Creedence Clearwater Revival vs the Grateful Dead vs the Band

wk, there are at least three songs left on your list that were hits - Hey Tonight, Sweet Hitch-Hiker and Someday Never Comes among them, plus several tracks that weren't released as singles but received heavy airplay - Ramble Tamble, for instance. And even some of what's left stands out - Walking On The Water (memorably covered by Richard Hell & the Voidoids) and the perennial favorite (Wish I Could) Hideaway. And even though the much-derided, end-of-the-road Mardi Gras features only three songs written / sung by John Fogerty, they're as good as anything he did before or since.

An amazing 51% of the 47 songs that John Fogerty wrote (or in one case, co-wrote) and sang for Creedence Clearwater Revival were either Top 40 hits somewhere in the world (20 of them!) or highly played FM radio hits (4 of them, which is probably an undercount on my part). In some cases, planned singles *weren't* released since the previous single was still riding high in the charts, theoretically robbing Fogerty of even more hits. And this doesn't include several more hits I'm not counting because they were covers! Something like 75% - 80% of these 47 songs are still well-remembered / played / covered today, which is pretty unusual since most big artists from that time period have a high proportion of "forgotten" hits.

Who matches this record? I don't think even the Beatles do (and their were *two* primary songwriters there, plus a few from George.) Maybe Dylan or the Velvet Underground, if one stretches the definition of hit to include songs frequently covered today. Fogerty's stuff still sounds great, fresh and exciting. Pretty freaking incredible, if you ask me. The sad thing is that among songwriters of his league almost no one was as tremendously robbed by their label as him.

Mo, these . . .

Long As I Can See The Light (double a-side single with Lookin' Out My Back Door - #2)
Hey Tonight (double a-side single with Have You Ever Seen The Rain? - #8)
Someday Never Comes (#25)
Sweet Hitch-Hiker (#6)

. . . were all hits. Those are the US chart positions. All of them except "Someday Never Comes" still get radio play here on Austin's oldies station.

Mind-boggling, the greatness of even the "filler," isn't it?

q for indie nerds, be honest: how many of you knew "walking on the water" from the richard hell & the voidoids cover?

for years i only knew "run through the jungle" as sung by lydia lunch

HAHA listening to that Lydia cover as I type!

occurs to me that the dead were the ICP of their era

Listening through shakey's list now and I think... this band is not for me. I just hear a huge gap in quality between their undeniable classics and the rest of the album tracks. He wrote these songs that have become massive standards, which the Grateful Dead obviously never did, and the Band has one or maybe two. But there's not a single album that I can sit all the way through. I'm not sure what it is.

As a pop songwriter, Fogerty is definitely up there with Lennon/McCartney, Dylan, Goffin/King, Smokey Robinson, Holland/Dozier/Holland, Bacharach/David etc. But as a rock band putting out albums at the peak of the album as a form, they don't really cut it for me.

Mo, these . . . were all hits.

Yeah I know and I debated quibbling, but they were just in the original list posted and I was just c+ping

yeah, sorry. I know my list probably wasn't accurate. I just threw it together quickly based on the songs I've already heard a million times to try to see what I was missing. Hey Tonight is the only other one I recognize though.

As a pop songwriter, Fogerty is definitely up there with Lennon/McCartney, Dylan, Goffin/King, Smokey Robinson, Holland/Dozier/Holland, Bacharach/David etc. But as a rock band putting out albums at the peak of the album as a form, they don't really cut it for me.

Yeah, it's interesting that - aside maybe from Cosmo's Factory - no one really ever talks about CCR albums. And to be honest, a weak point for me is their tendency to stretch it out on a song or two past the 5- or 6-minute mark. But considering that they released tons of material in a short time, and didn't sink to the level of doing "novelty" tunes, and Fogerty wrote 80% of their material by himself, I can sort of forgive him. I think in Springsteen's speech inducting them into the RRHOF, he talked about how Fogerty just got in there, said what he had to say, and split. The sort of economy in CCR's singles doesn't make for compelling album listening, especially when "deep" album cuts were often 7 minutes long - it makes the albums feel disjointed somehow, despite the fact that the songs all have a similar basic feel. I don't think the gap in quality is as big as you do - plenty of non-hits could have been hits - but yeah, they weren't really an album band.

The opposite is true of the Band, who never had a big hit as such, but whose first couple of albums are pretty perfect. I always got the feeling that later albums by them were searching for a hit, which lowered their power.

wk, I'd be curious how, if you listened to "Hey Tonight," you would compare it to their hits. To me, it's as a piece with them (and it was a hit), but clearly it's not one of the commonly played ones today. I ask because I'd love to get a sense of whether it's potentially familiarity with their hits that makes the other stuff seem lesser. Not just to you, but to other people. Give it a spin and let us know.

xposts
Also I didn't mean to make it sound like I care about "the album as a statement" or anything like that. I just care about hearing good songs I've never heard before and the more of them the better. When I started getting into the Dead, I just started buying their records from the beginning and the only songs I knew already were Casey Jones, Truckin, and Cream Puff War. And I basically like all of the material on those first 5 studio albums minus maybe a couple I skip on the first one.

I think the 16 tracks on WD/AB besides casey and truckin absolutely slay shakey's ccr list.

Hey Tonight is great. Someday Never Comes and Sweet Hitchhiker are pretty lackluster. Basically I think the charts are OTM re: CCR.

actually I take that back re: the charts now that I'm looking at the actual chart positions of their singles.

someday never comes always makes me sad

^^^ me too. Love this song so much.

the sequel to Chronicles is as essential as the first album imo

Definitely Creedence.

yeah Someday Never Comes is the most emotionally affecting song in their catalog - other songs are fun or angry or creepy but heartstring-tugging wasn't a thing Fogerty went for a lot (never wrote a love song etc) and he really nails it

man is "Tombstone Shadow" good or what

"Long As I Can See The Light" tugs my strings like "Someday..." too, but not to the same degree.

for years i only knew "run through the jungle" as sung by lydia lunch

^^^

I think I might even have heard the Gun Club cover it as well before I heard the CCR version!

yeah, Long As I Can See the Light, Who'll Stop the Rain, Have You Ever Seen the Rain?, and Lodi are all downers (in a great way though)

the problems with Sweet Hitch-hiker and Someday Never Comes = no killer hook on the intro, no great harmony vox on the chorus, no catchy lyrical hook on the level of "do do do lookin out my back door" or "rollin rollin rollin on the river".

Does anybody else feel like "Proud Mary" is the weakest of CCR's big hits? I've never liked that song - it's always bugged the hell out of me, in fact.

My least favorite of the hits is "Travelin' Band."

It's hard for me to remember what "Proud Mary" felt like to me before overexposure. It's not among my favorites, then or now. I actually still have a pretty vivid memory of hearing "Sweet Hitchhiker" for the first time on top 40 radio, heat of the summer, 1971. Love "Travelin' Band" although it seems like a pretty obvious Little Richard borrowing.

Proud Mary is their most classic, so it's the most overplayed, and therefore the most annoying.

I still remember this horribly annoying commercial "Penske, Penske, Penske Toyota" http://www.bobray.com/Piercey_Toyota.html (link to audio at the bottom of the page)

I agree that Travellin Band is one of the weakest. Feels like it just benefitted from the momentum of the other singles.

It's weird that they had so many top 10 hits but never made it to #1. It would be interesting to see a list of all of their #2 hits and what #1s they were up against.

The best version of "Proud Mary" is the one by Garrett Morris

Five consecutive #2 singles, I never realized that. Proud Mary was up against "Everyday People" by Sly and "Dizzy" by Tommy Roe.

yeah, here they all are

Proud Mary: "Everyday People" - S&tFS, "Dizzy" - Tommy Roe
Bad Moon Rising - Love Theme From Romeo and Juliet - Henry Mancini
Green River - Sugar Sugar
Lookin Out/Long as I can see - Ain't No Mountain High Enough
Travellin Band / Who'll Stop - Bridge Over Troubled Water

apparently at the time billboard counted those "double a side" singles as one

I have no recollection of Henry Mancini ever being played on my Top 40 station!

apparently at the time billboard counted those "double a side" singles as one

Only when both sides were played and when each received a certain percentage of the combined airplay. Each side had to have something like a minimum of at least one-third of combined plays. So I'm told.

yeah Someday Never Comes is the most emotionally affecting song in their catalog - other songs are fun or angry or creepy but heartstring-tugging wasn't a thing Fogerty went for a lot (never wrote a love song etc) and he really nails it

Totally. It's a heartbreaking song, and my favorite of everything Fogerty ever did. I think it's underplayed today because it's a little too affecting for casual, oldies-style listening. I don't really get the idea that it doesn't have a vocal hook, and harmonies on the chorus would only have ruined the presentation of the song as one man's private existential angst. Pretty stellar choice as the last real CCR single before they called it quits, too.

I don't really get the idea that it doesn't have a vocal hook

Lyrical hook, not vocal hook. "Someday Never Comes" is a pretty weak line compared to their biggest hits. It doesn't have the sing along quality of "down on the corner", "rollin rollin rollin on the river", or "doo doo doo lookin out my back door", and it doesn't have the visual quality of "bad moon rising" or "have you ever seen the rain". And even though there's some assonance going on with "Someday" and "Comes" it doesn't quite have the poetic ring of lines like "run through the jungle", "susie q baby I love you" or "come on the risin wind, we're goin up around the bend".

But apart from all of that, I just don't think it's that great of a melody either. And it doesn't have any killer riffs like Up Around the Bend.

agree that it lacks a strong lyrical hook. doesn't have much pop bite, musically. it's a moving song, though. that's the hook.

I like the song but yes it's a facile trope.

facile trope wouldn't be a bad lyric actually. I can hear fogerty singing that and rhyming it with rope.

fogerty didn't write suzy q tho right?

Odd timing, but, even though I would have known most of the earlier hits, "Someday Never Comes" was the first CCR song I experienced on the radio in the here and now. On that basis, it still holds great nostalgic appeal for me (listening to it as I type, and it sounds really good), but if I step back, it doesn't rate with the '68-'70 stuff, and I like "Hey Tonight" and "Sweet Hitchhiker" better too.

Suzie Q is a Dale Hawkins song

"Someday Never Comes" is simply a song about my parents undergoing a divorce when I was a child and me not knowing many things. When my dad left me, he told me to be a man and someday I would understand everything. Now, I'm here basically repeating the same thing really. I had a son in 1966 and I went away when he was five years old or so and again told him "someday" he would understand everything. Really, all kids ask questions like "Daddy, when are we going fishing?" and parents always answer with "someday", but in reality someday never comes and kids never learn what they're supposed to learn.
-John Fogerty, 1973

Nice quote. Someone was paying attention:

"My son turned ten just the other day
He said, 'Thanks for the ball, Dad, come on let's play
Can you teach me to throw,' I said 'Not today
I got a lot to do,' he said, 'That's okay'"
--Harry Chapin, 1974

fogerty didn't write suzy q tho right?

I wasn't trying to make any point about Fogerty as a songwriter, just why to me a song like Someday Never Comes is clearly not as good as their other, bigger hits. Which was all just an attempt at figuring out crustaceanrebel's question of "whether it's potentially familiarity with their hits that makes the other stuff seem lesser."

wiki says that "cat's in the cradle" was based on a poem written by chapin's wife, sandy. their source for that says she wrote the poem a year or so before HC began working with it, and that she based it on an unidentified country song:

"It was about a man and a woman sitting at their kitchen table and looking out to the backyard. They had a swing set and a sandbox and bicycle in the corner," she said. "They were talking about how it all went by so fast and how they could have spent more time, and now the kids are gone. That song put me in the mood for writing a lyric."

The Dead does have a heck of a deep catalog of original songs.

Their 'greatest hits'.

Truckin'
Touch of Grey
Sugar Magnolia
Casey Jones
Uncle John's Band
Friend of the Devil
Franklin's Tower
Estimated Prophet
Eyes of the World
Box of Rain
U.S. Blues
The Golden Road (To Unlimited Devotion)
One More Saturday Night
Fire on the Mountain
The Music Never Stopped
Hell in a Bucket
Ripple

Ok, for original songs of note…not including covers for which they were known.

Deal
Loser
Wharf Rat
Sugaree
Brown Eyed Women
Dire Wolf
New Speedway Boogie
Brokedown Palace
Black Peter
Bertha
Cumberland Blues
China Cat Sunflower
Ship of Fools
Jack Straw
Ramble On Rose
He's Gone
Mississippi Half-Step Uptown Toodeloo
Alabama Getaway

These tunes are original ones that they would use to often go outward on with improvisation.

Dark Star
Playing in the Band
The Other One
Bird Song
Help On the Way/Slipknot
Feel Like a Stranger

As for the lack of 'hits', I think part of it was they never really played the game and then oddly left so many of their classic tunes to be done on solo records by Weir and Garcia, some with the band backing on some in stripped down company. Part of this as they were leaving Warner's in the early 70s to start their own label.

They got down to deeper songwriting a bit later and I would imagine their rep probably kept them from ever getting on much AM radio where CCR flourished. Even in the studio most of these tunes are more like 4 minutes plus too and I'd say the compact genius berevity of some of the Creedence tunes definitely helped them getting on the radio.

I'd say more than a few of the Deads songs have had a good life afterwards being played by other artists.

Yeah, I don't think the Dead ever wrote any songs that were top 10 material (apart from Touch of Grey obv). Casey Jones was the closest but I'm guessing the cocaine reference held it back. LIke for that reason it's not something my mom would listen to.

album tracks on Willy as strong as the singles imo: Effigy, Don't Look Now are of a piece with Fortunate Son

New (Old) Warehouse Decree: EVERY FRIDAY is CREEDENCE FRIDAY

hate that Chapin song so much