Take a trip on the flying spoon? 
At the risk of incurring some wrath, I’ve always been suspicious of this band. Their whole oevure sounds forced, phony, and insincere as in “let’s all make some good ol’ down home cooking rock and roll!”
I believe there was some question as to whether all the members of the band were raised in a Louisiana swamp, but they rocked when I was a pup.
I’m not sure why you would say that. They had a very sound basis as the Blue Velvets and later as The Golliwogs. If it is true, no session musicians worked on CCR recordings.
The group joked that it took them 10 years of hard work to be an overnight success,
Allmusic.com also lists “Long As I Can See the Light” and “Who’ll Stop the Rain” as #2s.
It also lists “Run Through The Jungle” as #4, for a total of 10 top 5s…where do those rank in your Billboard book?
Thank you very much for correcting me. I’m glad to know that John Fogerty is getting the respect (and royalties) that he has earned through his excellent work…TRM
I always liked CCR…but really came to appreciate them after I saw John Fogerty in concert years ago. It wasn’t a concert I really would have gone to, but I had free tickets, so I went. I’m glad I did. I honestly never realized how many great songs CCR had, and ended up becoming a much bigger fan. I still rate that as one of the best concerts I’ve been to. Nothing high-tech…no big light show or big bursts of flames or anything…just great music.
Oh, and *Born on the Bayou *is the greatest CCR tune ever!
This is complicated because, like the Beatles, Creedence had a lot of two-sided hits. Many of the B-sides charted separately and some were even bigger hits than the A-sides (“Fortunate Son” only made #14–which answers your second question–while the B-side, “Down on the Corner,” made #3*). “Long as I Can See the Light” and “Who’ll Stop the Rain” were flip sides of #2 charting singles (“Lookin’ Out My Back Door” and “Travelin’ Band,” respectively) that did not chart separately–apparently they were treated as double A-sides.
*Wikipedia claims that “Down on the Corner” was the A-side; but “Fortunate Son” is listed first on the picture sleeve and has the lower matrix number.
Just popping in to say that, based on the rollover text, which was about liking subgenres of rock, I expected this thread to be about Contemporary Christian Rock, and opened it to see what bands in that genre had so impressed the OP. I’m a fan of Creedence, but never heard them referred to as CCR.
Absolutely, followed by “Lodi” and “Bad Moon Rising”. Oh, they had so many great songs…
Billboard ranked songs by radio play as well as sales, so it often charted b-sides separately from a-sides. For example, “Commotion,” the b-side to “Green River,” charted at 30 and “Fortunate Son,” the b-side to “Down on the Corner,” charted at 14.
But the three you mention don’t have separate numbers, even though they are specifically listed. That’s not true for most songs. There’s no explanation in the book for the difference, so I’d go along with the double a-side notion.
And CCR has been a common abbreviation for the band for as long as I can remember.
I think Creedence Clearwater Revival permanently win the prize for doing the most with three or four chords. Many of their songs are disarmingly simple. “Born on the Bayou” is a great example. I-IV-V all the way, but it just kind of hypnotises you.
My older brother had every Beatles album he could get. And his other favorite, and mine too, was CCR. Even what would be filler songs on another band’s album were very listenable on the Creedence Clearwater records. A few duds, but most of what you don’t hear is still very good. ‘It’s Just a Thought’, ‘Molina,’ Long as I Can See the Light… great stuff.
They were at Woodstock. And they are the original ‘cross-over’ band between Blues, Rock 'n Roll, and what used to be Country-Western (but is now the new ‘Pop music’).
Wait, is it really I-IV-V? Isn’t it in Emajor, with Dmaj and Amaj? So the Mixolydian mode, rather than major key, I think, but I don’t know how to notate the chords. Theory help here?
The turnaround would be flat VII-IV-I (VIIb-IV-I or bVII-IV-I).
You’re right, it’s as pulykamell describes rather than I-IV-V. Simple chords, still.
The flat VII can also be described as a “IV of IV” chord. The IV in the key of E is A and the IV of the A is the D. If you want to get real nerdy, some have described this as a “double plagal cadence” (a “plagal cadence” being IV-I). You’ll hear it quite often in blues, gospel, and rock music.
**puly **- you gave me a headache; do you feel better? 
(I wish I understand a fraction of that theory but that ship has long sailed…)
It’s actually not too hard to explain, I hope. “Cadence” is basically a classical theory word for turnaround. The most common type is the V-I, or perfect cadence. You see this one everywhere in Western music still. The other most common one is the IV-I. It is also called the “Amen” cadence, because–if you know church music–the “Amen” that ends it is almost always IV-I. “Double plagal” simply means you have two IV-I cadences in there: D to A, and A to E. You could have triple plagal: G to D to A to E. Or quadruple: C to G to D to A to E, etc.
Nevertheless, “double plagal” is not really a common term, in my experience. And this is analyzing contemporary popular music from a classical Western theory standpoint which, in my opinion, is sometimes like trying to fit a square peg into a round hole. But, in this case, I think describing it as two IV-I cadences chained together is a pretty accurate description of what’s going on harmonically.
Okay - got it. But I still think of “turnarounds” in terms of the licks that Chuck Berry would play at the end of his verses to get back to the “home base” part of the riff…:smack: