Song 181: “Proud Mary” by Creedence Clearwater Revival

Some 181, Fog Mary, by Creadance Clearwater Revival.

“Before we begin, I need to explain a choice made later in the episode.”

As long as time listeners will know, I do not use slurs on this podcast, but Creadance Clearwater Revival present a problem for this policy. For several years, before choosing that name, they've recorded on for another name, the name of a type of children's doll, patterned after black face menstrualcy. Now that term is not really known in America, but in the UK it is both the name of that

type of doll, and a racial slurve against people of colour. The word is why the used among older generations without intention of a fence to refer to the dolls, but is generally censored or bowdlerised in mainstream media these days. Terms like "Golly doll" are used instead of the word in question. And to give an idea of how the word is viewed by younger people who are aware of its

connotations, when I mentioned this problem without mentioning the word, on a social media site, where my followers are mostly about my own age or slightly younger.

“Some of the replies are got included, looks at Creadance Wiki page.”

They call themselves the "What?" regrets looking at Wiki.

"Oh, I never knew that, I wonder what it was." Google's. "Jesus Christ!"

Just look this up, and "Oh, wow, oh, oh no!" One does over to Wikipedia, expecting the names we hardly outdated but ultimately innocuous. Skills through summary. "Oh, holy Moses, no!" Just look at Wikipedia and physically me coiled.

And so forth, this is a term that has vastly different failinuses, depending on the country of end and your age, some people find it offensive, others find it truly shocking. I obviously can't do an episode on Creadance without referring at all to the name that they recorded on the 5th week for official years in the band's development. But I also equally obviously can't repeat the user term that gets that kind of reaction.

“So what I'm going to do is a compromise that will likely please nobody, but it's the best”

I can do under the circumstances.

I will say that name in full once when the band first take on that name.

And from that point on, we'll only refer to them as the group or the band until they change their name. In the transcript, I will likewise print the name in full the one time I speak it, but when using it to label music clips, I'll start out the vowels. It's unfortunate that this is the kind of thing I have to do.

The episode also contains some brief discussion, though not in any depth, of mental health problems, and of death from age related illness. Now that that's over, let's talk about something more interesting. Plastics. I just want to say one more detail, just one more, yes sir, I am listening, just sorry you.

Plastics. The youth culture and counterculture have the late 60s and early 70s, had an odd relationship with the concept of plastic. These days plastic is ubiquitous for better or usually worse, where we'll told to cut down on our use of plastic, both for environmental and health reasons, but it's essentially

impossible to avoid. Almost everything we buy is made of plastic or comes in some kind of plastic container, and that's just how things are. But in the 1960s, plastic was still only becoming ubiquitous, mass manufacturing your plastic items only really started after World War II.

And most people who could afford them had, for example, stereos and TVs with wood-normal metallic casing rather than the plastic casing they're coming now. Milk was still sold in glass bottles, as was cola. Plastic was, to an extent, seen as a symbol of the future. A future of ubiquitous consumption and consumer goods.

But anything that's seen as the future is a symbol both of hope and fear. And plastic symbolised mass production and conformity. The rejection of the way things were that characterised the hippie movement, and, more broadly, the counterculture and alternative lifestyles that led to everything from the Jesus movement to the Black Panthers, was a rejection of mass production and conformity, and

of capitalism. This is a big part of, for example, the popularity of Tolkien's work, among the same young

people who, in other ways, aesthetically were a million miles away, from a conservative

Catholic Oxford Don in his 70s, who thought that saying mass in English rather than Latin

There was a general feeling that the post-war world, where the Western industrial democracies,

“especially America, were experiencing greater material wealth than ever before thanks to mass”

production, had nevertheless lost something that made people human, a connection to the earth or to the past. This is something that was expressed in different ways, whether the Beatles seeking Indian wisdom, with George Harrison explicitly timed none of an at one point that he preferred Hinduism to Buddhism because it was older, or just a fetishising of authenticity in music, from

about the point that music from big pink came out. The monkeys were considered bad, not because of any in-haven quality in their music, but because they were manufactured rather than authentic.

“They didn't come together organically, and they didn't appear to those who dismissed”

them to have any connections to an older tradition. And plastic became, to the youth culture of the '60s, a signifier of inauthenticity, of everything they were supposed to. Captain B-Fart for tested the plastic factory as oppressing workers and disperling the environment. The Gold Coast Singers mocked the sale of cheap, manufactured religious icons in plastic

Jesus. You can buy him phosphorus and glows in the dark he's thinking pleasant taking with you when you're traveling far. Tell your friends he has YouTube and on one, for only $1.98, no COD. Jefferson Air plane talked about television as a plastic fantastic lover.

The kinks attacked conformists in plastic man.

“The man is set to pull up off the street and his life is thinking so full and he's”

sweet.

But he never swears and you'll watch such a boy then and for no one knows he really is.

I'm Frank Zappa, always at least a cynical about the young people bang his records as he was about the people they were supposed to. Singers in plastic people. Here the sound of marching feet down sunset boulevard to crescent heights and there at Pandora's plastic people.

And while I wouldn't be as harsh on the hippies as Frank Zappa was, I wouldn't be as harsh towards anyone as Frank Zappa was towards his own audience frankly.

It is always worth thinking about the inherent contradictions in any viewpoint.

And for example, for all that the counterculture wanted authenticity, its existence did also depend on the very mass culture and consumerism that it declared. The authentic music they wanted came on LP's albums were for real music and singles were for commercial rubbish. But the LP itself wasn't as made out of vinyl, a type of plastic, and the format would

not exist without plastics.

It's always worth thinking about material reality, as opposed to just thinking about ideas

and art, because the two always go hand in hand. Just that's Jack Sheedy. Sheedy was a dixie-line trombonist, decades after the commercial peak of that style. He was one of the mouldy figs, the less successful American equivalents of the British

Finally to put out recordings of his own music for the small mouldy figs scene in San Francisco.

“Which at the time was one of the few places with any kind of dixie-line scene at all.”

Sheedy's initial releases didn't sell well, and his band is now a footnote to a footnote. Even on webpages about the San Francisco traditional jazz scene of the 40s and 50s, the only mention of his band is that it was the first to play Club Hangover, before betterno musicians like Muggsy Spania and Elfather hands played there. But he puts out a couple more singles by his own group, and also by a new trio. That trio made music that was very different from

anything she'd played, and for most of the jazz. Their leader Dave Vue Beck did not have the normal background for jazz musician, and instead it stood a brief through the shunberg. Though he hadn't enjoyed the experience, it got into

“a screaming match with shunberg over whether something sounding good was a good enough reason”

to do it. With Vue Beck claiming it was, while shunberg insisted on biggest theoretical justification. And for a longer time, with the avant-garde composer Darius Milho, Vue Beck had done some earlier work with an octet, but had slimmed down to recording with the trio, an acknowledgement of the economic realities of having a larger band. Sheedy agreed to record the Dave Vue Beck trio as a favour to his friend Jimmy Lyons, one of the most prominent jazz DJs on the west coast,

even though it wasn't his style of music. The session was almost a disaster. The Bay Area was already at the forefront of the tech world, because of its connections with

the military, and Ampex, the company that manufactured the first ever tape recorders in America,

“who had made them for big classbears. We talked about way back in the episode on how high”

the moon was based there, mostly so it could sell to the military. After the first couple of machines that made for crispy, most of their cells were for recording telemetry information from guided missiles, but because they were based in the Bay Area, the San Francisco studio in which Concord records recorded had access to one of the very earliest production tape recorders in the US, and it was decided to try to record the tracks on the new machine.

Unfortunately, after two hours the engineer gave up in defeat, having wasted most of the session time, because he didn't know how to work the machine. This switched to cutting directly to the disc instead. I managed to get the handful of tracks caught in the last half hour of the session. [Music] Unfortunately, that would be almost the last thing ever to be recorded for Concord records.

The little label only released six singles in total, with the two brewbex singles

cut in that half hour period, being the third and fourth, and she had his band being one, two,

five and six. The label folded, unable to pay its bills, and so max and sole-wise, the owners of the pressing plant, took possession of the masters. They knew nothing at all about music, and didn't even particularly like jazz. They were plastics manufacturers, not music people, and even the record pressing wasn't their main business. It was just a sideline to their more jemble plastic mold in work. But then you knew the brewbex records had been selling,

even if she had his hands, so they came to him with a proposition. He knew about music, they had the equipment to make records, how about they worked together at 50/50 split. They agreed to start a new label together named fantasy records. This was supposedly named after the famous pulp magazine, according to multiple sources I've read, but there's a problem in this as far as I'm aware there was no pulp magazine just titled fantasy at the time.

The was born in 1938, the run-only three issues, however, both aim at its fantasy magazine, and the magazine of fantasy and science fiction, started towards the end of 1949, and that was the air that fantasy records was apparently started. Though they didn't get round to releasing anything until 1950. Fantasy was clearly in the air anyway. Everything was going to be released on the new vinyl, rather than old fashion shellac,

experience meant that they could release the records in distinctive colours.

“Mono albums were fest in transparent red vinyl, and when stereo came in, those were in”

transparent blue, some of the singles were released on blue are pink vinyl too. This was truly unusual for the time period, unlike today, when about half the vinyl released is in a coloured version, and made fantasy releases very distinctive.

Brubek recorded a fantasy for several years, first with his trio, and then with a quartet,

adding his friend Paul Desmond, a sax player who had played in his earlier octet. *music*

“Brubek also acted as a dance cup for the label, bringing in other musicians”

from the west coast just seen. He suggested that fantasy sign Jerry Mulligan. *music* The label was sounding enough that they started a subsidiary, Galaxy, which was the name of a pulp magazine of the time, which released the first recording as a leader by Brubek's former percussionist Cal Chayda. *music*

Jan's was never the most commercially successful music, but fantasy managed to make real money

“from releasing it. Max Wise later explained their technique for making money out of a”

not especially lucrative genre, saying, "In those days with a group like Mulligan, we were going to a recording session, side-menged up $40 each. The leader's got double, and at three hours session, according to the union, we had to get 15 minutes of music. When Brubek or Chayda were Mulligan women in a session, in three hours, if we didn't get an hour

and a half of music, everyone thought something was wrong. For every additional 15 minutes of

music we used, we had to pay them another $40 and $80. So in order to break even on a jazz artist, if we sold 5,000 units, we were very, very happy. Today, enough for gelatin costs anywhere from $40,000 to $50,000 in studio time. Today these guys aren't rehearsed, they listen to it while doing it, so I mean the market was different. Those figures, incidentally, are the union scale that musicians would get for playing the session. The leader, whose name was

on the record, would also receive royalties, but you can see the logic. 90 minutes of music would make for three albums. Even if Wise was exaggerating somewhat, and I suspect he was, you can still see that if you got extremely good musicians in and could cut a couple of albums in one three hour session. You wouldn't have to sell all that many of any of the albums, in order to make a decent amount of money. This was a business that was based on consistent sales

of a large volume of product, not huge sales of a hit. Though, if they got a hit of course, they wouldn't turn it down. Unfortunately for fantasy though, they did miss out on the biggest judgeable time. Paul Desmond wrote that for the day, "Frubeck Quartet", but they recorded it for Columbia Records, not for fantasy. "Frubeck" had got sick of the labels attitudes towards the music.

Not the word rate. After the group moved over to Columbia, they released an average of an album every 12 to 15 weeks for the next decade, but the fact that they put out whatever they recorded,

Brubeck didn't even know the gig was being recorded. The labels secretly put microphones

“in the ventilation dots at the venue, connected to a mobile recording studio in a van park outside.”

But the real problem it caused him to leave the label was financial. Hit misunderstood his contract. He and the wife brothers had agreed that he would get 50% of everything, and he thought that meant 50% of everything the label made. But in fact, it was only 50% of the profit made on his own records. A far better royalty rate than one would normally expect, actually. But Brubeck was annoyed because he had been acting as a defective talent scout in an arm

and for the label. And he was entered doing that work and not getting paid for it.

Brubeck's move from fantasy to Columbia did defied fantasy of one truly massive hit. But they did end up with a few other jazz records you might have heard. [music]

“Vince Gawaldi, who was named Dr. Funk. It started out as the pianist in Calcheda's band,”

which we heard earlier. Gawaldi had a distinctive piano sound and very physical style of playing which came from having small hands. He couldn't do the octave stretches that other pianists would do, and would have to hop his hand quickly across the keyboard to each note that all the musicians could reach without moving. Gawaldi only remained in Chade's band for a short time, cutting just one album with them. But without Gleason, who was at the time the jazz critic for the

San Francisco Chronicle, and who wrote the line and notes for that album, became the biggest boost to a Gawaldi's own new trio when they formed. Seoul's Ants, Fantasy's new marketing major, San Gawaldi's trio, initially for just one album. [Music]

“While the Vice Brothers were not from the music world, Seoul's Ants was very much from that world.”

He'd started his career working for Norman Grans, helping with the jazz at the Philharmonic Showers, and doing tour management for due acclaims and among others. He was so much a part of the jazz world that a few years later, in 1960, he would marry Charles Mingus's ex-wife Celia. For a wedding present, Mingus gave the two his record label, debut records, which would

become one of the first of many labels to be absorbed by fantasy over the years.

By the time Gawaldi's album was actually released, Gawaldi was back in Cal Chade's group, having in between also been briefly the pianist for Woody Herman's band. Just musicians don't tend to remain in one band very long. Gawaldi got dropped by fantasy after releasing his second album, because his sales report even by jazz standards at the time.

But he was constantly in demand for sessions with other musicians, playing under bewildering variety of records in the late '50s, and touring constantly. Even going to the UK as part of one of the exchanges organized by Chris Barber and the National Jazz Federation, coming over here with Woody Herman and a small band, while Chris Barber and his band sold the US. He also played with Jimmy with his balloon, Ben Webster and many others.

Gawaldi's eventual return to fantasy records was more or less out of desperation. Gawaldi was very impressed with the film Black Ophias, and it's unusual score in the new bus and over-style, which had not previously been heard in the US, and he wanted to do an album of jazz variations on the music. He tried various major labels, but they didn't bite, and eventually he went back to fantasy, but they were able to drop them previously.

"I have perfect pitch and natural rhythm, and just by one listening, maybe four or five bars, usually five bars, I can spot whether a record's going to make it or not, and I listened to this

we, that this was going to make it." Fantasy, unlike the larger labels, were willing to take a chance

“on the idea of a jazz album inspired by a Black Ophias, but there was a problem. The Black Ophias”

material would only fill out one side of an album. Gawaldi suggested that for the other side, they could go to an old classic everyone could play in their sleep, since I felt for you. The recent pop hit, Moon River, and two of Gawaldi's own songs, Almaville, and cast your face of the wind. That last track was released as a B-side, but DJs flipped the record, and soon cast your

face the wind was a top 30 hit on the pop charts. Quite extraordinary for a jazz instrumental. This from a label that a few months earlier had taken out a full page adding billboard to

“both 13 and a half years without a hit. And the success of cast your face the wind had two”

lasting effects on American popular culture, whose ripples are still felt today, both of them

oddly to do with documentaries. First, they'd the film make a Lee Mendelssohn was looking for someone

to score a documentary he was playing to make on the comic strip peanuts, to be titled a boy named Charlie Brown. He first asked Dave Bruebeck, and then Calcheda, and both turned him down. But then he was driving across the Golden Gate Bridge and heard cast your face to the wind on the radio. He knew Gawaldi was the man for the job. And Gawaldi released a soundtrack album, titled Jazz Impressions of a Boy Name Charlie Brown. With a cover and gate fold illustrated by Charles

Schult. [Music]

“The documentary never actually sold to TV. But in the process of trying to sell it, Mendelssohn”

more well as accidentally got commissioned to produce an animated peanuts Christmas special. And of course Gawaldi was chosen to score that too. And Gawaldi's music for a Charlie Brown Christmas has been a major part of American Christmas for the ensuing 60 years. But it's the other effect we're talking about today, because cast your face at the wind being an actual char tit, was so surprising and unusual at Ralph Gleason, who as well as being a music

journalist also presented a jazz show on local TV. To decided to do a three-part documentary tackled and at the rear of a hit, looking at how a hit record was made. It's that documentary we heard earlier, with Max Rice talking about how Gawaldi came to the label with the black obvious idea. And that documentary, while it didn't have much of a viewership at the time, indirectly led to six multi-platforming albums, three films that won the Oscar for best picture,

innumerable lawsuits, and a feud that lasted more than 50 years. Because among the small audience, for anatomy of a hit, with the form members of a non-successful band, Tommy Fogetti and the Blue Velvet. One of the most profound experiences of John Fogetti's life. One that shaped literally everything

happened when it was four years old. He talks in his autobiography about what was nearly the first

object I would have realized was my possession, mine alone. It was in fact his second possession. The first, according to the book, was a dollar of a black baby. And he says of that, I've often wondered if that somehow predisposed me to love black music, black culture. But the second possession was something he consciously remembers being given by his mother, a record, one aimed at children of his age. He says of that record, long gone now.

but I sure do remember the songs.

“The weather it was dry, the sun so hot, I froze to death. So Zana, don't you cry.”

Oh, so Zana, don't you cry for me. I've come from now, I've been with my bangle on my knee. The two songs on that record, which I suspect was the algeleton one we just heard, as Jolson released a single of these two tracks in 1950, and was one of the most popular entertainers in the world. Where Ossu Zana and Campdown Maces, and that record simultaneously introduced him to three things. It helped teach him the concept of ownership.

It was his first exposure to the music of Stephen Foster,

who he now sacrifices his most formative influences as a songwriter.

“And most importantly of all, it taught him that the was such a thing as a songwriter.”

His mother explained to him that the two songs on the record were written by a man named Stephen Foster, the first time he ever came across the idea that songs were written by specific people. John was the third of five fugitive brothers, and his older two brothers were both lovers of our

MV music. So he absorbed the music they listened to, mostly on KWBR for Moteland,

the fugitive grew up in El Servito, a suburb in the Bay Area. They'd listened to G by the Quos and similar popular music, but KWBR would also play people like Hal and Wolf and Bo didly, and gospel music by the swan silver tones and the staple singers, and young John absorbed all of it. He also absorbed the music as parents would play. He talks specifically about them loofing the mills for the record when you were sweet 16 and singing

along with it. A poignant memory later after they divorced. From the age of eight he wanted to be a rock emulsinger, and specifically he wanted to be a black rock emulsinger. He made up in his head a do-op group called Johnny Corvette in the Corvette, and he says in his autobiography, "Every one in my mind banned had matching jackets like the turbines of the five settings of the penguins. I was Johnny and we were black. I meant no

disrespect, I was just a kid fantasizing about what he loved. Swim my mind, the grown-up version of me and my group was black. He became even more interested in music as a source of comfort when his parents divorced. In his autobiography he references the beach both song in my room to describe how he felt at this point, and he grew to love the white rock musicians of the time too, like Elvis and Bill Haley. But his big inspiration at the time became Karl Perkins,

because of Perkins' voice, and because he realized that Perkins wrote the songs and played league guitar as well as just singing. The Perkins was a league guitarist, was a big thing for Fogadier at that point,

“because to him the guitar was at least as important as the vocals.”

He started listening to records like Gene Vincent's Bee Bapalula for Cliff Gallup's playing, to Dale Hawkins' Susie Cue for James Burton, and a little later to Dwayne Eddie and Freddie King. Perhaps surprisingly as well, he also loved Charlie Christian's playing on records like playing home. He says it as autobiography. I'd say there's a whole lot of Charlie Christian in how I play, just a feel of that swing,

the way he rifts off the melody, parts of keep on chugling and reference in Charlie.

dread or down by the river side, and I'm trying to keep things just real simple,

“I'm probably in some way referencing Charlie Christian.”

The Fogadier for this mother seems to have had a big influence on John's tastes. She was the one who got him to listen to Benny Goodman, and she was also a big fan of Fogadier music, and would every year take her younger sons, the older brothers wouldn't go. To the annual Berkeley Fogadier festival, where they'd get to see performers like Pete Seeger, who John later called the greatest entertainer I have ever seen, and Mamblin Jack Elliott,

Jesse Fuller in Alan Lomax. He also learned through these festivals about hugely led better,

whose music he loved because it sounded like the blues music he was hearing on the radio.

And John was also getting into country music more.

“When he booked great balls of fire, the base side was generally Lewis's version of Hank Williams's”

"You Win Again." "Cherry Berlin." John started to listen to as much Hank Williams as he could, and branched out from there to other country music. He started trying to teach himself both the guitar and the piano. He got guitar lessons from Barry Olivier, the DJM for motor who organized the Berkeley Fogadier festival,

but who was also a teacher of Fogadier. The viola county only had a handful of lessons, and mostly taught himself by listening to records. Often slowing 45s and 78s down to 33 so he could figure out parts. He also had a musical accomplice in his older brother Tom. Tom was four years older, a young adult while John was in his early teens, but he shared a lot of John's musical tastes, and they were both harmonized to heavily brothers records like Wembleybe

Loved, and sometimes Tom would sit at the family piano and play Bobby Freeman's Do You One Adance, and sing in an imitation of Freeman's voice while John played the Bungos. At this time John saw what's idolized his older brother, because Tom was a great singer who could sound just like Bobby Freeman, and he was the lead singer in a vocal group called Spider Web and the Insect, who had had an actual record contract with Bob Kean at Delphi Records,

the same man who had signed Sam Cook and Richie Valens. The record ended up not coming out, and the tapes were apparently disappeared, but that was hardly the point. Tom was the closest thing to being a rock and mole star in John's orbit. He even knew Bobby Freeman's piano player. One day John walked into the music room at his high school and started fooling around on the piano playing a few of his favorite songs. Things like Do You One Adance, Buildog Its Hunky Tunk,

and Fat Storm and Own Little Richard Records. After a short while and not the boy came in, attracted by the music. They got talking about all the records they loved, like Lingway's

“rumble, and Doug Clifford invited Fuggety to join his band. Or at least, that's how it was”

from Doug's point of view. Fuggety reports thinking to himself, "Am I joining his band? No, he's joining my band, and you know actually deciding he was the leader." Though at the start there was not much of a band. Doug played drums but didn't yet have a full drum kit, just a snare drum he balanced on a flower part and played with Paul Q's he tended to drumsticks in the school's wood shop. He played his drum along to a friend of his, Stu Cook, who was from a richer family.

So rich that they could actually afford to get the piano tuned regularly, and who played piano and trumpet, though neither very well. The sum dispute is to the order in which things happened.

Whether Doug and John played together in fact as Stu, or whether the first time John played with Doug,

it was as part of his already existing playing with Stu. And, like a lot of things to do with this band, which first of the story is told, has a certain amount of political significance to their later infighting. But what's definitely the case is that Doug Clifford and Stu Cook were already friends and playing together, and that Clifford was the one who met John Fuggety and suggested they jump together. As the group, which John Press and the Blue Velvet, already had a keyboard player in

get a tune out of pretty much any instrument. Once Clifford had saved up enough for mind-lawns

“and symbol of our jobs to buy his own full kit, the Blue Velvet started performing at local dances.”

Performing sets largely made up of the instrumental hits of the time, like Red River for Rock, Vumble, and songs by John's latest guitar guard, Dwayne Eddy. John loved a lot about Dwayne Eddy's music, but one thing he was particularly impressed

by was that Eddy's titles were always evocative. With a title-like rebel Bowser,

you didn't really need lyrics, you knew what the song was about anyway. The Blue Velvet started getting quite popular around El Serito, where they were the only real rock band. El Serito was only 20 miles from San Francisco, but it was a world away culturally, and even San Francisco in the late '50s wasn't the same as San Francisco in the late '60s.

“At the time, instrumental rock music was still very popular. The kind of music that”

would be able to later turn into Twangy-Surfing's Dementals. And while they'd do the occasional vocal, they were not merely set up for it. None of them were great singers, and they didn't have a microphone, and ordered most of the places they played. This was the kind of set-up where they'd turn up with John's guitar and amp and Doug's drum kit, and used whatever piano was at the church hall or wherever the dance was, with nobody involved even knowing what a PA was at all.

That changed when Spider-Web and the insects split up. Tom Fuggety was 18, and the rest of the insects were a year or two older. He was very serious about wanting to make a success of their music, and offered to pay for a recording session for the group so they could release their own

“single insulated gigs, the rest of the band didn't want to know. If they weren't going to get”

paid for the session itself, why would they want to turn up? Tom wanted to build a future, he didn't want to be stuck in a dead end job like most of the people around him. He wanted to be a star. He had the looks, and he had the talent, but time was running out. He was 18, and about to graduate from high school, and he'd have to get a proper job then. He needed musicians who were taking things as serious as he was. And oddly, his little brother's group seemed to be doing just that.

John Fuggety was the kind of obsessive, driven personality we see a lot in stories like this. The one who drives his bandmates to doing better by insisting they'd play it right,

and right is always his way. And who can play everyone's instruments better than they can play

themselves, and will show them exactly what he means. Almost every successful band has one member like this, and he, and it's almost always a he. It's very rarely the most loved member of the group by the other members, but it's the kind of drive that has often necessary for success, if not always for an enjoyable experience playing together. Tom started joining the blue velvet on stage, sitting in for a couple of songs of their shows, and the band were immediate

they impressed by how much better they went down with a good-looking singer who knew how to work crowd. The band members would good musicians, but they were very far from being charismatic. John actually hated looking at the audience and would turn away from them whenever he called. Tom got the blue velvet to go into a recording studio with him to record a demo of two songs in written. He was a songwriter as well, what couldn't John's big brother do? But there was a little

label interest at first. But the trio continued playing school dances and church holes,

and even a couple of county fairs, and at one of the county fairs there met a black arm and B singer James Powell, who had a recording contract with a tiny label, Fisty Records. Powell was looking for some musicians to back him on a session for a single, and the blue velvet, just the original trio, not Tom who didn't play an instrument, eagerly agreed. Doug played drums, Stupiano, and John played electric guitar, but also borrowed a stand-up

bass for the session, and overdove that. The record didn't do much, but it was still a natural record. It even got played on KWBR, the group's favourite radio station. And best of all, Stupoc had a project in San's

There would be more records and soon. Tom fuggated kept pushing for a record deal,

“and it had eventually paid off. Tommy fuggated in the blue velvet, as they were now known.”

Got signed by a small San Francisco bass label called Orchestra Records. They were very new, and it only released one previous single. Me and my shadow by Doug he's all star band Joe Band. I've been unable to track a copy of that down, but found a copy of a later single by that group on YouTube, and while the old star part might be questionable, there were definitely a band Joe Band.

The first single of the blue velvet's released was one written by Tom. Come on baby.

On this they didn't have a bass, but John played a bass line on the bottom strings of his guitar, then overdub lead on the high strings. Whale come on!

“That got the group some encouraging remarks from Casey Kasem,”

had the time a local DJ, not yet a national figure, but encouraging remarks with all. It's old, practically nothing. The next single, have you ever been lonely, was a standard bit of 1961 pop, clearly patterned after office like Del Shaman. The songwriting credit for that though wasn't Tommy Fogati, but was rather Johnny Fogati. They released one of the single on Orchestra Records, now you're not mine, a Johnny Fogati song,

backed by yes you did, a Tommy Fogati song. But that record wasn't even credited to the right band name. The label referred to Tommy Fogati in the blue violets. That would be the last

“Tommy Fogati in the blue velvet's record to be released in June 1962, and was also more”

or less the last record that the orchestra label released. By this time the group were close to graduating from high school, and Doug and Stu were thinking of going off to college, while Tom was already married and working a day job. John had taken some work at a recording studio in Berkeley, where he worked as an assistant doing whatever little odd jobs needed to be done, but learning how to create effects like slapback echo, and occasionally sitting in as a

session musician when someone needed one. The blue velvet's continued playing gigs all through 1963, a handful of month, with Doug and Stu commuting from their college at San Jose State every weekend, and they continued rehearsing regularly, but they were getting nowhere. But John and Tom, particularly, were desperate for a way out of the route they found themselves in. One story that various people have told about the band in 1963, sums up where they were. By this time the group

were decided that Booker T and the MGs were their model, and they were playing green onions at a school reunion dance. After the performance, a black man came up to the group and told them they played it pretty good, but there was something missing, a crazy repeated several times. The group took this to heart because, like many young white men who fetishize the music of black people, but don't have many in their social circles, they believed that black people had

more soul than white people. And then, in the beginning of 1964, two things changed for them

almost back to back. First was the same event that changed everything for all America.

The Beatles' appearance on the Ed Sullivan show affected everyone who cared even slightly about popular music, but it caused two big changes for the blue velvet. The first was that they were no longer going to be Tommy Fogati and the blue velvet. They were just going to be the blue velvet. You didn't perform a single embacking band anymore, you had to

man who was going to be integrated into the group. They realized that the only line-up that

“would matter for a while was the Beatles one, two guitars based in drums. Tom could play a little”

guitar, though at this point it could still only play open chords. What John later disparagingly calls cowboy chords. And so he was now the groups with him guitarist, while Stu was totally had to switch from piano to bass. And the other change came a little over a month later. When I got to make some record in the middle west, he hasn't got a record company with an arms reach. To do something about it. He has to go to New York, he has to go to Chicago. He might

got a lot of senseless. It was Vince's good fortune. But he was in San Francisco and San Francisco had a record company. Fantasy records. They had made two albums by Vince and either of them had sold very well. Fantasy is not right if I saw him max-wise. Sol's role in a company, he's the president, Sol's role in a company, is to say no to max. And max is a role in a company, is to do

“things to annoy sol. And that's me of a hit. The three part documentary that Ralph Gleason made”

about Vince Cavaldi. Had its first broadcast on the 8th of March 1964. And the blue valvets were watching.

They were amazed. There was a record label that had actually released hit records in San Francisco. Not all the way downstate in LA. They could just go down and talk to them. Fantasy is one hit single have been an instrumental. So they recorded a demo of some instrumental and they took the demo to fantasy records. Where max-wise told them that they were going about things all wrong. By now, another month later, the Beatles had the entire top five

on the charts to themselves. And whilst told them that if they wanted to have hit records, they couldn't be thinking of instrumentals. They wanted to be doing songs like that.

Oh, and ditch the name. Get a name that sounds like you might be British.

“So they went away and worked up some new material. Gentle Tom decided that they were going to be”

a songwriting team like Lenin and McCartney. Though they would much later differ sharply over how much the two of them contributed. With John later claiming that Tom made no or minimal contributions to the songwriting. And he'd just been added so they could be more like Lenin and McCartney. The two also took on pseudonyms. John chose to be Toby Green while Tom was van wild. The group themselves would now be the visions. They came back to fantasy with two new green and

wild collaborations. Both very consciously muddled on Beatles tracks. The song chosen for the B-side, Little Girl, does your mama know, was straightforward enough. As John makes a size, it was muddled on this boy. And that in turn was firmly in a genre that the now visions have been playing for years. The Little Girl also picks up on the repeated I can't hide from I want to hold your hand. And use as that to get out of the middle late. But the A-side, don't tell me

no lies. It's quite a remarkable assimilation of the Beatles style, given that there's only been aware of the British group a few weeks. [Music] Max Weiss was excited by the record and so with the group when it eventually came out towards the end of the year. There were less than two years though when it came out with the afternoon of the name on the label.

Weiss had decided to give them a more British name and landed on a name that he explained to them with the name of a kind of food-o-dull that British people had. So it was a British name and so for the next few years, Tom and John Fuggity, Stu Cook and Doug Clifford were, "I'm sorry, I'm going to have to say it." The gully wugs. They didn't like it either. Not for the racial reasons, but because it was a stupid word and nobody this book to knew what it was. And then they had to go into a whole half

remembered spell that Max Weiss had given them. But fantasy records knew how to make a hit and they didn't. So they went along with it. They went along with other ideas the Weiss had too. They were white wigs he told them to wear. They described by most people who saw them as afra wigs, but white rather than black. But from the one photo I've seen of them, they look exactly like a white version of the Vussian hat that Weiss, who by now had fully embraced the

beat-nick lifestyle, could be seen wearing in the clip from the gewaldi documentary. These were coupled with sheepskin waste coats in a similar style to those sunny bono war, polka dot shirts, and patchwork tart and bell bottom golf pants. The visual effect did not have the effort the stylishness of the Beatles. While they were waiting around for the record to be released,

So John started sitting in with another band, the apostles on the guitar.

“And when they got a residency and pulled another gun, he went along with them for a few weeks,”

and two major things happened there. First, he got a taste of the Pacific Northwest garage scene we talked about in the episode on Louis Louis. Seeing hard-earned garage rock bands like the Kingsman, Pulver Fear and the Raiders, and particularly the Sonics. The other change came from the fact that Mike Burns, the group's keyboard player and lead singer, was, according to Fuggety, literally tone deaf. Party threw desperation, and party because he was

free from the social pressure of audiences he'd grown up with and was playing for strangers.

Fuggety started to take some lead vocals. He'd never thought of himself as a singer,

“though he added a few harmonies when required. But in his methodical way, he would tape the”

shows and listen back to them afterwards, making notes of how he sounded, and trying to teach himself how to sing like the black singers he liked. Every night trying to make himself more like James Brown, Wilson Pickett, and especially Little Richard. He was still not a natural frontman. He really disliked looking at the audience, and he would turn to one side to read the graffiti on the venue walls rather than look at them, and his singing sideways on from the audience later

became a trademark of the group. But by the time he got back to ulcery to a few weeks later, he had decided that he was a singer. The group continued recording for fantasy records throughout 1965, and released for further singles that year. And over that year, you can hear the lead vocals moving over from smooth voice, Tom, to John's deliberately rough and voice. Those singles are mostly of historical interest, as you hear the foggy teas,

and give them later events presumably mostly John, slowly finding a songwriting style through imitation. Almost all their records are modeled on specific records by British invasion bands.

You can hear them and think, "This is where they first heard the Rolling Stones. This is where

they heard the zombies, and so on." An interesting one is that fourth single, the second-day side on which John sang lead, which is very obvious he modeled on glory by them, with some elements of them's version of Baby Pleased On Goat, for an end. [music] Rather astonishingly, John and Tom Fuggety had managed to come up with a Van Marison knockoff

titled "Van Out Girl", 18 months before Van Marison himself recorded his own far more famous song of the same name. It may even be that Marison heard the knockoff and fouled it away for future reference, because the track was a regional hit, selling 10,000 copies, and by this point the band were doing moderately well, getting occasional prestigious gigs like a supports lot for sunny and share. Suddenly, while Van Out Girl at the end of 1965 did fairly well.

“Their first single of 1966, which I think is by far the best of these early singles, was a flop.”

[music] The group continued in a holding pattern through 1966, releasing a handful of singles, but they were in precisely the route that they were looking to get out of. They were playing the occasional gig while Doug and Stuart University expanding their minds. Both men became rabbit Tolkien fans and Doug got the nickname Cosmo

because of how cosmic he was. But they were on the edges of the Bay Area in the suburbs, not in San Francisco where the action was, and a whole scene was developing there that they weren't part of, and that they were partially defining themselves against. They were hicks from the sticks and didn't fit in with all these new bands called things like quick silver messenger service

They didn't jam. Tom was still working a day job, and John was making a living doing

“god jobs around fantasy records, helping out and becoming very friendly with souls ants,”

the label's marketing manager, who he saw as something he reckoned with spirit. They ended 1966 with a track called Walking on the Water, written by the Fogity Brothers, another massive step forward in the sound, with John Fogity adding multiple layers of keyboards,

and a living which for the first time seemed to be telling a story. One with clear religious imagery.

This was the closest they would get to the heavy rock that was popular in San Francisco. All in all, my name, do not feel free, speak again to run, found it in my brain. Increasingly, the band were just cutting rhythm tracks in this studio, and letting John take over from that point, performing multiple instrumental overdops by himself. He had learned a lot from all his time of recording studios, and was slowly learning all

“techniques necessary to get the sounds in his head out and onto disk.”

Walking on the water had no chance of becoming a hit though, because in January 1967, both John

and Doug, who had dropped out of university, were drafted. They managed to pull a few strings

and only get put in the reserves, as we've seen people like Dean Thomas do earlier. But it was much more virgin for Fogity and Clifford, because the Vietnam War was properly ramping up at the time. They weren't sent to Vietnam, but they did have to go and do military basic training in a barracks. Doug quite quickly became ill with distress and was hospitalised and given a medical discharge, but Fogity spent fully six months on active duty.

And even after that point, he started to set aside one weekend a month for his military reserve duties. Once John finished training, it was able to go back to full-time music.

“Tom called a band meeting at the Shire, the house where Doug and Stu lived,”

and which the band used for their rehearsals, which their name dudes their love of Tolkien. They needed to make a decision. They had now been performing together as a quartet for nearly seven years, and they'd gone nowhere, and this was because even though they thought that themselves is serious, they weren't committed. They needed to treat the band as a full-time job. Tom was going to give his notice at his day job. Stu would not do what his father wanted

and go on to law school, and they would rehearse all day every day. They'd have a band account that all the money from gigs would go into, and they would pay themselves a week the wage of twenty dollars. Tom made the immense sacrifice here if putting his entire savings, one thousand two hundred and fifty dollars, about twelve thousand in today's money, into the salary part to start them off, despite having a wife and children who were lying

on his income, and Stu sold his car and threw that money in as well. There were going to be working men in a working band. Every day they would meet up and rehearse. The plan from this plan was to spend six weeks rehearsing each new single, so when they got into the studio they would know it backwards in sideways, and everyone would have their parts down perfectly, and they could cut the track quickly and know that they could reproduce it on stage.

The first single I released that way, at the end of 1967, was a song titled "Part of L."

[Music] And as it happens more often than one would think in these situations, the band finally taking the plunge and deciding to sink or swim, seemed to coincide with the events that gave them the opportunity to do much much better than they had before. Almost as soon as portable as released, John Fuggety got a call from Seoul's Ant,

his friend and mentor at the record label. The Ants told Fuggety that he bought the label outright from the wise brothers and was now in charge, he still had faith in the band, and wanted to send him to a new contract with the label. He was going to lend the band $1,500 for new equipment because John desperately needed a new amp, and he was going to let them get rid of the ridiculous clothes and the even more ridiculous name. All the group's prayers have been

answered. They signed the new contract, which was essentially the same terms as that old one, eagerly, and without any legal advice. Fuggety has later claimed, though others have disputed this. The Zanz told them that if they became successful they'd tear it up and give the band a more favorable one. But in truth, despite the problems that came later, the contract was,

10%. Hardly wonderful, but on the low side of normal rather than completely unheard of.

And fantasy took Fuggety's publishing rights, which again was perfectly usual at the time. These are things that Fuggety would present later, and to a certain extent with good reason. But there were no worse than the contract signed by 90% of new bands at the time. The other big issue that came up later was the amount of recordings required by the contract. It was a seven-year contract and it called for the band to deliver 12 tracks a year for

two years, and then 24 tracks a year for the remaining five. If the company wanted, they could ask for up to 10 more tracks a year, and if the group didn't deliver the full amount

one year, it would roll over for the next. A track here was defined as something under five minutes.

If they recorded a six-minute track, it would count as two, and 11 minute one would count as three,

“and so on. Now, remember what Maxwell said earlier. In a typical three-hour session with the”

jazz group, they'd expect to get at least 90 minutes of music. Assuming the five minutes per track the contract allowed, that would work out as 18 tracks suitable for the contract in a three-hour period. You can see how to accompany the camera making that kind of music. The contract seemed pretty reasonable. It would be no more than two or three days' work a year to fulfill the contract. Even at the more normal way to forward tracks per three-hour session that were standard for

pop music at the time, that would still be only 24 hours work in the studio to provide everything that was required. And these are the kind of numbers that were perfectly standard for pop bands in the early 60s. In 1963, for example, the Beatles in the Beach Boys both released 32 tracks each, but that was the early 60s when records were cut live with minimal overdombs,

“and when albums could be filled with cover versions of whatever the most recent hits were.”

This was only four years later, a blink of an eye in business terms, especially for a business based on this reliable and music as West Coast Jazz, but four years was an age in rock history. But at this point, the group were just happy that they had a deal, and that Zance was taking them seriously as they were now taking themselves. The next thing to do was to come up with a name. They started throwing ideas around. John came up with Whiskey Rebellion,

looked like they should be got some a bump. Tom suggested Credence Newball in the Ruby after a friend of his. It was eventually John who came up with the final name, inspired by a commercial for Olympia Beer. Fuck it, he was convinced, even decades later, but it was the beach Boys, a band he admired a great deal, singing on that advert. It definitely isn't,

“it's some session singers doing an imitation of them. He thought about that commercial”

and the idea of clear water, and he combined it with the name of Tom's friend Credence, that we decided to spell the name of the next great E. And then he added Revival. The group was being revived, but it also had claritations of a revival meeting, fitting the vaguely religious subtext that it started creeping into John's writing. The group were also revivalists and that they were, in a sense, looking backwards musically.

Much like the band, who were at about the same time working on music from big pink on the other coast. The newly named Credence Clearwater Revival, were making music that was modern, even new, but which owed more to the music at 5, 10 or 15 years earlier than to the music that was being made by the people around them. In their little suburban community,

only 20 miles from San Francisco were to million light years away socially. They've been largely

cut off from the various musical scenes that had developed, and they built their own thing for elements of Dwayne and E.M. Wilson Pickett. Charlie Christian and Hudie Lightbatter, howling Wolf and Carl Perkins, but they were still a Bay Area band. And if they wanted to get any kind of success, they would have to appeal to a Bay Area crowd. And that was going to be difficult because they were making fundamentally different music. Credence weren't improvisers.

They would come up with parts and play the parts the same way every single time. One reason they spent weeks rehearsing each song is because Purgity wanted very precise arrangements. He'd been very influenced by watching the film, The Glad Melissa Story. This is the man that had a hideous lip that they before you opened. What are we going to do, Glenn, postpone the opening? Poor old little lady.

But we're not going to postpone anything. We're going to open tomorrow if I have to stay up all

Well, he shorts could play those parts on clarinet. Why not? You see clarinet lead?

“Why not? Don, get me a whole lot of manuscript paper. Use your office size. Sure. Sure.”

clarinet lead. Sure. What? And don, call Helen. Tell her not to worry. Tell her I'm going to be working here all night. Right, clarinet lead. And I can harmonize it real tight all in the same octave. Four sexes in the clarinet. He better stay up all night.

Foggyty had decided he wanted to be like Miller and have every instrument in its own proper place.

He was very concerned about things like creating the proper sense of space between the instruments.

But Foggyty could not read music. So the way he'd rehearsed the band was that he teach them the songs and let them come up with their own parts. Then by his own account,

“drawing the rehearsal process, he'd slowly make suggestions through the band members.”

Saying, maybe you could do this or try it like that. And by the end of the rehearsal period, they'd all be playing the parts that he came up with. But they'd think they'd come up with them themselves. Well, that is actually what happened in an artist, I wouldn't like to say. It's not how the other band members portray matters. But there is a lot of bad

blood between the other surviving members and Foggyty. Foggyty can't resist an opportunity at any

point in his autobiography to have a dig at the other members. Well, their work ethic, their general attitude towards him, or their musicianship, especially dogs, and to claim that he did everything it was carrying the other three at all times. This might even be true. But it does make one wonder then why it was that he chose to work with the same musicians

“for a decade and a half. If they contributed as little as that, and he could have done the same with”

anyone. Just be aware, especially from this point forward, that for fairly obvious reasons, all the books about Credence tend to privilege the viewpoint of Jump Foggyty, since he was the group's lead singer, lead guitarist, and the rights revolver hit. And that that privileged viewpoint will necessarily come through in everything I say here. I try to give us much weight as I can to deal with this account, but I also have to deal with the source material I have.

So, what would they to do? Foggyty decided to combine the roots of Rockstal that they were developing themselves, and the jump music that the San Francisco bands were doing, but as he said himself, when the dead would jump, it seemed like they'd go off the path right away, and then stay off the path. Here's the I like that so you don't. In my world, I couldn't have my music be as unstructed as that. It makes me uncomfortable. So to start with, he took

Dale Hawkins as Suzy Q, the vocabilly classic that featured his guitar hero James Burton, and which was closely based on the music of another world favourite Howley Wolf, and which the group had started playing at live shows. And then he carefully mapped out an eight-minute arrangement of the song. He couldn't read music, so he sat down at his kitchen table with several sheets of paper

taped together as a roadmap, drawing graphs of where the record would peek and fall, who would come in where. As he put it later, there were parameters for how far out the song could go. I had to know darn sure what was going to happen because I didn't want people falling asleep. The audience all the band, the difference between our jams and say the dead, in my band there was an arrangement. But the idea was still to make a record that could

get played on KMPX, the free-form radio station that played records, and live tapes, by most of the San Francisco bands. So Suzy Q, creed and spelled it differently from Dale Hawkins, was eight minutes long and incorporated feedback sounds that pockety said were inspired by East West by the Butterfield Blues Band. The Credence version of Suzy Q was long enough that it had to be split across two sides of a

single, but with its psychedelicized arrangement touches, like the filter put on Fuggety's voice at points. It sounded enough like a KMPX record that the stations started playing it even before it was released.

came out, the DJs and other stuff of the station went on strike. Credence played a free show

“for the striking workers, and when the strike ended and the star DJs moved on master the new”

station KSAN. They remembered who had supported them and playlisted the record. Suzy Q made number 11 on the charts and the label wanted to brush out an album. The band self titled debut featured Suzy Q and two of their older songs. I re-recorded working on the water, re-titled work on the water, which would become the only songwriting credit that Tom Fuggety would ever have on the Credence record. And the single version of Portable. Plus three more

jump Fuggety originals. A version of Wilson Pickett's 99 and a half won't do. And the group's next single, another 50s cover. This time a version of screaming Jay Hawkins' iPods is spelling you.

“That's single though, only went to number 58. Better than anything they'd done before Suzy”

Q, but not good enough not to cause worry that the group might have been a one hit wonder. I'm not only that, but they're one hit to be in a cover version. The album did slightly better reaching number 52 in the album charts. The album had line notes by Ralph Gleason, who by this point had switched his allegiance from jazz to rock, and was a contributing editor to Rolling Stone. The line notes consisted of two long columns extoling the virtual

of the San Francisco scene, but the only mention of the band themselves or their music coming in the last paragraph, where he devotes a whole sentence to them, saying, Credence Clear Water

Revival is an excellent example of the third generation of San Francisco bands, which gives

“every indication as this album demonstrates possibly, of keeping this trend of the San Francisco”

sound undemnished. But John Fuggety had been working on his songwriting. He would carry a notebook about all the time in which would write down little phrases. He found the music easier than the lyrics, but both would essentially come the same way. He did on a phrase, musical or a lyrical, and spent weeks thinking about it and trying to connect it to other phrases he had lying around. It would take a long time, and he'd often have the music finish before the

lyrics, which were increasingly more impressionistic and literal. Fuggety's new songs weren't

especially the standouts of the first album, but he was improving quickly, and by the

time the album came out he'd already hit on the sound who would make the group's career. The first sign of it came in a sound check at the avalan, when Fuggety hit on a rift that he insisted the band keep playing. He knew he had something. He kept playing that riff in the sound check and making mouth noises and singing odd words like Hound Dog, trying to find the shape of a song. The lyrics, when he finally wrote them

later, were in his new impressionistic style, and were in early example of a trend that soon became called Swamp Rock. This is different from the earlier genre of Swamp Pop, which originated in Louisiana of an East Texas. But several of the musicians from that earlier genre became better known in the new one. Swamp Rock is rock music with strong influence from country and soul music, particularly musicians from what Charles L. Hughes is referred to as the country soul triangle,

have Memphis, Muscle Shows, and Nashville, but also with the strong ad makes to live influence from swamp pop musicians, and would live focused on the deep south. This especially by your country, the area around the Gulf Coast. The music has twangy vocabilly style guitars, a funky soulful rhythm section, and radiates authenticity even when it's anything but. The style seems to have been developed pretty much independently by several musicians,

most notably Credence and Tony Joe White, putting together various streams of music that were separately becoming popular in 1968. There was of course the band and their country soul flavored songs of the anti-bellum south, and the band influence literally everywhere at this point. But the receptal of the elements in play. There was a whole stream of music from musicians from Georgia, centered around Tommy Row and Joe South, that combined bubblegum pop with country soul

elements, like South's games people play, making sunny elements of country soul music popular.

and lyrics about chock tour of itch. This was the primary influence for Tony Joe White, who were along with Credence was the first person to hit big with a swampy rock style.

Incidentally, I've never covered Oldtabilly Joe in this podcast because Tyler may hand

coke of it so well in his country music podcast cocaine and mind stones, but I can just point

“people to that episode if they want to learn more about the song. You should listen to it.”

There was the blue-eyed soul pop of outside the box tops from Memphis. ♪ Lonely days ago I'm a good home ♪ ♪ My baby is so old me I'm better ♪ ♪ I don't get how much money I got a spare ♪ ♪ Got to get back to my baby ♪

♪ Lonely days ago I'm a good home ♪ ♪ My baby is so old me ♪ And most influential on the more hippy side of swampbuck, there was Dr. John the Night Trepper and his voodoo songs in New Orleans. ♪ Walk through the fire ♪ ♪ Fly through the smoke ♪

♪ See my enemy at the end of the room ♪ ♪ Walk on the pillar, see what they can do ♪ ♪ Walk on the pillar with the cane of the zoo ♪ ♪ Hang on, hang on, hang on, hang on ♪ ♪ Walk on the pillar ♪

All of these have been hits in the give or so before swampbuck, coalesced as his younger. And Foggyty would have been aware of all of them. The reference that came to mind when it was writing the lyrics, what became born on the bayou, though,

“was bowed to these first album and songs like Who Do You Love?”

♪ Walk through the smoke, fly through the fire ♪ ♪ I used the corpus snake for a next time ♪ ♪ I got a brand new house on the roadside ♪ ♪ Made from rattles snake had ♪ ♪ I got a brand new chip that made me made on top ♪

♪ Made out of a human skull ♪ ♪ Now come on, take a little walk when we're all in ♪ ♪ And tell me who do you love? ♪ ♪ Who do you love? ♪ ♪ Who do you love? ♪

♪ Who do you love? ♪ ♪ Who do you love? ♪ ♪ Who do you love? ♪ ♪ Don't stop hand and agree on mine ♪

“When it was writing born on the bayou, that was what Foggyty had in mind.”

A mythical deep south of Who Do's and Hound dogs and black cat bones. Where Tony Joe White wrote Swampbox songs like "Pook Solid Honey," after hearing Ode Dibelly Joe, and thinking he should write songs like that rooted in his own experience. John Foggyty had no experience whatsoever of bayou country.

Indeed, he seems never to have left the West Coast,

and never to have ventured further south than LA, before his time in the military, when he was stationed in Fort Ragged North Carolina. To buy the time the songs were recorded, the group had done some short tours to promote Suzy Q,

playing the film while he's supporting the beach boys, and playing in Honolulu, supporting the vanilla footage. I know the band would have had a hit with a heavy cover version of an older song. It still spent almost no time outside California, though, and none in the area's drum was now writing about.

So born on the bayou wasn't about the real deep south, but was a white man from California using his imagination to inhabit a world built out of the elements of songs by both deadly and howling wolf. But as Foggyty pointed out, his first great influence, Stephen Foster,

never went below the Mason Dixon line,

until long after he'd written most of his successful musical songs. ♪ Born on a bayou ♪ ♪ Born on a bayou ♪ Born on the bayou was a major step forward in Foggyty's writing, and would end up being the opening track of the group's second album,

Bayou Country. The first to have the credit produced an arranged by John Foggyty.

and as the next few would.

“To produce to be at least one track that stretched out to seven or eight minutes.”

This time there were two, keep on trudling and graveyard train. At least one cover of a song by one of John's heroes to show the group's roots and tie them to a tradition of music, show that they were authentic. This time it was good gully Miss Molly,

and both sides of at least one hit single. But the rest of the album being short, punchy songs that were written as if they were hit singles. The original plan was for born on the bayou,

the first real-foods of John's new songwriting style,

to be the eighth side of the next record. But at the last minute, the record was flipped. Foggy Mary had a long gestation that was built up from many parts. The title was literally the first thing Foggyty had written in his notebook for song ideas, but at the time it was just a title.

He thought maybe Foggy Mary was a domestic servant, a cleaning lady, someone who wore a uniform and had undervalued work for rich people but still had a pride. That was the mental image at the start. But he only had those two words, Foggy Mary, a title. But that was worth noting down, as he said to Dwayne-Edy later,

"When it came time for me to write songs, I used that lesson I had learned from you."

“It was simply, if the title could mean so much without lyrics, the title must be important.”

If you can have a cool title like Ram Mood or Rebel Mouser or Foggy Mary's a bad road, heartbreak hotel, hunky-tongue, bad room rising, on top of everything else, you're really setting off in the right direction. Suddenly he had a basic chord sequence he'd been working on, and a riff that was inspired by Beethoven's fifth symphony. He thought that riff sounded something like a paddle wheel, but didn't have much else,

and then he got a letter he'd been waiting for for a long time, his official discharge papers. He was no longer in the murder to be reserved, didn't have to go to the one we can to munt the camps that had kept disrupting his career, even after he was out of basic training. And he was totally free. The phrase left a good job in the city came to him, fitting the feeling of not the fine detail of what had just happened to him.

They fit the chords he'd already been playing with. He started writing a lyric with that line,

“and brought in the thought about the paddle wheel, big wheel keep on turning,”

and then he finally realised that proud Mary wasn't a woman who was the name of a ship.

Before he had even finished the song, forgotten he was convinced that he had written his first true classic song. As song that wasn't just good, it was great. It was so great he couldn't let the band ruin it. Up to this point the group had been, well, a group. If they were backing vocals on a record, the other band members would provide them, but Fogity had a particular idea for how he wanted

the backing vocals to sound on fire of Mary, and the group weren't getting them exactly the way he wanted. He wanted them to sound like gospel groups. He named the Swan Silver Toans, the vibe blind boys of Alabama, and the sensational nightingales as examples in his autobiography. And the group's rough-a-harrity sounded too punky, had too much attitude. So he wiped their vocals. Fogity would wipe everything if it wasn't exactly what he wanted.

Ever since he bought a body-hullier album, pushed must he cobbled together from Holly's demos. He'd been firmly against the idea of letting anything that wasn't a master take survived, in case he got released later by an unscrupulous record company. And so credence for about the only major band of the time where we don't have massive box sets about takes and demos and alternate versions. Fogity replaced the group's vocals

with himself multi-tracked, getting exactly the parts he wanted to get. [Music]

When he finally got the vocals done, the group's road manager told him it sounds like the

inkspots. Fogity later wrote, "I wish he'd said the mills for those, but the sentiment was exactly right." But the group were, understandably, upset. And they got more upset when Fogity, and an Italian restaurant, the other three members of retreated to, laid down the law. From that point on, he was properly taking charge. Things would be done differently from now on. He was the only one writing the songs and from now on, it was going to stay that way.

None of the others were to bring in any new material. They could still sing backing vocals on stage.

important that things be done right, because the records were permanent. So from this point on, the other three were going to be confined to just playing the basic rhythm tracks. John was going to do any instrumental overdoping, and all the vocals by himself, and their input was not wanted. As far as John was concerned, he was actually doing the more of favour. He was going to take a move to work, but not get any more of the money.

“And what did it matter who did what as long as the job got done?”

They were on the verge of the big time, and he couldn't let the others blow what they've been working for for a decade at this point, by making a record that was less than exactly what Fogetti heard in his head. That didn't mean that they weren't still a gang together, all working for the same goals. It was just that he was going to be the one deciding what those goals were. The other band members didn't see things that way. After all, it was only a few short

years since they had been Tommy Fogetti in the blue velvet. John, who until recently had never

“sung a lead vocal, who still wouldn't look at the audience face on while he was singing,”

and who every time he took a guitar solo, would turn around and look at dog, and half the time wouldn't look him in the eye, had somehow taken over his front man from his older, better looking for them with the better singing voice. And now he wasn't even going to like his brother sing backing vocals, or even though Tommy had been writing songs before John. Was this really what they had worked for? And while he was talking about how it was

his vision that had got them on the charts, there were all of every aware that up to this point

“they had not actually had a hit with any of John's songs. There were only hits had been a cover version,”

but that was about to change. Fogetti made number two on the chart, where the credence got to number two many times,

but never had a number one record, which some have suggested is down to them putting out

records with B-sides that were strong enough that the airplay got split. The album was from bio-country, made the top 10 on the album charts and just kept telling eventually going double platinum. The group got on the ed Sullivan show, the other three made enough of like John's tactics, but they had to admit they'd worked. And while Fogetti didn't make number one, it wasn't many ways the biggest song of 1969. Fogetti recorded it and they kept recording it and often having hits

with it. First up was Solomon Berg, who recorded his version almost as soon as Credence's record

came out. And had a top 20 R&B hit with it that spring. [Music] Fogetti produced a version for the check-mets limited, which became a UK top 40 hit. [Music] Amen Corner, a UK pop sensation at the time with the one of top 10 hits.

Recorded this as an album track. [Music] Elvis started doing it regularly, performing it in Vegas every night and on two of his hit live albums. [Music]

I left a good job in the city working for the man every night and day. And I never lost one minute

“of sleep in one of the way things might have been a big wheel keep on turning.”

[Music] It became a song that's obsessed by Wilson in the same way as being my baby and short name bread. And as late as the mid-90s he was cutting multiple as yet on released versions of the song. Now, if you come down to the river, bet you're going to buy some people who live. You could not have to worry. If you've got no money, people will on the river are happy to get.

Roll it, roll it, roll it, roll it, roll it on the river, roll it. But most famously Solomon Burke suggested twig turner that it would be a good song for Tina's

“thing. And I can Tina Turner had a worldwide top five hit with their cover version.”

Less than two years after Credence's original came out. [Music] Foggety had done just what he said. He had written a classic, a standard, a song after one new, and he'd made them stars by doing things his way. Foggety's need for control did not just extend to the records. He decided that the reason they'd waited too long for success was that they had

listened to him relied on other people. So he was going to do all the band's business dealing himself from now on. As he said at the time, I wouldn't trust anybody else.

“I don't dig it because it's a hassle for me answering the phones instead of somebody”

else or spending time thinking about things. But I've always had to do it so it's not an

extra burden at all. And glad I do now. It's every bit as involved as songwriting or being a musician of a single learning or song whatever. You've always got to be thinking about direction. I use myself as a manager sort of to oversee everything else I or the band does. And one of the things Foggety made sure the band did. It was not to rest on their levels. But to get back to work almost immediately, working on the next hit record. For the next couple of years, regular of

this clockwork, there would be a new credence hit single every three months. And off and both sides of the single were chart. Foggety was convinced that in order to maintain any kind of success, you had to have a new single ready when the last one started dropping down the chart. So people wouldn't move on to the next thing and forget about you. He also insisted that both sides of every single at least have hit potential. Thinking of artists he wanted to emulate like the

Beatles and Elvis, whose be-sides were from better than other bands asides. For the next single, Foggety once again started with titles written down. The be-side, low-day, was the name of a

place in California that Foggety had never visited. And he had made a note of the title several years

earlier. Indeed, he'd been horrified he ever so earlier seeing quick silver messenger service performing a song that he thought was also title low-day. Thinking he'd missed his chance. And yeah, that is free. Thankfully for him, he'd been mishearing Codina as low-day, and the title was free to use. He conjured up a story of him musicians, stuck playing the kind of gigs Foggety had once where they had to be reduced to himself.

[Music] That didn't chart, but it did become a perennial on classic rock stations. The a-side, bad-moomizing,

at that time. But Foggety's lyrics rather than astrology, were inspired by the film the devil and

“Daniel Webster, and a scene of natural, or unnatural, disaster in that film, for which only the”

protagonist who has sold his soul to the devil is saved. The plot of that film incidentally is about a man desperate for success, who signs a seven-year contract that brings him prosperity, but also brings out the worst aspect of his own personality, alienating him from family and friends, and to eventually tries to use the legal system to

get out of the contract he now wishes he'd never signed.

[Music] Foggety later said that he knew the song was a hit even before he'd finished writing the lyrics. Because one of the band members' wives heard the rehearse in the backing track and kept

“homing the guitar lick that comes in from the second verse on. That was, as Foggety freely admitted,”

inspired by Scottie Moore's playing on Elvis's "I'm Left Your Right She's Gone," and the whole track is a conscious application of Elvis's son period. Compare Moore's playing... [Music] To Foggety. [Music]

Bad Moon Rising again made number two in the US, and actually became a number one hit in the UK,

where generally Credence weren't quite as big as in the home country. It's around this point that the group started to develop a reputation,

“there would be both a blessing and a curse, so there were a band that didn't have an”

identifiable base. A band that everyone liked, but didn't necessarily love. They didn't fit in with the San Francisco crowd, because they didn't jam or take psychedelic drugs, and they were all hardworking family men who saw the whole thing as self-indulgence. But nor were they as political as bands like the MC5 or the Foggetrock bands. They were quite proud that while they were personally opposed to the Vietnam War,

they were making music that both sides of the cultural divide could enjoy, and there were moderate liberals who might have personal objections to Richard Nixon, but that didn't mean they were going to go out and support a Marxist revolution. The formulation the band members themselves came up with was Credence's Like Burgers, or the bands might be Foggetrock, or Caviar, or some exotic cuisine,

but everyone enjoys a good burger, and there were times when it's just the thing to hit the spot. And their job was to make the very best burgers they could.

It seems to be around this point the problems first started to surface between jump,

Foggety and Souls Ants, and there were two very, very different stories about what happened, which are fundamentally incompatible. Everyone has agreed that at the start, Foggety wanted to be an negotiate the group's contract, primarily because he felt the 10% royalty rate they were getting was too low, and also because he decided he wanted to own the publishing for his songs. Fundamentally, he felt agreed that the band were only getting 10% of the money,

when in his words Credence made up 90% of the label sales. Which, at that point in time, is probably if anything and underestimate. Foggety likes to put a trade fantasy as a single artist label, and that's slightly unfair. Driving the period when the whites for the Zodon't reliable, fantasy put out a lot of records, and a lot of the major classics by very prestigious artists like Charles Mingus, Cecil Taylor,

and others. But it is true that for a while, when it became clear how big Credence were,

to all Credence all the time. They seem only to have put out five albums in 1969,

“of which three were new albums by Credence, with the other two being a spoken word album of”

beat poetry by Lawrence Föln and Getty, and album by Billy Joe Beacote, a focusinger who, according to the one article about him I can find on the internet, apparently quit music to invent the two-wheel drive bicycle. It's very unlikely that these two records sold in the kind of numbers that were remotely comparable to Credence's millions, and so Foggety was just divided in his belief that his band deserved a better rate. Unfortunately, Seoul's ads was also just divided in his belief

that a deal is a deal, that he shouldn't sign a contract if he don't like it, and that the money he was making was his reward for taking a chance on a band who had spent a decade going nowhere, both men were essentially stick to these positions for the rest of their lives,

a inevitable force, meeting an unmovable object. But at least at first, Zanz was willing to

negotiate a little, and here's where the story breaks down. The story has told by Zanz, and all the members of Credence who were not jump-foggety, is that Zanz offered to give the members of Credence 10% ownership of the company, not just of their records, as a good world gesture. And the Foggety unit actually turned it down since he wouldn't get his publishing back. Given that fantasy records went on to buy up the catalogs of prestige records,

“why have the most important just labels in the world? The post-Atlantic stacks catalog,”

including records like Isaac Hase's shaft soundtrack, and specialty records, who put out a mangrove as all of the little Richard's important work. This would, if true, have been a calamitous financial decision. When Zanz eventually sold the label in 2004,

it was worth at least $80 million, and the company emerged into Concord Music Group.

Recently reported they turned down offers of $6 billion. I don't know about you, but if I was in a band and one of my band mates turned down 10% of that on my behalf, I'd be a tad peeved. Foggety, on the other hand, vehemently insisted that the offer that was made was not a gift of 10%. Just stock options on 10% of a planned initial public offering of 11% of the stock. In other words, 1.1% of the total stock, which they would have to buy themselves,

albeit as a preferential rate. In return for signing an extended 10-year contract. According to Foggety, all four band members decided democratically that they weren't going to do this,

“after taking legal advice. I honestly have no idea which of these stories is true,”

and given the personalities involved, both sound very plausible. I mentioned both possibilities here, because which version of this she believed to be true, coolest everything that follows. Either Foggety talk a quicksatic stand on a point of principle, and in doing so not only cut off his own nose despite his face, but the metaphorical nose of his bandmates, too. Or, Saul Zanz made a not-very impressive offer that wasn't worth

them taking up, and so they didn't. One decision they did make though was to do something else since suggested, and have their money paid not to them, but to a tax shelter company in the Bahamas, effectively raising their income by 30%. That was a decision that would come back to haunt them. All they didn't stop the group from continuing to turn in product that would make a lot of money for fantasy, and quite a bit for them. For the next B-side, commotion,

Foggety was inspired by the Benny Goodman Orchestra, and the fast tempo of their legendary version of Sing Sing Sing. Foggety took that, and combined it with the train rhythms that you get on so many old country records, and the vocabilly feel he'd use previously unborn on the bayou, to produce a B-side that made the top 30 in its own right.

The A-side me mile was a title at Foggety had had for a long time. It came from him going to this drugstore soda fountain as a small child, and looking at the labels of green river syrup. Stu Cook plays both electric and stand-up bass on the track. Parts Foggety is very insistent

the track once again went to number two, kept off the top by Sugar Sugar by the Archies,

“and it became the title track of the third album, the second of 1969. The album, which had the A-and-B”

sides of both their two most recent singles, went to number one, and his Foggety's personal favourite of Credence's albums. The group then embarked on a summer of playing festivals, including a headline appearance at Woodstock. The group came on stage much later than planned after the grateful dead, and didn't really enjoy the experience. Foggety beatled their performance from appearing in the film of album of the show, as he thought it's subsdandered. The listening

to it now it sounds fine, and better than some sloppy performances that did make it into the film. The next Credence single was a double sided hit. The last billboard changed

“their methodology for counting two sides of the same single as it was going up the chart,”

we don't have separate chart positions for the two tracks. The B-side down on the corner,

gave the album that came along with it, the third of 1969, its title, William the Poor Boys.

The group were getting a reputation as a singles band, a band who put all their best material out on their singles. Foggety thought this was a good thing, again, Credence being a hamburger, they were for everyone, and making music that you would hear on the radio, but as far as the taste makers of the time were concerned, singles bands were fundamentally on serious, and the only bands that mattered made albums not singles. And this might have affected the plans for the album

“at least for short time. There was apparently some thoughts making the album a concept album,”

as if it were made by another band, William the Poor Boys, and named the came to Foggety after seeing a commercial for the Disney adaptation of Winnie the Pooh, and thinking of the phrase Winnie and the Poor Boys. The concept was thrown out after he'd written two songs, the other being Poor Boy shuffle, but down on the corner paints a portrait of the fictional band as versions of his band mates personalities as Foggety saw them. William was himself out from playing the harmonica. Poor Boy

was his brother Tom, because the Foggety's mind Tom was rapidly singing into self-pity and complaining about everything. Blinky was still, because he was myopic and Rooster was dog, who Foggety thought spent too much time on tall looking for women to sleep with. The A-side, Foggety's son, was one of the few times that Jump Foggety got explicitly political in his songwriting, and was also one of his most personal songs. Foggety's son was about

the Vietnam War, which Foggety opposed, but it was also about class politics and privilege. Foggety had become in rage by news stuff about David Eisenhower, the grandson of the former president, Marie and Julie Nixon, the daughter of the comemon, and thinking about how some people had everything handed to the monoclater, while he had grown up in poverty and had to work hard for

everything he'd earned. He also thought about how many of the sons of powerful people were getting

deferments emerging to avoid the draft, while people without powerful families were being sent away today. Incidentally, Foggety is often allied with these two things when discussing the song, giving some people the impression that David Eisenhower himself was a draft-udger. That slightly unfair to Eisenhower, who much like Foggety went into the reserves, naval in Eisenhower's case, but served three years active duty rather than Foggety's six months.

Though he was never sent into act of combat. The result was one of Foggety's most passionate

and most straightforward songs, partly because rather than recognizing over the lyrics for weeks,

And that passion helped cement credence's popularity among the troops who had been sent up to fight.

“Give me, I know millionaires so hard don't go, give me, give me, give me,”

give me, and don't want to, they won't go. The song still has a great deal of personal meaning to Foggety. In 2015, he tackled his autobiography after it. And he was utterly infuriated in 2020 when Donald Trump, a man who was precisely the kind of person that Foggety had been met and against, started using it in campaign values. The double-sided single went to number three,

slightly worse than the previous two singles, but still a big hit by anyone's standards.

The William the Poor boys album made the same position on the charts. The third album of the year

“to make the upper reaches. That album, whose cover photo was meant to, according to one biography”

of the band I used in researching this episode, Channel Alan Lomax. So the meet further back for the obligatory cover versions, and previously. All the way back to Hewdie Ledbatter for versions of Midnight Special and Cotton Field. That song was probably brought back to the group's mind by the beach bow's recent cover version of it. And there's some slight influence that detects in the arrangement.

But Credence's version knows more to book Owens as 1963 Country version of the song. With Foggety emitting done, which is guitar part quite closely.

“Oh, Cotton Field's back home, when I was a little bit of it in my mama would rock”

me and my cradle in those old cotton fields back home. Oh, when those cotton balls get a run, you can't pick very much cotton in those old cotton fields. More and more country influence would creep into Foggety's music over the next couple of years. By the end of 1969, the group should have been celebrating, having had four massive hit singles and three police successful albums in one year. Potentions were starting to be felt within

the group above Foggety's leadership. Some of this was normal creative friction. Tom Foggety was increasingly resentful of not being allowed to write or sing, given that for years he had been the groups from man and main songwriter. But some seems to be almost willful provocation by Foggety. For example, one story Foggety tells in his autobiography

as if it reflects well on him. It's about the recording of Cotton Fields. In Foggety's telling, Doug Clifford did not play the song the way Foggety wanted.

Foggety never has a single good word to say about Clifford's drumming, and Foggety and the

engineer had to salvage the track by making 30 or 40 edits to the tape to fix Clifford's timing. With Foggety then adding extra acoustic guitar to smooth it over the edit. This is perfectly plausible. Every artist has a story about a record that has to be salvaged in the edit, because one musician just could not get the part right. And it must have been a hugely stressful job for Foggety to supervise the editing,

which of course would require 30 or 40 physical cuts to the tape. Any one of which could have destroyed the track and rendered all their work useless. If this is the case, I say if not because I doubt it, but because it's something that only Foggety has said, and everything with this band is contentious enough that taking the word of any one source might be problematic. Then they did an astonishing job of the edit, because I've listened

to it multiple times with good headphones listening for signs and can't find any. But then at the end of the edit session, Foggety collected up all the bits of tape that have

saying there's your drum track. This kind of attitude from Foggety was not making him hugely

popular with his bandmates, and this got worse when his need for control and his own particular vision of artistic purity led to decisions they thought were counterproductive. The one that caused the most resentment in the group was when Foggety decided they were no longer going to do one cause, ever. From Foggety's point of view, this made sense. Uncours were meant to be a special thing that only happened when the show was really good, and that was cheap and

by making them something that you did on a routine basis. And it was just fake in authentic

“to go off stage knowing you were going to be coming back on. You should just go out there and play”

all the songs you intended to play and then leave. The rest of the band taught this was absolute

madness, and it caused resentment in audiences as well. Credence's shows were already shorter than the multi-hour shows that were becoming commonplace, as bands like The Greatful Dead or Led Zeppelin would stretch out songs to 20 minutes or more with extended gems. With the exception of their one extended track Paralbum, most Credence songs were under five minutes, and the hits people came to the show for were often under three, and they played them

just like the record on stage. So they would do a 10 to 15 songs set that would last under an hour. When fans realized that they weren't going to come back on stage, many became furious,

“but foggy wouldn't budge, and the other figure had the uncle without their lead singer.”

None of this stopped the group from continuing to work as hard as ever, but the next single showed signs of these tensions in several different ways. Who'll stop the rain, the more popular of the two sides? Had a wave in as to it that was very different to anything the group had

released up to this point? It's also, for the first time since Portable, featured the other band

members on backing vocals as a stop to their desire to be more involved. Listening to it, much like listening to their live recordings, it's hard to see why foggy thought the others were incapable of singing the harmonies on other records. foggy seems to have been trying in his own way to make some concessions.

“The album that included who'll stop the rain was titled Cosmos Factory,”

as a tip of the hat to drug Clifford, the band member who was least happy with foggy tea. That album shows the signs of foggy being stretched on as the breaking points in retrospect. There were four cover versions and two extremely extended tracks. The 7 minute album opened up Bumble Temple, and in 11 minute cover version I heard it through the grapevine, in which the same style as their various Suzy Q. The other three cover versions though were much

more than the band's normal range. Sounded like almost redundant covers of very Overson's Ubidube, both at least before you accuse me, and Elvis' version of Arthur Christophe's library left me. They're specifically covering Elvis's version with Clifford doing an almost exact replica of DJ Fontana's drum part. Also the Mumble Temple, all the originals on the album were the A or B sides of singles. The other side of who'll stop the rain was travel in band,

a song about the experience of being on tour, on which John played saxophone and piano as well as his normal guitar. That song led to a lawsuit from the publishers of Good Golly Miss Molly, which was settled out of court by Souls Ants by in the publishing company. That single took the group back to number two, and the next single, also included on Cosmos Factory,

did it almost as well. The group was so busy that they could no longer do their routine of intensively rehearsing the arrangements of the songs, and both sides of that single were written over a single weekend before the group recorded them on the Tuesday. One through the jungle was inspired, not by the Vietnam War, as most supposed, but actually by the sprinkler Charles Whitman, and was a play-by-fuggety for Gun Control.

carnation. Foggety took the riff from that.

“And used it as the basis for up-around the band.”

[Music] That single went to number four. There was then a European tour, where fans at the Albatore got outraged that they only played 55 minutes with their on-core, and then yet another single, the last one on Cosmos Factory. Looking out my back door, is regarded by many as the closest credence got to a psychedelic lyric.

But Foggety insists that what some tried to claim would drug references, were actually inspired by the Dr. Su's books he was reading to his son.

“Musically meanwhile, it shows Foggety's increasing influence from country music,”

especially the baker's field sound of musicians like Mel Haggard and Bocawins, the latter of whom gets an aim check. Looking out my back door, came out in July 1970 and went to number two. Cosmos Factory released at the same time, made number one on the album chart and went quadruple platinum. In 18 months, the group had released seven singles that

had reached the top five, most of them double-sided hits with both sides charting, and four top 10 albums, two of which went to number one,

“nor of which went multi-platinum. That's an astonishing success rate for a band that had been”

almost completely unknown up to that point, and the band had achieved everything they'd

had ever worked for. Most books around the band described them at this point as the second

biggest band in the world after the Beatles in 1969, and the biggest once the Beatles announced their breakup in early 1970. And while depending on precisely which metric you used that arguable, you could make a case that, for example, the Rolling Stones were bigger, and possibly Led Zeppelin. It's certainly a defensible position to take, but things were getting more of a more difficult. Thomas specially was beginning to feel like he needed to get out of the band,

and that his contributions were not recognized. Even though he was now only the rhythm player and no longer the front man, he was a good rhythm player. There were all good musicians, and they had a connection as he unit that could only come from playing together for a decade, and more recently spending every single day treating music like a job, and practicing together every day without fail. And John seems to have realized that he needed to do some things to keep

the band together. For a start, he agreed to let a book be published on the band.

Inside Credence, at 84 pages, was basically a fan magazine by any other name,

but it did have chapters and all for a band members and given them in their time in the sun. There was a concerto to attempt to present the band as a band, not as John Fuggety and three interchangeable sidemen. They also hired PR people for the first time, again to promote the band as more than just one man, and they spent longer working on their next album than ever before. For the first time there was a break of more than three months between singles,

indeed the next single didn't come out until after the album was from Pendulum, which came out five months after Cosmos Factory, and was given a big PR push. That album had been preceded by a band meeting, in which the other three members had told Fuggety they wanted more say in the music, and they wanted to write songs. Fuggety and his telling had explained to them that they needed to get an album out for Christmas,

and the other said agreed that they would do one more album of just his songs.

It was going to be their sergeant pepper, and they'd take a whole month to record it

“rather than the few days in the studio they normally talk. The songs weren't up to scratch,”

apart from the single have you ever seen the vein, which was written about John's feelings about the tension between the band members? The album was promoted with a big press junket, in which the band members all talked about how excited they were for the next album, to one why they were going to write and sing songs themselves, and then Tom Fuggety quit the band anyway. He had simply had enough of being in

it for the shadow, and wanted to make his own music. His first solo album titled Tom Fuggety,

featured grateful data associate Melocone does on keyboards, and former mothers of invention

“from my Billy Monday, and barely cracked the top 200. There was not album single,”

good by media man, became a flute top 20 hits in Argentina. He released a string of solo albums over the next decade, as well as farming the band ruby, and spent some time as the rhythm guitarist for the Saunders Garcia band with Saunders and Jerry Garcia. Doug and Stu were his rhythm section on a couple of his solo albums,

but he never had any real commercial or critical success or than with Saunders and Garcia.

Tom's biggest success after Credence was an unusual one. At one point, Tom Fuggety ruby must be huge in the UK, because the band got big royalty checks from here, but they never had a hit or even sold many records here. Yet everyone in Britain of my age of older is familiar with the track BRT. In an unusual context, it's 19 and a half minutes past nine, and next this morning on BBC One program three in the series play tennis, and that's in just over five minutes.

The track was used on the BBC for several years whenever they put up the test card, pages from C-Fax, or there was a few minutes break between programs. For a while, it was touching go as to whether the group would continue. Doug produced and Stu played on the sessions for an album by a folkie, Mark Spelstre, which also featured Donald Duck Dawn, the bass player from Bucketie in the MGs, who was a good

friend of the group. And there was some thought for a while of having Dawn joined Credence on Bass, with Koch moving to rhythm guitar. Cook also produced an album by Clover, a country rock band

who had later become known for backing Elvis Costello and his first album, and for, in a later

lineup, having two future members of Huey Lewis and the news. But eventually, they decided to continue as a trio. The talk most of 1971 off from recording, over the one single Sweet Hit Chiker,

“which made the top 10. But they did tour, to surprisingly good reviews given how important”

Tom's rhythm playing it went to the band. And in January 1972, they recorded an album titled "Mardi Gras" or, as it became known to many after John Landau's Rolling Stone review. "Fuck at his revenge." "Fuck at his decided he was going to show both his own rateful band members and his demanding record label. "Fuck at his decided that if they wanted the band to be an equal partnership, he was going to beat an equal partnership."

The contract said he had to be lead singer and songwriter on at least a third of the material, so that was what he would do. He wrote two new songs for the album to go with Sweet Hit Chiker, and sangly done a sound like cover version of Ricky Nelson's Hello Mary Lou. And it told Stuart Doug that they had to write and sing three songs each too. He would play guitar and nothing else. He wouldn't make a main one suggestions,

he wouldn't sing, he wouldn't it wove a dubbs. If they wanted any of that stuff that had to do with themselves. The result was catastrophic. Landau's review ended. Pendulum was a

reaching for new dimensions. On this album he seems to have just given up.

“The result is, relative to a group's established level of performance, the worst album I have ever”

heard from a major rock band. The group did a brief tour and then split up. Or rather, John Fungity left the other two who continued working together. They played on

several of Tom's solo albums starting with his second Excalibur, which also featured Jerry Garcia

and Mel Saunders. And Doug recorded a solo album Cosmo, with Stuart's part of the band. Doug also produced Groove's Paradise by Doug Sam, which they both played on. Both men were playing on several Doug's song and Sudoku's quintet records over the years. Becoming part of the rotating cast of musicians who were in and out of his orbit.

“It was true Sam that Cook ended up doing what became his most influential,”

though not commercially successful work outside Credence. Producing Vucky Ericsson's "classic album" the evil one. Someone of you who've heard the Patreon bonus for this episode might now be a bit confused, because in that I said Doug Sam produced two head-to-dog by Rocky Ericsson. He did, but he produced a single version of a couple of years before Cook produced the album.

Cook and Clifford work together pretty much consistently for almost the next 50 years. For the last 25 of those in a band called Credence Clearwater we visited, playing their old

“Credence hits to huge crowds. Jump fuckity on the other hand went in a different direction.”

First he made an entirely solo album of Country Covers, playing and singing everything the

way he'd always wanted to. He released the album under the fake band named The Blue Witch Rangers,

with his own name only when she did producer. The version of Jambalaya from that record made number 16 on the charts. The album wasn't a success, not even making the top 40, and foggy-bling fantasy records and souls aunts in particular. He now desperately wanted to get away from fantasy records. Fuckity's main issue was that the label still had his publishing rights and wouldn't give them back

to him, but he was also burned out and suffering from Microsoft, due to a combination of stress from the band and problems in his marriage. He simply couldn't produce the amount of work he'd been doing from 1968 through 1970, and looked at the hundred or so tracks he still owed on the contract, and saw that stretching out into the infinite distance. And souls aunts were simply not willing to negotiate with foggy-ty. They had a contract and that was it.

His aunts was more of interested in the film business now anyway. He was in the middle of producing one floor over the cockles nest, and he would later go on to produce such asco-winning films as the English patient and Amadeus. His biggest successor would come from a film he wasn't directly involved in. He bought the film in merchandising rights to the Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings from their owners in the mid-70s, and produced the moderately successful late 70s animated Lord of

the Rings directly by Ralph Bakshi, who wanted to use Led Zeppelin for the soundtrack, but was refused because then the soundtrack album couldn't be released on fantasy records. Middle-earth enterprises, the company he formed for those rights, still holds the rights for the vast film and merchandising empire based around Tolkien's books. The stand-off continued until 1975, when David Gaffin had the silent records offered to buy foggy-ty's contract from fantasy,

at least for North America. Fantasy still released his music everywhere else.

Fuckity's self-titled first-the-salam album was his first album of new materials in 1971.

The song later became a bigger UK hit for status quo, but the album was unsuccessful,

“both critically and commercially. And Fuckity later said a bit,”

by the time I entered my 30s I was slowly drying up. I kept frying and it kept coming out lousy. Suddenly I began to feel I could no more make a hit record than the guy down the street running a jackhammer. Creatively it went away and I knew it was gone and that was a terrible

thing for someone who had been doing so well. He recorded a second album for Salem titled Who Do.

For the label rejected it and Fuckity agreed it was not worth releasing and had the tapes destroyed. He would not release another record for a decade. That decade was mostly spent in litigation. Partly this was because the tech shelter corporation into which the group had been having their royalties paid suddenly disappeared, as corporations like that are want to do. And the group members had to spend years trying to get their money back.

And part of it was that Fuckity still felt tied up with fantasy records because they still had the foreign minds to his new music. And by now he absolutely hated them and saw his aunts in particular. The band's permission was needed for any use of Credence's music and TV or films, and for any me packaging of it on various artists' compilations. And the other three members, who had also lost all their money, and have had less of it to start with than he had

thanks to his songwriting royalties, were quite keen to have their old records made money for them.

“If they could get 100 grand for Credence's song being used in a feature film, my wouldn't they?”

But junk kept feet to and get. Partly to preserve the integrity of his art, but partly because he didn't want Zanz making another penny off his work. These pressures broke down the relationship between Fuckity and the other three and rapidly. At the start of the 80s there was still at least vaguely friendly. They'd had to work together to try to reclaim some of their money. And there was even talk

of a reunion which came to nothing. They even played together twice at their high school reunion, doing a set of the material that played as the blue velvet. And at Tom Fuckity's

second wedding. But the fact that the other three wanted to make more money from their old work,

“while John was vetoing it, inevitably made them take common cause with soil Zanz.”

In the early 80s Fuckity gave up his veto on the recording's use, under pressure from the other three. And we complained bitterly about how his work was then misused in films and commercials. He also, to finally free himself from any connection to fantasy whatsoever, give up all his royalties to his fantasy bank catalogue. Meaning that from the early 80s on he didn't make a penny from those recordings, rather than songwriting royalties. In return

for no longer being sent to fantasy outside North America. Finally free of the contract he released

an album "Centifield", on which like his previous two albums he played every instrument himself. The album was a massive hit making number one on the chart, but for two further sets of legal problems. The first came with a song about a dancing pig, titled "Zanz Can't Dance." Little Billy can work on his round, put him in new Ukraine for the little big fantasy. "Friends, please, but it's the old money." "What's he going on with my little brother?"

"Friends, please, but it's the old money." "What's he going on with my little brother?" "What's he going on with my little brother?" Shortly after release, after legal advice, that song was changed to "Vance Can't Dance" and they album be issued. But Fogity was still sued by Zanz for defamation over the song. When Zanz died in 2014, Fogity's response was to post the video for the song to Facebook.

The other song that caused the eagle trouble was the top 10 single the old man down the road. , Zanz sued Fogity over that track, claiming that it was plagiarised

He argued that Fogity had self plagiarised, and that therefore Zanz owned a new song.

“This went to court, and Fogity was able convincingly to demonstrate that the two songs were”

different, and that the resemblance was just because he was jumpfogity, and all his songs sounded like jumpfogity songs. He was also later able to recover the cost of the lawsuit from Zanz. Setting a legal precedent about the grounds for Fogity's law suits. The publicity for these law suits, and Fogity's claims about Zanz, was not good for the other band members, who by this point went out communicating with John almost solely by a letter.

Tom Boto is, saying in part, "You have sabotaged and severely damaged my career and my source of income. Because you gave up your fantasy abilities, you felt you had nothing to lose by

blasting soul, fantasy and credence in the press and on the radio. Not only in San Francisco,

but in Los Angeles, New York, all over the U.S. and in other countries."

“The problem is, Doug Stewart and I haven't given up our share of the royalties,”

and by hurting fantasy's image, you have severely damaged the royalty income that Doug Stewart and I were entitled to. You had no right to say those things, it's not your group. We own it, we own the name and advance to the royalty income. The Fogity Brothers stopped speaking to each other, and didn't even properly reconcile when Tom Fogity was dying of an AIDS-related illness in 1990. In one of their last

conversations when Tom was dying, he told John that Soul Zanz was his best friend. Fogity meanwhile has repeated the stated that Cook or Clifford were actually the ones who brought the similarity between the two songs' advances attention and suggested he sue over them. Something both meant and vehemently denied. Fogity's follow-up album, I have the Zumbi, was not the great success that centerfield was,

either commercially or critically. And when he taught it promoted, he aggravated audiences by only playing material from his two recent albums, refusing to play the creed and songs because fantasy still had the publishing. Eventually he started occasionally adding the songs into his setlist,

“after Bob Dylan told him, "If you don't start doing it, people are going to only remember”

proud Mary as a Tina Turner song, but he still wouldn't regularly play creed in his material in his show until the '90s. After I have the Zumbi, there was another 10-year break in Fogity's solo releases. This one caused partly by his increased drinking. He had a severe alcohol problem at one point, though he got it under control, and partly because of a sense of perfectionism. Fogity has released seven albums in the last 39 years, but only three albums of new material.

In 1997, 2004, and 2007. The 2007 album was actually on fantasy records. The Zumbi sold the label and it was bought by Concord music, a company owned by the sitcom writer producer Norman Leia, and they negotiated a contract with Fogity which would start

them paying royalties on his creed and records again. After that, he released a second blue

bridge range as album of country covers, an album titled "Rota Song for Everyone" where he duets with various celebrities like Kid Rock and the Food Fighters, on versions of his old creed and songs. Fogity's factory, an album of remakes of his old hits made with his kids throwing locked down. And this year's Legacy The Credence Clear What We're Available Years, which he'd tried and failed to persuade the record label to subtitle Taylor's version,

because like Taylor Swift, it's a collection of note-for-note sound like remakes of the old records. His closest possible to how this sounded originally, made because he doesn't own the old recordings. Though in this case, given that it's released through Concord, the same company still owns the Credence Masters. Once suspected his problem isn't with who owns them, as much as with who else would profit from them. The new record is a jump-fogity solo record

and he'll get all the performance royalties, while three quarters of the Credence Performance royalties would go to his old fanmates. Tumfogity of course died tragically young, but Cook and Clifford continued performing as Credence Clear What We visited, from 1995 until 2020. A part from a period where John Fogity was suing the moment I used of the name, and they had to perform as Cosmos Factory. In 1993, when the group

were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Cook and Clifford turned up expecting to play, but were informed that Fogity was refusing to play with them because they sided with fantasy records over him. And Fogity instead performed the Credence songs with an old star Jamban,

more than 50 years after he signed it away. And at 80 years old, he finally has most

“of what he spent the vast majority of his adult life fighting for, valuing his integrity,”

more than his relationship with his brother-in-law, his bandmates. Stu Cook and Doug Clifford

on the other hand performed together in various forms often on for 70 years.

Regarding any problems they had with their confacts as being essentially trivia. Both attitudes

“have something to say for them. And both of our authentic expressions of who those people are,”

but they're clearly incompatible. And what's miraculous in retrospect is not the Credence split-up so soon after their success, but that they lasted together long enough to become successful at all. And that the combination produced as many tracks as it did.

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