It was only a few days ago that I wrote about the skiffle influence on todays music, saying how a group could be formed around a guitar, a washboard and a tea-chest bass. Here it is in all it's glory on this album cover. CCR standing on a street in West Oakland with, as stated in a 1974 Rolling Stone article "gut-bucket bass, washboard, ol’ git’ar an’ mouf harp". This was going to be some sort of concept album based on the characters in the photo, CCR in their alter-egos of Willie and the Poor Boys. The opening song 'Down on the Corner' seems to add to the theme by mentioning what the visual tells us ..
'Down on the corner
Out in the street
Willy and the Poor Boys are playin'
Bring a nickel, tap your feet
Rooster hits the washboard and people just got to smile
Blinky thumps the gut bass and solos for a while
Poor Boy twangs the rhythm out on his kalamazoo
And Willy goes into a dance and doubles on kazoo'
Ultimately that's all there was to it. The concept of a concept was abandoned and what we got instead was a selection of damn good stand alone songs. One of them was the result of this album photo shoot. The band were playing around with the instruments and came up with something they liked. When they got back into the studio they cleaned it up and recorded it as 'Poorboy Shuffle'.
1969 was a massive year for CCR. They toured the country, played the Atlanta Pop Festival, did a midnight set at Woodstock and recorded and released 3 albums between January and November. They also put out and promoted 8 singles from those albums. Surprisingly they never hit #1 in the US with any of those songs but have the dubious honour of getting 3 #2's in this one year.
'Willy and the Poor Boys' has a mix of songs and influences. 'Fortunate Son' is a classic protest song that still holds it's own even today. 'Effigy' was a specific direct hit against Nixon and 'Don't Look Now' has the plight of the working class. A couple of covers, 'Cotton Fields' and 'The Midnight Special' of Leadbelly fame and the rousing story of a farmer finding a UFO in 'It Came Out of the Sky'. Throw in a couple of instrumentals and you've got a great piece of vinyl in your hands.
The reason for their success and prolific output was ultimately the reason for their breakup - John Fogerty. A major talent, writer, arranger, producer, musician, lead vocalist, John essentially WAS Creedence Clearwater Revival but his leadership in all things wasn't appreciated all the time by all the band. He was criticized for driving them too hard, for putting great songs on BOTH sides of the single releases and not allowing the others any major input. It wasn't until their 1972 album 'Mardi Gras' that Stu Cook and Doug Clifford got to record some of their compositions and take lead vocals, but by then it really was too late. Tom Fogerty, John's brother, had left the band in 1971 and the remaining trio were not getting on at all. The other two resented John's dominance and John resented the fact that they wanted more control after he had basically done all the work to get them where they were.
It had to end, and so it did, in October 1972.
Bitter feuds, legal troubles, family disharmony and petty squabbles pretty much took over for many years. John went on to have a very successful solo career but one of the weirdest lawsuits against him was brought by Fantasy Records. Fantasy owned the rights to many CCR songs and when John recorded 'The Old Man Down the Road' for his solo 'Centerfield' album for Asylum Records, Fantasy claimed it was a re-write of 'Run Through the Jungle' which they owned. So they were basically suing John Fogerty for plagarizing himself!
As well as their original songs, in their heyday CCR did some very credible covers. 'I Put a Spell on You', the Screamin' Jay Hawkins classic. A memorable 11 minute version of 'I Heard it Through the Grapevine', their first high seller 'Suzie Q' and even 'Hello Mary Lou', the Gene Pitney song he wrote for Ricky Nelson.
Everybody knows CCR's music, if not from their 7 studio albums then certainly from radio play, and anyone with even the most rudimentary collection will probably have one of their 40 plus compilations. That being the case, and just to balance the books, I've put 2 links at the end of this review to CCR songs done by other people. The Reels are an Australian group who had hits doing covers and their 1986 version of 'Bad Moon Rising' is well worth a listen. The second clip is the classic live Ike & Tina Turner rendition of 'Proud Mary' from their brilliant double album 'What You Hear Is What You Get' from 1971. It starts off nice and easy .......
Creedence Clearwater Revival. Good old rock in the middle of flower power.
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