Looking Back at Credence Clearwater's Five "#2" hits!

[Borderstone]

It's common knowledge among music lovers and followers of the Billboard Pop charts,
that the John Fogerty led group
Credence Clearwater Revival reached #2 five times without ever going to #1.

Three times in 1969 and twice in 1970 it looked like a sure fire trip to the top,only to end in what had to be an incredibly frustrating result.

What's rather funny and maybe bizzare is "who" kept them out of #1 in 1969.

March 1969: Proud Mary #2 / #1 Dizzy-Tommy Roe

June 1969: Bad Moon Rising /#1 "Love ThemeFrom Romeo & Juliet"- Henry Mancini

Sept. 1969: Green River / #1 "Sugar,Sugar"-The Archies! :D LOL! (That "had" to be embarrasing!)

1970 was not as embarrasing:

Feb.'70: Travelin' Band /
#1 Bridge Over Troubled Water-S. & G.

Aug./Sept. '70: Lookin' Out My Back Door/
#1 "Ain't No Mountain High Enough"-Diana Ross

In the end though,I'm sure CCR didn't have that much of a care about the pop charts. The best groups just liked making good music and could care less about singles and how high they would go.

Out of the 20 songs that made the Hot 100 though,they had 17 top 40's (partly due to 2 sided hits.)

[Affair on Touhy Ave.]

I've never been all that interested in hit singles by an artist let alone if they ever had a no. 1 hit though in a way it's too bad some of these pop songs, including the bubble gum stuff beat CCR's chance to hit no. 1.


Of course some of the deep album tracks from the LP's these songs came off of were much better than the bands hit songs. such as Ramble Tamble off of the 1970 Cosmos Factory LP is a great track.

GR LP has Comontion which sort of sounds a lot like RT, makes me wonder if both songs could of been written about the same time and they held back RT for whatever reasons.

[ May 22, 2007, 15:55: Message edited by: Affair on Touhy Ave. ]

[joveski]

this was the first band i ever heard. i would have been 4 years old. my dad used to play them a lot around the house and i got hooked on the tunes. obviously never knew their names and things but i recognised them. still a big fan these days of anything fogerty. i saw fogerty live a couple of years ago and still sounds like he did back in the 60s/70s

[RM]

Fascinating stuff, Borderstone. I was shocked to see 'Proud Mary' beaten by 'Dizzy'. Scary. I guess the drugs of the time were a bit more potent than I recall.

[RM]

Originally posted by Borderstone:

In the end though,I'm sure CCR didn't have that much of a care about the pop charts. The best groups just liked making good music and could care less about singles and how high they would go.

That was probably true at the beginning, but considering John Fogerty WAS CCR, he found out the hard way that he had basically signed away the rights to his music to 'Fantasy' records. He was one VERY unhappy camper for many years. Take a look at the cover on his 'Eye of the Zombie' cd.

[Borderstone]

RMD,yes I remember his album "Eye Of The Zombie",pretty weird!

One of the really sad things of the 50's,60's & 70s were all those great artists who lost control and posession of their own material.

In Fogerty's case,Fantasy records added insult to imbedded injury by suing John for "stealing his own sound". This came about in 1985 when he released te "Centerfield" LP and it's successful hits,"The Old Man Down The Road" & "Rock and Roll Girls".

Fantasy,owning his old material,said "Old Man" was a remake of "Run Through The Jungle". It was a silly lawsuit of course but Fogerty won out.

(I wonder if they would have cared so much if his LP had flopped?)

I got into CCR through oldies stations in San Diego ('77-'80)and Phoenix '80 on up. Since then,I have bought all of their 60 & 70s Lps. Great stuff! They are of course,inthe R & R Hall Of Fame.

[Auburn Annie]

More info at wikipedia (usual warnings about accuracy apply): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Fogerty

[joveski]

> Take a look at the cover on his 'Eye of the Zombie' cd.


not to mention some of the songs on Centerfield!

[Don Quixote]

CCR has always been high up on my list; it was a shame that the legal and personal wranglings, mentioned above, got in the way. One of my best friends made the connection between GL and CCR; not only were they unique in their sounds and more concerned about the message than the money, but some of their best work had nothing to do with sappy love songs, or love songs at all. For that alone, we should be grateful to JF and GL.
DQ

[fezo]

The great thing is that John Fogerty finally got over the Fantasy Records thing.

I had seen him on the tour which turned out to be promoting Eye of the Zombie. It was not a pleasant experience and the album is such abysmal self indulgence that it is nearly unlistenable.

Well, forward to 1998 and releasing Blue Moon Swamp. Word had gotten around that he had overcome the anger and was doing Credence music again. I almost had to drag my wife there but ogh was it worth it! He's been fabulous again ever since. Anything you see of his is wrth a spin with that one exception.

As a nice tie it together Saul Zantz no longer owns Fantasy records and it was bought by a Fogertey fan. He's back on his original lable and living a happy life.

[Borderstone]

That's great news to hear all the nonsense is finally the past. Hopefuly I get to see his show,wish he could get together with the other original members.

I remember on 1985's "Centerfield" though his scathing lyrics aimed at Zantz ion the song "Zantz Kant Dance". :D

"Zantz knat dance but he'll take your money"! ..and in the video was a claymation like pigs wearing sunglasses and spending hoards of cash! LOL! Naturally...lawsuit!

Oh well,"clearwater" under the bridge. Hey..that'd be a great LP title!

[ELizabeth]

Don Quixote... What's wrong with love songs? Come on, GL has written several beautiful ones himself.

[Borderstone]

The world would be even less beautiful without love songs (well written one's that don't get overly sappy that is.)

Sappy:see.."Always"-Atlantic Starr. [img]tongue.gif[/img]

[fezo]

Well, I don't suspect you'll ever see Credence together. For one thing Tom Fogertey died years ago. John and the band had a lawsuit going because they were touring with a sound alike replacing John as "Credence Clearwater Revisited. John lost that one and they never reconciled. John and Tom were not speaking at the time of Tom's death. That part it very unfortunate.

That said, I think it's a very good thing that Credence will never get together again. Listen sometime very carefully to an old Credence record. Try to pay attention to everything except John and his guitar. Then listen to, say, Blue Moon Swamp. Truth is John is surrounding himself with better musicians and creating just a perfect sound. I like him this way.

[Winter's Claw]

Hey Borderstone,
It's actually spelled C-r-e-e-d-e-n-c-e, with two e's. I'm not sure why they spell it this way, because the word is spelled c-r-e-d-e-n-c-e. Maybe they misspelled their name intentionally, like the Beatles and Byrds did.

I thought "Bad Moon Rising" was a #1, but I looked it up and you're right, it only got to #2.

[Borderstone]

Wow, W.C.-I never noticed that spelling,
which is weird because I have all of their LPs! Thanks for noticing for me.

[fezo]

Doh! And I've been correcting the spelling from my spell check without realizing that!