It\u2019s been well documented that 1969 was an absolutely stunning year of music, and for CCR, it was a particularly prolific one. The quartet released three <\/i>albums that year, all of which were consistently great, keeping them in the charts around the world while running antithetical to the artsy, bloated spirit that had started to take hold of the band\u2019s contemporaries.<\/p>\n
CCR was definitely an American band, one that relied on blues, Motown, and swamp rock updated for a new generation. It sounded like nothing else on the radio \u2013 and still doesn\u2019t, as you know a CCR song the moment it starts \u2013 and had an instant charm and appeal while still bringing hard rock and pop appeal. The negative side was that John Fogerty had taken control of the band and turned it into a less-than-democratic environment; among his directions were that the band continue to release music, pretty much as soon as it was mastered, so that they always stayed in the public conscious.<\/p>\n
It made sense on paper \u2013 and in today\u2019s fickle world, it\u2019s even smarter \u2013 but in 1969 it wasn\u2019t really necessary, and CCR\u2019s set at Woodstock only cemented them as an integral part of the vast, diverse musical landscape of the year. This means that each of their albums has some filler on it, mostly in the form of instrumental jams designed to kill time, and while fun, these can be a bit repetitive after a time. On Willy And The Poor Boys<\/i>, that song is \u201cFeelin\u2019 Blue,\u201d and it\u2019s about the only time this record\u2019s energy flags a bit.<\/p>\n
But boy, does \u201cFortunate Son\u201d ever make up for it. Fogerty\u2019s timeless protest anthem, while written at the time of Vietnam, is not tied to that war but is smartly centered on all privileged Americans \u2013 the rich and the politicians \u2013 who send other people\u2019s kids to war and who cite undying patriotism but live lives of hypocrisy and luxury. The fiery rock is just over two minutes but says more than most protest anthems; some consider it CCR\u2019s best song, and it\u2019s tough to argue.<\/p>\n
By their fourth album, CCR was a tight unit, but their songs veered between punchy numbers like \u201cFortunate Son,\u201d the witty story-song \u201cIt Came Out Of The Sky,\u201d and \u201cDon\u2019t Look Now\u201d to more ramshackle, front-porch pieces like \u201cDown On The Corner,\u201d the jug band homage \u201cPoor Boy Shuffle\u201d and both of the traditional American songs \u201cCotton Fields\u201d and \u201cThe Midnight Special.\u201d By this point, CCR had fully absorbed its influences, despite the California origins, and could totally reinvent and sell a remake of \u201cThe Midnight Special\u201d that sounded timely in 1969. One of the chief appeals of CCR is that their songs rarely seemed tied to a specific time \u2013 psychedelic rock, British invasion, prog, disco, punk, etc. \u2013 and so their music remains timeless, if a touch corny and innocent by today\u2019s jaded standards.<\/p>\n
\u201cSide O\u2019 The Road\u201d is another instrumental that does little more than kill some time, leading to the closing \u201cEffigy,\u201d which was written more pointedly about Richard Nixon and is among the most depressing melodies of Fogerty\u2019s oeuvre, made even more melancholy by his vocal multitracking and the bee-sting guitar solos, which take up half the song. The piece fades out without any kind of hope, but rather than undercut what came before, it seems to illustrate that we live in tough times no matter what the era. While you can\u2019t ignore that, sometimes the simple act of playing music, hanging with friends down on the corner (as it were) and storytelling can make things better, at least for a while. And on that level, Willy And The Poor Boys <\/i>succeeds.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":45,"featured_media":32732,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"tags":[],"artist":[5749],"rating":[5615],"class_list":["post-44502","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-creedence-clearwater-revival","rating-rating-b"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/44502","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/45"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=44502"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/44502\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/32732"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44502"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44502"},{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=44502"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=44502"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}