Pause and Rewind: This Month in Music

The Date: September 1969

The Album: Willie and the Poor Boys by Creedence Clearwater Revival 

For my second month of album reviews, I will be reviewing a slightly lesser known album, Willie and the Poorboys by Creedence Clearwater Revival. In the summer of 1969, Creedence Clearwater Revival was at their peak as a band. They’d already released two other popular albums that year, and had just performed at the legendary Woodstock Festival. Instead of taking a break, they continued to make music, and created what I consider to be their best work: Willie and the Poorboys.

An important thing about this album is the atmosphere. As you can tell from the album cover, the band is playing music on the street, which is referenced in the first song, “Down on the Corner”. The song is a country-rock jam with lyrics about the fictional Willie and the Poorboys playing for people on the corner of the street. That’s the vibe that the band goes for on this album, a raw music celebration, and they hit it perfectly. One of the weirdest songs that Creedence Clearwater Revival’s lead singer, John Fogerty, has ever written is “It Came out of the Sky”. The song is about a farmer in Illinois seeing a UFO.“Cotton Fields" puts a more modern spin on the legendary blues and folk artist, Leadbelly, with great harmonies on the country classic. “Poorboy Shuffle” and “Feelin Blue” close out the record’s first side, and while I can’t call the tracks essential, they help develop the raw vibe of “Willie and the Poor Boys”. 

Kicking off side two is "Fortunate Son”, the song that helped define Creedence Clearwater Revival, and what I consider to be their best song. Fogerty sings about modern struggles for the average person at the time, like the Vietnam war, over a great guitar riff. The band goes back to a country style on “Don’t Look Now,” and while I don’t love Fogerty’s sorrowful voice on this track, it far from ruins the album for me. After that, there is another Leadbelly cover, this time “Midnight Special”. This was a song that Leadbelly learned in prison, and the band once again puts a modern spin on it. The track would end up becoming one of this album’s biggest hits. “Side O’ the Road” is an instrumental jam, once again contributing to the literal “Side Of the Road” atmosphere of the record. Finally, “Effigy” closes out the album with an apocalyptic instrumental and haunting harmonies, ending this masterpiece of an album.

Overall, Willie and the Poorboys is the band of Creedence Clearwater Revival making an outstanding album while they were at the peak of their powers. I consider it their best album because of the raw atmosphere that I’ve mentioned so many times. In 1969, the world was changing, but Creedence Clearwater Revival was continuing to make great music.