NOTE: This is a pre-production transcript and may not precisely match the finished product.
[INTRO]
Hi, welcome to the next episode of How Good It Is, and today, we’re looking into some very murky waters. Take it away, Jenna!
[Jenna: “HGII”]
Hi, I’m Mike Messner.
Remember to check out the website, howgooditis.com, and the Twitter, the Instagram, the Bluesky and of course the Facebook page, which you can find over at facebook.com/howgooditispod.
[OPTIONAL BUMPER]
Ding ding ding! It’s Trivia Time! This musician was a graduate of Villanova University, and worked as a telephone lineman and truck driver before making it big in the music industry. Who was he? I’ll tell you the answer at the end of the show, but for now, let’s get to the song of the day.
In 1967, Fantasy Records gave a local band then known as the Golliwogs a chance to sign a record contract. Now, the band loved the idea, but they had always hated the name “The Golliwogs,” which had been forced on the band by a previous owner of Fantasy Records. The group chose the name that you know them by: Creedence Clearwater Revival. The name came from three sources: Tom Fogerty’s friend Credence Newball, a television commercial for Olympia Brewing Company that emphasized that the beer was made with “clear water”, and the four members’ renewed commitment to their band. The members of the band were the aforementioned Tom Fogerty on rhythm guitar, his brother John on lead guitar and vocals, Stu Cook on bass and Doug Clifford on drums. In early 1968 the band began appearing regularly at local San Francisco-area clubs and venues, including the Fillmore West, and later that year CCR began touring across the US and made their first appearances in New York City at the Fillmore East.
The band’s first hit was a cover of the rockabilly song “Susie Q,” which reached #11 on the American charts in June 1968. They then began a string of hit albums and singles that continued uninterruptedly for two years. The single “Proud Mary”, backed with “Born on the Bayou”, reached number two on the national Billboard chart in January 1969. Three months later, the double A-side “Bad Moon Rising” and “Lodi” also hit number two in the US. Bad Moon also spent three weeks at number one on the UK Singles Chart during September and October 1969. And that brings us to the song we’re going to examine today, “Green River.”
The Fogerty family, which resided in the Oakland suburb of El Cerrito, California, often took vacations to Yolo County, not far from Sacramento and the home of both Lake Berryessa and the University of California, Davis. (Full disclosure: your host graduated from that fine institution in 1994.) Anyway, one of the bodies of water that flowed into Lake Berryessa was named Putah Creek, and it was (and still is) full of algae and other stuff that gives the water a green tint. John and Tom Fogerty played in and around the creek on their vacations, and John says that was the origin of the story told in the lyrics. In fact, he apparently learned to swim in the “green river! There was in fact, a rope hanging from a tree there, and there were bullfrogs and dragonflies there, as the lyrics suggest. Fogerty also acknowledged that the “actual specific reference, ‘Green River,’ was from a soda pop-syrup label – his favorite flavor was called Green River.”
Now in the last verse a character named Old Cody Junior warns the singer that back in the real world, things are more or less going to hell and that it’s all going to burn down – but that he (the singer) can always come back to Green River. And who was Old Cody Junior? Well, we know that Buffalo Bill Cody had, at one time, owned a cabin next to Putah Creek. Cody senior, however, only had one son – his name was Kit Carson Cody, and he died of scarlet fever at the age of 5.
The music is pretty deep into the category of swamp rock, which Fogerty claimed was influenced by the Roy Orbison song “Dream Baby.” Let’s hear a few bars of that…(short selection from “Dream Baby)
And now the first few bars of “Green River”…(short selection from “Dream Baby)
Now I admit those are short selections, but I think you can kind of sense that they both have elements of rockabilly. Neither song is overly produced, so you kind of feel like you’re in the room with both Orbison and Creedence as they’re playing. There’s very little reverb in rockabilly or swamp rock, and you can hear that the notes don’t sustain or echo all over the place on both the songs. There is a strong acoustic rhythm guitar in both, although you heard John Fogerty’s lead riffs kind of obscure what his brother Tom is playing. Finally, the lead vocals are right up front in the recordings, so the instruments are definitely there for complementing and not for competing with Orbison and Fogerty. “Green River” and “Dream Baby” rely on tight, small-band arrangements that let the groove carry the song.
The song was recorded between March and June 1969, and was released in July of that year. When the song came out, it went all the way to #2 in the US charts, where it stayed for one week. And it did very well in other countries as well: #5 in Austria, #5 in Canada, #8 in what was then called West Germany, #11 in New Zealand, and #19 in the UK. By 1990, the RIAA certified “Green River” as a gold record, having sold 500,000 units. The B-side, called “Commotion,” peaked at #30. “Green River” was kept out of the #1 position in America by the song “Sugar, Sugar” by The Archies.
Now about a month after the release of the single, the album “Green River” was in the stores. Of course, it had the title track, and it also included “Commotion,” “Lodi, “Bad Moon Rising,” and a cover of Nappy Brown’s “The Night Time Is The Right Time.” The record hit #1 in the US, and was a top 20 hit in Canada, Holland, Germany, Finland, Italy and the UK. Not bad for a few kids from a small town in Northern California!
Naturally, since the band was a major act at the time, they got an offer to play at the Woodstock festival in August 1969. In fact, Creedence was the first act to sign a contract for the event, for $10,000 (equivalent to $86,000 today). The band took the stage on Sunday, August 17, following the Grateful Dead’s 90-minute performance. Now, if you heard the original soundtrack of that concert or saw the documentary movie, you didn’t hear or see the band’s appearance at that event. There are varying accounts for why the group wasn’t included. One story suggests that the band did not consent to the footage or the tape of their performance being included in the movie or the album. Another possibility is that their record company, Fantasy Records, forbade inclusion of the performance for legal reasons. John Fogerty later expressed that he felt the late hour, plus the fact that a portion of the audience was asleep during CCR’s set, meant their music was overlooked, even though many at the time considered it one of the best performances of the festival.
The full Woodstock performance wasn’t released until 2019, when Fantasy Records released Live at Woodstock. That record has gotten positive reviews, so you might want to check it out.
Speaking of live performances, I should mention here that CCR did a live recording of the song themselves, which was released in 1980 under the not terribly exciting title “Creedence Clearwater Revival: The Concert.” The quality of the live recording isn’t as good as the studio, of course, but it still captures the spirit of the band and the excitement they could generate onstage.
There have been dozens of covers of “Green River,” but one in particular stands out to me. It was done in 2019 by Billy Gibbons (the vocalist for ZZ Top) and La Marisoul, the stage name for the lead singer of La Santa Cecilia, a Los Angeles based band that does both American and Latin styles of music. When you listen to it, you’ll notice that the lyrics are a bit different, and not just because they’re sung in Spanish…(short selection from that version of Green River)
You can find that recording on an all-Spanish record of CCR covers called Quiero Creedence, which came out in 2016.
All told, Credence played the song “Green River” 41 times in concert, according to our friends at setlist dot fm. The first was on August 8, 1968, at the University Arena in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and the last was on May 22, 1972 at the Denver Coliseum in Denver, Colorado. That last date, by the way, was the very last CCR concert ever. By that time, Tom Fogerty had left the band, and the remaining members, Cook and Clifford, were tired of John Fogerty being the songwriter AND the lead vocalist AND the record producer for CCR. The band officially split in October 1972 and reunited only twice, to play at Tom Fogerty’s wedding in October 1980 and for a high school reunion in January 1981. Tom Fogerty passed away in 1990 from the AIDS virus, which he contracted from a blood transfusion following back surgery.
[3 sec bumper]
Now, you remember the trivia question I asked you at the start of the show? This musician was a graduate of Villanova University, and worked as a telephone lineman and truck driver before making it big in the music industry. Who was he? And the answer is, Jim Croce. Croce’s first hit was the single “You Don’t Mess Around With Jim,” released on ABC records. Jim ended up having five studio albums and seven singles in the charts between 1970 and his tragic death in a plane crash in 1973. Some of his more popular hits were “Operator (That’s Not The Way It Feels),” “Bad, Bad Leroy Brown,” “I Got A Name,” “One Less Set Of Footsteps” and “Time In A Bottle.”
And that, Cousin, is a full lid on yet another edition of How Good It Is. We’re on the socials as How Good It Is Pod, and that’s the Gmail address as well. The theme music for the show is by Jenna Getty, the producer and originator is Claude Call, and I get the blame for everything else. The song we discussed today does not have any direct association with the town of Green River, Wyoming, for those that are curious. This is Mike Messner, reminding you, run for the roses, but don’t forget to stop and smell ‘em! Talk again soon.