2004 re-release of Disraeli Gears, but didn't make the original album. Jack Bruce wasn't happy about this, especially since he wasn't able to re-record his bassline. To keep the tenuous peace in the band during Cream's reunion concerts in 2005, "Strange Brew" was omitted from their 19-song playlist, despite being one of their best known and loved songs.

Clapton got the idea for the album title after a roadie named Mick Turner told him about the derailleur gears on his bicycle. Derailleur, pronounced "Di-rail-yer," are the kind of gears commonly found on 10-speed bikes. The roadie pronounced it "Disraeli," which led to the title.

On Eric Clapton's Crossroads boxed set, Strange Brew is placed next to "Lawdy Mama," the Blues song it is based on.

There is a movie called Strange Brew, but it has nothing to with the song. Made in 1983, it stars Rick Moranis and Dave Thomas as Canadian brothers who love beer.

The album didn't appear until November 1967, but this song was issued as the first single in June of that year, reaching its UK peak of #17 on July 15. Disraeli Gears was Cream's second album; they would release two more before calling it quits.