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CD Review: The Creedence Reissues Part 2 - Green River And Willie And The Poor Boys
By Glen Boyd: 2008-09-28 04:55:59
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 two of a three part review of the Creedence reissues and focuses on the album's Green River and Willie And The Poor Boys. The great songs kept coming on CCR's 1969 album Green River. Many believe Creedence's third album to be their best, although that spot changes for me almost as often I change my own...well, you know. But there is simply no denying that title track, where against all odds of probability, Fogerty's guitar actually outswamps some of the songs on Bayou Country. Released as a double A side single with "Commotion," the two songs together kick Green River off with an unstoppable one-two punch. Where "Green River" is still anchor deep in the Mississippi swamp, "Commotion" chugs along with a twang that owes as much to the country of Johnny Cash as it does to the rock of Chuck Berry. Likewise, "Lodi" brings to mind what Hank Williams Sr. might sound like backed by the Tennessee Three. But on Green River, Fogerty's lyrics were also branching out from the riverboat themes into the broader arena of social concerns. "Bad Moon Rising," would in fact foreshadow such still to come songs as "Who'll Stop The Rain" and "Fortunate Son." On "Bad Moon Rising," Fogerty weds the darker images of the swamp with those very concerns in lines like "I see a bad moon rising, I see trouble on the way." Although the lyric seemed ambiguous at the time, there is little doubt what he meant when taken in retrospect. Elsewhere on this great album, Creedence offers up takes on dixieland and gospel ("The Night Time Is The Right Time") and blues based rock ("Tombstone Shadow"). Creedence's fourth album, Willie And The Poor Boys came just a few months later. On it's surface, Willie represented a return to the band's more bluesy roots with Creedence adopting the alter-ego of the band singing "Down On The Corner", and scoring yet another hit in the process. Most of this record is steeped deeper than ever in the music of the deep south, as titles like "Cotton Fields" and "Poorboy Shuffle," and a very down home sounding cover of "Midnight Special" certainly bear witness. But Fogerty's songwriting also continued it's political left turn, with his most blantantly antiwar song yet in "Fortunate Son." Of the six Creedence albums, Willie And The Poor Boys is their most obvious homage to the southern based musical traditions it was by now so obvious that the band had adopted as their own. RELATED: creedence clearwater revival
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