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CD Review: The Creedence Reissues Part 1 - Creedence Clearwater Revival And Bayou Country
By Glen Boyd: 2008-09-28 05:22:46
This Tuesday, Concord Music and Fantasy Records (who John Fogerty made an unexpected peace with a few years back, after decades of legal wrangling) is reissuing the first six of Creedence's original albums in new remastered editions with bonus unreleased tracks.
Each album comes in a nicely done eco-correct fold out package, featuring new liner notes by some of music's best journalists including Dave Marsh, Robert Christgau, and the San Francisco Chronicle's Joel Selvin. The liner notes in of themselves are fascinating to read, as they reveal some little known details about things like Creedence's split, including the involvement of notorious Beatles villain Allen Klein. But its the extras that are the real treat here. Each of the six new discs include such rarities as live recordings of songs like "Susie Q," "Proud Mary," and "Fortunate Son", alternate takes including "Down On The Corner" and "Born On The Bayou" with Booker T and The MGs, and even CCR's odd homage to the Beatles "Revolution #9" ("Revolutions Per Minute Parts 1 & 2"). The remastered versions of Creedence Clearwater Revival's first six history making, record breaking albums will be in stores on September 30. This is part one of a three part review of the Creedence reissues and focuses on the band's 1968 debut album and it's followup Bayou Country. My first exposure to the music of brothers John and Tom Fogerty, along with the rock steady rhythm section of bassist Stu Cook and drummer Doug "Cosmo" Clifford -- or Creedence Clearwater Revival as they were collectively known -- came at the beginning, in 1968. My father's military career had just relocated our family from a rural town in Washington State to the island of Oahu in Hawaii. There would be much culture shock in store over the next two years we lived there, dropped from a small town into the multi-racial microcosm of the islands -- at the tail end of the sixties I might add -- as we were. As a pre-teenager about to enter junior high in Hawaii, the first shot in that cultural upheaval came on the radio. There was an AM station there called KKUA that was formatted like most top forty stations, except they placed an emphasis on "heavy groups" like the Airplane and Iron Butterfly, over the bubblegum pop I was used to hearing on Seattle's KJR. The first song I heard on KKUA was all eight minutes of Creedence's "Suzie Q." They also played "I Put A Spell On You," a psychedelicized remake of a song by a guy named Screaming Jay Hawkins who I'd learn more about as I got older. Both were from Creedence's first album, which I ended up buying. It was these two songs that set the tone for the album's gritty feel of a darker, bluesier sort of take on the acid-rock that was so much in vogue at the time. Another highlight of the album was another non-original song, Wilson Pickett and Steve Cropper's "Ninety Nine And A Half." Fogerty's songs weren't center stage for this band yet. But that would all change soon enough. By the time of Creedence's second album Bayou Country, the band had grown into a much tighter, confident sounding group and John Fogerty's original songs were now front and center where they belonged. Outside of Fogerty's songwriting itself, the thing that was, and is still most amazing about Bayou Country was the sound. These guys were from the Bay Area, but you'd never know it hearing the deep cajun feel of songs like "Born On The Bayou." Fogerty's guitar tone to this day remains something that can only described as, well, "swampy." There's nothing fancy about it, yet it still immediately summons dark images of the deep south. Taken together with Fogerty's unique voice -- which is basically equal parts bluesy drawl and twangy wail -- the whole thing percolates like that particular region's finest tasting gumbo. John Fogerty's guitar and voice are the spice in this particular soup, with brother Tom providing the seasoning with his rhythm guitar. Holding down this essential groove fell to the rhythm section of Cook and Clifford, who did so with the hypnotic precision of one of those hoodoo shamen. There's nothing remotely suggesting late sixties San Francisco about it. That alone would be enough, but on songs like his first great single, "Proud Mary," Fogerty matches those images of the deep south with his words. With it's lyrical images of "big wheels that keep on turning," "riverboat queens," and above all, "rolling on the river," Mark Twain himself couldn't paint a much more descriptive picture. The thing is, that great song would prove to be but the tip of the iceberg when it came to Fogerty's knack for writing unforgettable songs in the same way, and with the same frequency, that you or I might change our socks. RELATED: creedence clearwater revival, john fogerty
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