'Cleaned a lot of plates in Memphis. Pumped a lot of 'tane down in New Orleans.'
'The first album came out on my 23rd birthday, May 28, 1968, and we were off and running as Creedence, but still kind of a second-on-the-bill act. But all through that time, I’m writing very busily. This was where all that evolution very dramatically occurred in me. I’ve seen science-fiction movies where the guy’s head suddenly doubles in size; that’s actually what occurred to me. All that stuff – all that imagery, that Southern lore, all that fable stuff that’s in the songwriting, starting with the name and the plaid shirt – was going on in me, and the other guys were still the bar band.
Bayou Country really stated what Creedence Clearwater Revival was and should be. There were hints of it on the first album. The singin’ is good, and the band plays well; it just doesn’t sound as authentic as Stax. But Bayou Country just lands very authoritatively. The title track, with that droning chord and that whole spooky thing, that’s such a great opening. And the cover shot, which was just by accident, was spooky and undefined, and it did nothing to dispel the vision.
Because I was writing – this is late ’67 and early ’68 – it occurred to me one day that what I liked was song titles. So I went down to the drugstore in El Cerrito at the mall, and I went and got myself a cheap little notebook, and I made myself a title page that said “Song Titles” [laughs], and the first thing I wrote was “Proud Mary”. I looked at it and said, “Hmm… what does that mean? Maybe it’s like a domestic worker, a maid.”
Then I began to write some melody. The flow sounded good, but I had no idea what it was about. So I go back to the song-title book and “Proud Mary” is sittin’ there, and dang if it didn’t sound like a paddle wheel goin’ around. I said, “Man, that sounds like a riverboat!” Now, that’s the magic, the myth, the voodoo of this whole deal. I began to write the song – the story – of that boat, Proud Mary. It was the central character. That’s exactly how it happened; it’s no more mythical than that.
We went into RCA in Hollywood, Studio A, to record Bayou Country in October [1968]. We had the music for “Proud Mary” recorded, and I knew what I wanted the backgrounds to sound like. I showed the other guys how to sing the backgrounds, having remembered what we’d sounded like on “Porterville”, which was very ragged, not melodious, and I had this beautiful harmony sound in my head, kinda like what the old gospel groups would do. And I heard our tape back, and I just went, “Nahhh, that’s not gonna work.” So we had a big fight over that. I said, “I’m gonna sing all the parts” – ’cause I’d been doin’ that for years with my tape recorder at home, and I knew harmony, and the other guys, frankly, did not. We literally coulda broke up right there.
I was well aware of the sophomore jinx; I did not want to go back to the car wash. I actually made that speech: “If the second one stinks, we’re a one-hit wonder.” Instead of delving into the underground, my Elvis-and-Beatles upbringing came directly into play. And I was able to write songs that would go on Top 40 radio, because that’s what I had wanted to do since I was four. I wanted to make hit singles; I thought that was my job. At the conclusion of “Proud Mary”, I even said to myself, “Wow, that’s my first standard.” '
Bayou Country really stated what Creedence Clearwater Revival was and should be. There were hints of it on the first album. The singin’ is good, and the band plays well; it just doesn’t sound as authentic as Stax. But Bayou Country just lands very authoritatively. The title track, with that droning chord and that whole spooky thing, that’s such a great opening. And the cover shot, which was just by accident, was spooky and undefined, and it did nothing to dispel the vision.
Because I was writing – this is late ’67 and early ’68 – it occurred to me one day that what I liked was song titles. So I went down to the drugstore in El Cerrito at the mall, and I went and got myself a cheap little notebook, and I made myself a title page that said “Song Titles” [laughs], and the first thing I wrote was “Proud Mary”. I looked at it and said, “Hmm… what does that mean? Maybe it’s like a domestic worker, a maid.”
Then I began to write some melody. The flow sounded good, but I had no idea what it was about. So I go back to the song-title book and “Proud Mary” is sittin’ there, and dang if it didn’t sound like a paddle wheel goin’ around. I said, “Man, that sounds like a riverboat!” Now, that’s the magic, the myth, the voodoo of this whole deal. I began to write the song – the story – of that boat, Proud Mary. It was the central character. That’s exactly how it happened; it’s no more mythical than that.
We went into RCA in Hollywood, Studio A, to record Bayou Country in October [1968]. We had the music for “Proud Mary” recorded, and I knew what I wanted the backgrounds to sound like. I showed the other guys how to sing the backgrounds, having remembered what we’d sounded like on “Porterville”, which was very ragged, not melodious, and I had this beautiful harmony sound in my head, kinda like what the old gospel groups would do. And I heard our tape back, and I just went, “Nahhh, that’s not gonna work.” So we had a big fight over that. I said, “I’m gonna sing all the parts” – ’cause I’d been doin’ that for years with my tape recorder at home, and I knew harmony, and the other guys, frankly, did not. We literally coulda broke up right there.
I was well aware of the sophomore jinx; I did not want to go back to the car wash. I actually made that speech: “If the second one stinks, we’re a one-hit wonder.” Instead of delving into the underground, my Elvis-and-Beatles upbringing came directly into play. And I was able to write songs that would go on Top 40 radio, because that’s what I had wanted to do since I was four. I wanted to make hit singles; I thought that was my job. At the conclusion of “Proud Mary”, I even said to myself, “Wow, that’s my first standard.” '
What's to say about Proud Mary? It sounds, of course, like it's always been there and it feels difficult to imagine what it must feel like to be the guy that wrote it. I can't really say anything much about it because it's just too omnipresent though that's really a tribute to the song rather than a criticism of it. It's played at virtually every wedding in the States and must have been covered by more artists than any other Creedence song, probably most notably by Ike and Tina Turner who all but stole it away from them. The nature of standards.
As attested by Fogerty above it was both his statement of vindication and the moment when things started to go wrong in terms of band relations. Brutally put, it was a stark statement to the rest of them of how talented Fogerty truly was. It was originally backed with Born on the Bayou, pretty much as bold a statement as it's possible to make in terms of a breakthrough single. It's myth making of the highest order. Made all the more powerful by the fact that it's an act of imaginative creation rather than something that actually organically rose up from the swamps.
' In other hands this ersatz remembrance of the way things never were on riverboats might have seemed like a case of overexposure to Life on the Mississippi especially given Fogerty's total immersion accent, which (in true New Orleans style, pretty rare for a California kid) transforms 'work' to 'woik' among other things.
Fogerty gets away with it, though, because he came up with a riff and rhythm that roll along as mighty as the Mississippi itself. The surging flood of guitars and drums, the bass line's undertow and the liquid guitar solo justify every vocal and lyric affectation. By the end the story seems natural and eternal, which maybe means that those studied qualities aren't affectations after all.'
Dave Marsh, The Heart of Rock & Soul
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