Hidy, friends and neighbors. Good to be partnering up with Claude on another podcasting project! This episode is about a song whose title vaguely sounds like the result of a chemical spill, but which is actually a classic piece of rockabilly.

John Fogerty and his brother Tom were natives of Northern California, and their family vacations often were to a cabin in Yolo County, just west of Sacramento. That cabin was next to both a lake and a creek, and the Fogerty boys would play in and around that creek during vacations. And yes, you’ve guessed it, the water there did have a greenish tint because of algae and other natural phenomena. Coincidentally, Green River was John’s favorite flavor of soda pop as well (though I’m not sure I would drink anything with that name these days).

Fast forward a few years to the mid 1960s, and John and Tom, along with their buddies Stu Cook and Doug Clifford, are in a local band called the Golliwogs. They picked a new name in January 1968, shortly after they got their record contract, and were thereafter known as Creedence Clearwater Revival. They followed the natural route of local gigs, then national tours, and then record releases. The song titles are familiar: Susie Q, Bad Moon Rising, Born on the Bayou, Proud Mary (which Claude covered on an episode of How Good It Is a while back, and then the song that hearkened back to John’s salad days at that creek in Yolo County.

Give it a listen to see how Roy Orbison rubbed off on the boys from El Cerrito, and how the song fits into the overall CCR legacy.

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Ladies and Gentlemen, the queen of them all.

Pattie Boyd was the inspiration for a huge number of songs. Some of them went to the top of the charts, some of them weren’t released as singles, but nearly all of the songs about her are well-known, and not just because they’re about her; because they’re actually pretty darn good.

And the crazy part is that all of them came from two men: George Harrison and Eric Clapton. There’s a song in Clapton’s catalog that could have easily been about her if you try to read into the lyrics, but it’s more coincidence than anything else, since it wasn’t written by Clapton. But it’s also quite possible that the lyrical content is one of the things that gave it its appeal to Clapton. Who knows.

When I return to this topic (in two episodes), we’ll talk about the other contender for the big title.

If you’re a Patron of the show, you’ve already gotten this episode in your Patreon feed. Feel free to listen again here, if you’re so inclined. Newsletter should be back next week; I’m still readjusting my work flow. You can click here to become a Patron of the show.

Click here for a transcript of this episode.

Where have I been?

Life, Cousin. Life got in the way. A lot of things sidetracked me, and even though I was keeping the feed for this show active, I still had several moments of “Yeah! Gonna get back to it soon!” alongside an equal number of “why bother?” moments.

I’ve also been working on a different podcast project with Mike Messner, who you might remember from a couple of Gordon Lightfoot episodes we did here. I talk about it during the episode, but you can check it out here.

Mike convinced me that there was still more to say; in addition he wanted to help me say it. In addition, I wanted to move the show a little closer to its original educational roots. There’s more about that during the episode, too.

So, bigger picture: Mike is going to take on some of the hosting duties, and I’m going to be doing a mix of new shows and a re-work of old shows. We have roughly the next 20 or so episodes mapped out, and while Mike will be writing and producing his own stuff, I’ll be reviewing scripts and dealing with final production, plus I’ll be dealing with the show notes (the stuff you read here) for the time being.

Have a listen, get The Rest Of The StoryTM, and let’s re-light this candle!