Robert Christgau, Christgau's Record Guide, 1981.Ī truly comprehensive overview of this wonderful band's most popular work, as well as a showcase for one of the truest and most distinctive voices in the annals of rock & roll, that of John Fogerty. Then go back and catch up with the more "obscure" stuff. Fifteen of these twenty songs went Top 10, and this is where anyone who snorts at the notion that Creedence was the greatest American band should start. Dave Marsh, The Rolling Stone Record Guide.Īl Green is the only other artist of the post- Pepper era to make great albums while scoring consistently on the singles charts, and like Green, Creedence is worth owning in a more public and archival configuration. Since then, it's all been repackages, except for the lamentable Live in Europe.Ĭhronicle is a fine singles anthology, but Green River and Willy and the Poor Boys are great rock records in their own right. Eventually, the group tried to achieve a communal balance, the other members of the quartet contributing songs to the final studio record, Mardi Gras, a noble but disappointing affair. Not all of this was unsuccessful, by any means - "I Heard It Through the Grapevine" is more intense than any six minutes of Grateful Dead music on record - but still, his metier was the single. (Creedence arose from roughly the same town as the psychedelic bands, but came from much poorer families.) And after a time, Fogerty burned to prove that he was as much an artist as anyone in the Grateful Dead - he apparently did not know that he was already more - and the group tried to stretch out, to make nominally "progressive" music. Perhaps best of all were "Lodi," the story of a working rocker's depression at being stuck in another out-of-the-way gin mill and his determination to beat everyone, and "Fortunate Son," a stab at the privileged that only kids from the wrong side of the ultra-hip San Francisco area could have felt so sharply. Then began the flood: "Bad Moon Rising," "Born on the Bayou," "Commotion," Down on the Corner," "Green River," "Have You Ever Seen the Rain," "I Heard It Through the Grapevine" (an extended song that worked), "Proud Mary," "Travelin' Band" and "Who'll Stop the Rain." All of this occurred between 19, when the group fell apart. On its first album (Creedence Clearwater Revival), the band attempted to stretch out, as was then the fashion, but though the approach garnered a hit with "Suzie Q," an extended version of the Dale Hawkins classic, Creedence didn't really hit stride until Fogerty tightened up some three-minute songs. Led by guitarist/vocalist/writer John Fogerty, the group simply pumped out classic rock singles, one after another, in much the same rockabilly spirit as Elvis Presley and Jerry Lee Lewis, adding some touches of New Orleans R&B and other relatively antediluvian sources. ” If Vol.1 turned you on to CCR, the tastefully remastered Vol.2 will turn you into the kind of fan that looks for other epic CCR album gems like the strangely absent “Keep On Chooglin’.Creedence Clearwater Revival was probably the greatest American singles band, one of the hardest-working American groups of any genre, and almost the only exponent of working-class sensibility in American rock & roll - particularly California rock & roll - after the advent of Haight-Ashbury and before the rise of punk.
CCR’s gospel-rock take on the old traditional folk song “The Midnight Special” is so good that it inspired a great television musical variety show by the same name in 1973.
And aside from the Little Richard staple, you won’t find a more rocking version of John Marascalo and Bumps Blackwell’s “Good Golly Miss Molly” than the one here. The song’s swampy twang is immediately fetching, with that opening guitar-picked hook, the mellow voodoo groove, and one of John Fogerty’s best vocal performances - not to mention, it convinced everyone that four guys from the Oakland suburbs of El Cerrito came from the gator-infested wetlands of Louisiana. Why “Born On the Bayou” wasn’t initially chosen as a single (it was the B-Side to “Proud Mary”) remains a mystery. 2 cements their staying power with an excellent selection of hit- worthy album cuts.
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