Bayou Country

Editors’ Notes With their second album, this San Franciscan quartet permanently moved their musical home to the swamp-rock of the American south. Songs infused with an unusual Americana mythology established songwriter John Fogerty as a writer of great consequence and “Born on the Bayou” and especially “Proud Mary” turned CCR into a hit-making machine, beginning a streak of singles that would keep the band among the era’s most visible. The band’s blues roots are still firmly entrenched. Fogerty’s take on Little Richard’s “Good Golly Miss Molly” reveals his deep debt to Richard’s influence. “Penthouse Pauper” is brutal blues. The near seven-minute harmonica and guitar workout of “Keep On Chooglin’” balances both Fogerty’s pop sense and the band’s need to be heard as serious contenders during the late 1960s, an era that required a certain amount of “jamming” to prove legitimacy. The 40th Anniversary edition includes four bonus cuts: live versions of “Born on the Bayou” and a nicely charged “Proud Mary,” a nearly nine-minute blues jam called “Crazy Otto,” and an alternate take of “Bootleg.”