There is no doubt that John Fogerty is rightly regarded as one of America’s greatest ever songwriters, and with CCR had nine top 10 singles and eight gold albums between 1968 and 1972. His falling out with the rest of the band caused their demise, while he also had major issues with the boss of Fantasy Records, Saul Zaentz, which led not only to lawsuits but the loss of royalties on his own material. It took until 2023 for Fogerty to get back the rights to the CCR Global catalogue, after 50 years of fighting for them, and to celebrate he has now released this newly recorded set of CCR classics.
20 songs, classics all, but the question with this has to be why? He is nearly 80 years old now, and although his voice is truly remarkable given his age, why would we want to hear John covering material he first recorded more than 50 years ago? The question is logical, as Spock might say, but this material is just so good that Fogerty is easily forgiven. It starts with “Up Around The Bend” and finishes with “Fortunate Son”, while in between we have the likes of “Proud Mary”, “Have You Ever Seen The Rain”, “Green River” and so many more. It may be an album which will only appeal to completists, as the rest of us have the original versions, but just playing this is guaranteed to make anyone smile.
Rating: 8/10
Links:
https://johnfogerty.com/