With Concord Music Group having purchased the Fantasy catalog, the fortieth anniversary of Creedence Clearwater Revival’s debut LP provides a suitable opportunity for a fresh round of reissues. All six of the original foursome’s albums (from 1968’s Creedence Clearwater Revival through 1970’s Pendulum) have been struck from new digital masters and augmented by previously unreleased tracks. Those who purchased the 2001 box set can pick up most of the bonus tracks separately as digital downloads (the two longest bonuses are CD-only). Those who didn’t buy the box, and think they’ll buy all six reissues may want to consider the box set for its inclusion of pre-Creedence work from the Blue Velvets and Golliwogs, the seventh CCR album Mardi Gras, the 1970-71 live recordings and several box-only bonuses. But for those just wanting to pick up a few favorite albums, these reissues are the ticket. Each is presented in a digipack with original front and back cover album art and a 16-page booklet with photos, credits and new liner notes.

Creedence Clearwater Revival
The Great American Band’s Debut

Creedence’s self-titled debut finds the band making the transition from blues and psychedelia to the bayou flavor that made them the greatest American rock band ever. The disc opens with a resurrection of Screaming Jay Hawkins’ “I Put a Spell on You.” Fogerty’s vocal hasn’t the insane menace of Hawkins’ original, but his manhandling guitar solo shows how broad his vision of American music was going to be. The same is true for the group’s cover of Dale Hawkins’ “Suzie Q,” extending the rockabilly classic into an eight-minute epic. Doug Clifford’s fade-in backbeat gives way to Fogerty’s insinuating guitar riff, and a run through of the lyrics leads to an intense guitar jam whose feedback-lined climax dissolves back into the smoke of a fading backbeat. The album’s third cover is “Ninety-Nine and a Half (Won’t Do),” offered as a harder blues than the original’s Stax groove, and with a more ferocious vocal than Wilson Pickett’s original.

The originals, all written by John Fogerty, aren’t the swamp-rock icons of later albums, ranging from the straight blues “The Working Man” and “Get Down Woman” to the soul-psych “Gloomy” and jamming “Walking on Water.” The tune that points forward is “Porterville,” where you can hear the seeds of CCR’s swampy rock and an aggressive individualism in Fogerty’s lyrics. The 2008 CD’s bonus tracks include the throwback harmony rocker B-side of the group’s first single (originally issued as the Golliwogs) “Call it Pretending” and a 1968 album outtake of Bo Diddley’s “Before You Accuse Me” that’s less refined than the version they’d record for Cosmo’s Factory two years later. Two superbly present live tracks from a 1969 Fillmore show repeat “Ninety Nine and a Half (Won’t Do)” and “Suzie Q,” the former close to the studio original, the latter a set-closing showpiece demonstrating Fogerty’s hypnotizing guitar mastery stretching out to nearly twelve minutes.

Bayou Country
The Great American Band Finds Their Mojo

By the time Creedence recorded their second album, Bayou Country, John Fogerty had fully merged his broad range of Americana music influences into a wholly new sound. The El Cerrito, California bred songwriter re-imagined himself as a bayou musician whose guitar rock crawled from the swamp laden with backwoods blues and country twang. Fogerty debuts his persona on the album’s opener, with reverbed guitar bending over, around and through the group’s brilliant rhythm section. It’s a perfect bookend to the album’s closer, “Keep on Chooglin’,” whose title and rhythm define the underpinnings of the band’s musical vocabulary. In between Fogerty crafted the lasting myth of “Proud Mary,” fusing the group’s newly born shuffle, the soul of Stax and fictionalized images of Mississippi riverboats.

The band plays spare, late-night blues on “Graveyard Train,” but the images of lonely rural highways, railroads and undertakers all return to the album’s bayou hoodoo. The lone cover is a version of Little Richard’s “Good Golly Miss Molly” that finds Fogerty tearing up his overdriven lead guitar. The 2008 CD’s bonus tracks open with an alternate take of the shuffling “Bootleg” that’s stretched to double the original three minutes with a scat vocal section added to the middle. There’s also a trio of live tracks from the three-piece version of the group (sans Tom Fogerty) that toured Europe in 1971. “Born on the Bayou” is more rock ‘n’ roll fierce than the album track, “Proud Mary” is a by-the-numbers rendition of a band’s Big Hit (and seems most to miss Tom Fogerty), and “Crazy Otto” is a nine-minute blues jam recorded at the Fillmore in 1969.

Green River
The Great American Band’s First Completely Original Effort

Creedence’s third album (their second for 1969), Green River, is their first completely original effort as a band. Gone are the lengthy San Francisco jams, replaced by concisely written and arranged songs that concentrate Fogerty’s evocations of an idealized South. The album opens with the title track’s sumptuous memory of a mythical childhood, a song so deeply soaked in Southern swamps that it’s hard to imagine it being written in the urban hills of California’s Bay Area. The Fogerty brothers intertwine their twangy electric guitars with familial telepathy. The sound first explored on Bayou Country is now heard on every cut, mellowing the blue “Tombstone Shadow” and providing an introspective stage for Fogerty’s ballads. Even the frantic “Commotion” is given a Cajun base for its lyrics of a country boy demolished by the city’s hyperactivity. Fogerty’s social conscience stretches biblical allusions to then present day situations on “Wrote a Song for Everyone,” and with “Bad Moon Rising” the visions turn catastrophic. There’s a great deal more darkness here than on any other Creedence LP.

Fogerty’s guitar could be sinewy or ring with the influences of Chet Atkins, as does his solo on “Cross-Tie Walker.” Country music also makes an impact on the sorrowful, highly personal lyric of “Lodi.” The album closes with its sole cover, a slow rockabilly take on Ray Charles’ blue-soul “The Night Time is the Right Time.” The 2008 CD’s bonus tracks include a pair of pre-LP backing tracks that were never completed, the country-shuffle “Broken Spoke Shuffle” and the twangy “Glory Be.” Also here is a trio of live tracks from the group’s 1971 European tour. “Bad Moon Rising” is rushed (as are so many songs played live), a medley of “Green River” and “Suzie Q” is condensed to four-and-a-half-minutes, pointing out the two songs’ similarities more than giving the latter its full due, and “Lodi” is a fittingly weary lyric for a band reduced to three of its original four members.

Willy and the Poor Boys
The Great American Band Notches Their Second Classic

Creedence’s fourth album, their third full album for 1969, Willy & The Poor Boys, was even more of a classic than the preceding Green River. The band sounds even more at home with their sound and Fogerty’s creativity was stoked by the blistering pace at which he was creating new material. One could be forgiving of a few album tracks that didn’t measure up, but there weren’t any. Fogerty’s pen was overflowing with quality tunes and the band’s covers of “Cotton Fields” and “The Midnight Special” are so thoroughly inscribed with the Creedence sound as to be their own. Even the instrumental confection “Poorboy Shuffle,” with its wheezing harmonica and washboard skiffle, fits tightly into the album’s sequence, providing a light introduction and crossfade to the Ike Turner styled “Feelin’ Blue.”

The darkness of Green River is mostly dispelled here, as “Down on the Corner” opens the album with a joyous shuffle that coasts on Creedence’s potent rhythm section, and the paranoia of “It Came Out of the Sky” is played for rural laughs. Fogerty’s not without his calluses though, and “Fortunate Son” opens with a low, throbbing bass and memorable guitar riff to accompany the blistering attack on masters of war and privileged souls who get others to fight their wars. The 2008 CD’s bonus tracks include live versions of “Fortunate Son” and “It Came Out of the Sky” recorded by the three-piece Creedence on their 1971 European tour. The former is sung at a breakneck tempo that doesn’t seethe as fully as the studio original, the latter, recorded in Berlin, features the same hot guitar mix as other tracks from this show. Closing the CD is a version of “Down on the Corner” recorded with Booker T. and the MGs. The mono audio of this last bonus is less than sparkling, but where else are you going to hear John Fogerty and Steve Cropper swapping guitar licks?

Cosmo’s Factory
The Great American Band Hits Their Peak

Creedence’s fifth studio album, Cosmo’s Factory, expands upon the gains of their previous two releases even as it returns to the jamming, psychedelic roots and enthusiastic cover songs of the band’s 1968 debut. The result sums up the band’s evolution with socially-charged guitar jams (“Ramble Tamble”), concise, iconic hit singles (“Travelin’ Band,” “Up Around the Bend” and “Lookin’ Out My Back Door”), memorable B-sides (“Who’ll Stop the Rain,” “Run Through the Jungle” and “Long As I Can See the Light”), heartfelt throwbacks (“Before You Accuse Me,” “Ooby Dooby” and “My Baby Left Me”), and a tour de force eleven minute reworking of Marvin Gaye’s “I Heard It Through the Grapevine.” Rhythm guitarist Tom Fogerty would stick around for the next LP (Pendulum), but this one’s actually the more fitting summation of the original foursome’s 2-1/2 year run. John Fogerty might well have sensed this was the high point as he sings “Lookin’ Out My Back Door” weary but satisfied, and “Long As I Can See the Light” as an elegy.

Given that all three B-sides should have marked their own time on the charts, one can easily imagine this album spinning off six hits, with the lengthy album tracks tucked away on the late night radio waves of underground FM. Legacy’s 2008 CD reissue adds three bonus tracks, including a post-LP studio take of “Travelin’ Band” recorded without horns, a previously unreleased live version of “Up Around the Bend” from the group’s final European tour and a 1970 studio jam of “Born on the Bayou” featuring Booker T. on organ. If you’re only going to buy one Creedence LP, this is as good as it gets. Of course, that could equally well be said about Green River or Willy and the Poor Boys, and perhaps even Bayou Country. Best bet: get them all.

Pendulum
The Great American Band’s Last LP as a Foursome

Creedence’s sixth studio album in 2-1/2 years, Pendulum, marked their finale as a four-piece; two months after its December 1970 release, rhythm guitarist Tom Fogerty would quit the group for good. Unlike the summary of their musical inventions heard on 1969’s Cosmo’s Factory, their latest LP found John Fogerty pushing the group in new directions, including more blatant nods to New Orleans funk, Stax soul, and experimental studio productions. The album’s press – both at the time and with this reissue – suggested the new focus was partly motivated by the dismissive attitudes of the band’s peers. With a string of top-5 singles and a lack of trendy sounds on their albums, Creedence wasn’t always given their due as innovators. Fogerty may have felt stung, but instead of capitulating with nods to current trends, he sought to lead the band in new directions. Fogerty may well have felt restless after stringing together Bayou Country, Green River, Willy and the Poorboys, and Cosmo’s Factory in just 18 months. Fogerty wrote all of the album’s songs for the first time, employed sax solos and a vocal backing chorus and, most conspicuously, added generous helpings of Hammond B-3.

Given all those changes, the album opens with a characteristic heavy rock jam that would have fit the group’s debut. The organ lining the album’s single, “Have You Ever Seen the Rain,” portends the larger changes to be found within the album, and those innovations first kick in with the organ, saxophone and chorus backing of “Sailor’s Lament.” Fogerty’s keyboard provides a spooky introduction to “(Wish I Could) Hideaway,” offering melodramatics that harken back to the group’s earlier cover of “I Put a Spell on You.” Fogerty’s fascination with Stax turns blatant on the funky “Chameleon,” and the structure and riff of “Born to Move” provide a solid nod to Rufus Thomas’ “Walking the Dog.”

As a producer Fogerty gives his rhythm section its due on “It’s Just a Thought,” moving the bass and drums forward and rewarding listeners with some of Stu Cook and Doug Clifford’s terrifically melodic playing. The album closes with the Little Richard styled rocker, “Molina,” and the six-minute prog-rock experiment “Rude Awakening, No. 2.” The latter provides a “heavy” bookend to the album’s opener, but aside from the acoustic guitar intro, it’s rather tortuous. Closing track pretentions aside, this is a solid album whose new directions may not measure up to the group’s peak, but might have proved fruitful had the group not dissolved with 1972’s Mardi Gras. Bonus tracks on the 2008 CD reissue include the promotional single “45 Revolutions Per Minute (Part 1 and 2),” which finds the band experimenting in the studio with a “Revolution #9” like montage of production tricks, backwards tape, sound effects, musical bridges, comedy bits, and San Francisco DJ Tom Campbell. Wrapping up the disc is a live take of “Hey Tonight” recorded by the three-piece Creedence in Hamburg on their last tour of Europe. [©2008 hyperbolium dot com]