Point of debate: Creedence Clearwater Revival

[Tommy_Carcetti]

The issue: Should Creedence Clearwater Revivial be classified as "Southern Rock" even though the band itself was not based in the South?

I'll take both argument and rebuttal. Two minutes for each side.

[Tuesday Afternoon]

1. CCR is not Southern Rock...according to Wiki:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Southern_rock_bands

C
Canned Heat
Charlie Daniels Band
Circus of Power
Confederate Railroad
Cross Canadian Ragweed

[DBoon]

28. Canned Heat?

Canned Heat is (was) Southern Rock?

[BeachBaby]

2. It's not about location, it's about genre.

I would compare it to Motown - which technically is Detroit, and yet Philly is notorious for that style of music.

[Tuesday Afternoon]

3. Philly is its own genre

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philly_Sound

Philadelphia (or Philly) soul, sometimes called the Philadelphia Sound or Sweet Philly, is a style of soul music characterized by funk influences and lush instrumental arrangements, often featuring sweeping strings and piercing horns. The subtle sound of a glockenspiel can often be heard in the background of philly soul songs. The genre laid the groundwork for Disco and what are now considered Quiet Storm and smooth jazz by fusing the R & B rhythm sections of the 1960s with the Pop Vocal tradition, and featuring a slightly more pronounced Jazz influence in its melodic structures and arrangements.

[Resuscitated Ethics]

4. Southern California, maybe

Little Feat southern rock? Same answer--

Southern rockers may dig CCR and Feat, but those California dudes are on a different mojo plane. They don't understand the fear of midnight wild boars hollering from the swamps. So the West Coasters may end up on the mix tapes, but they aren't southern rock IMO.

[old mark]

10. CCR was from Northern Cal, near Richmond, etc. by the old ship yards.

Started as a real garage band, had shorter hair by the stanbdard of the day because at least some of them were in the National Guard to avoid the draft.

mark

[Resuscitated Ethics]

14. Thanks for geography lesson

it's all a LA mashup to me.

I love Fortunate Son (I ain't no Senator's son!)

I also love the whole Blue Moon Swamp record despite some of the precious regionalisms in songs like Jelly-Roll. If from anybody but Fogerty that kind of schmaltz wouldn't last in my house.

[old mark]

15. Me, too. They are still good to listen to, unlike some of the

other bands of the period.
FWIW, their older materiel is owned by their first manager. They get NO royalties from most of the music they wrote and recorded.
They got screwed big.
mark

[Resuscitated Ethics]

29. sometimes when a band does a TV commercial

like DEVO swiffer spot they are actually getting rights back from bad deals long ago according to a Mothersbough interview I glommed from somewhere DEVO-weblike.
Fogerty for the longest time was battling the "Creedence sound" that he couldn't perform, not just the songs. Centerfield was huge for him because it sounded Creedencey and he didn't get sued.

"Southern Rock" is a twisted admans term like "the sixties" that has no benefit except to sell copies of Radar Love mixed with Skynrd/Hatchet/some Allmans etc.

"Southern Fried Rock" is for frat chicks to puke grain punch to BTW.

[Orsino]

5. Insufficiently long guitar solos. Disqualified.

Also, they didn't say "lawd" enough.

[Sebastian Doyle]

16. The CCR versions of "Susie Q" and "I Heard it Through the Grapevine"

Could compete with Free Bird or any other Southern Rock anthem in terms of ridiculous length. Except it's one guitar playing the solo, and not three, like a lot of the Southern bands did it.

[Sequoia]

20. A number of years ago there was a radio station in S. Cal

which played that Grapevine song over and over and over and over again...all day long. It might've been in Bakersville since the "Grapevine" (the big hill you gotta go up on I5)from Los Angeles to Bakersville and on to Hwy 99 and Hwy 41 which lead you to the gates of hell...,NO...YOSEMITE NATIONAL PARK. And we could get that station in the park too.

[Orsino]

22. Yes. Two songs, though, don't make CCR Southern rock.

To qualify, the band would have to shove overlong solos into nearly every track.

[Sebastian Doyle]

23. They probably would have, if they had been on the scene only a few years later.

Creedence were a "singles" band in a time when AM radio still played music, even GOOD music, because FM wasn't really widely used yet. Unfortunately AM radio stations hated to play anything over 3 minutes long. So, aside from the two songs previously mentioned, and a few other deep album cuts, CCR became masters of the three minute single.

If their debut album had been 4 or 5 years later, it probably would have been more designed for the FM radio format, and more longer songs with solos.

Either way, they were no doubt a serious influence on Southern Rock, as well as on your blue jeans wearing all American rockers like Bruce Springsteen & John Mellencamp. And Tom Petty, who falls somewhere in between those two labels.

Labeling genres of music is something I always thought was kinda silly anyway. Music is either good, or it isn't. Other than that, who gives a shit what you call it?

[Orsino]

25. They influenced almost any decent rock band.

Anyone who wasn't listening was missing out.

[ProfessorGAC]

19. No Twin Guitar Leads Either

So, they're DOUBLE DQ'd.
GAC

[XemaSab]

31. Oh lawd, stuck in Lodi agin....

:cry:

[HopeHoops]

6. Ah, but it does have the word "Revival" in the name. That sounds Southern.

[Tuesday Afternoon]

8. Neil Diamond and Johnny Cash --

http://www.youtube.com/v/zCgeWUKcumA&hl=en&fs=1

[raccoon]

7. I think it should be. Those guys, esp. John Fogarty, SHOULD HAVE BEEN from Louisiana. nt

[Jamastiene]

18. That would have been perfect, wouldn't it?

Once again, you and I are thinking alike. Great minds and all. ;)

[kwassa]

9. That designation would be an insult to CCR

dragging it into that ignominious backwater featureless swamp called Southern Rock.

[Tuesday Afternoon]

11. Works for me. I like the CCR sound but, it is not Southern Rock...

no matter how you describe it.

[Tommy_Carcetti]

12. Even with "Born on the Bayou"? "Proud Mary"?

Just asking.

[Tuesday Afternoon]

13. I will give you this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_rock

1950s and 1960s – origins
Rock music's origins lie mostly in the music of Southerners, and many stars from the first wave of 1950s rock and roll such as Elvis Presley, Little Richard, Bo Diddley and Jerry Lee Lewis hailed from the Deep South. But the British Invasion, and the rise of folk rock and psychedelic rock in the middle 1960s, shifted the focus of new rock music away from the rural south and to large cities like Liverpool, London, Los Angeles, New York City, and San Francisco.

In the late 1960s, traditionalists such as Creedence Clearwater Revival (from Northern California), and The Band (Canadian, though drummer Levon Helm is a native Arkansan) revived interest in the roots of rock. See Muscle Shoals Music.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I think they respected the sound and therefore are true to it and honor it.
Southerners LOVE CCR but, _I_ (and who the fuck am I?) do not consider them to be Southern Rock.

[auburngrad82]

17. They're not "southern rock" but their sound has kind of a "swamp music" feel

Sort of a New Orleans R&B vibe.

Little Feat is another one with the New Orleans feel.

[harmonicon]

21. no

[Taverner]

24. Well - I would argue it's 'Proto-Southern Rock"

Since there really wasn't a Southern Rock distinction at the time. Even the Allman Brothers was considered a blues band.

[CreekDog]

26. did you ever stop to think that Southern Rock was copying CCR?

or trying? :shrug:

[no name no slogan]

27. CCR predated Southern Rock

Most music scholars don't date the beginning of Southern Rock until 1969, the year the Allman Brothers (the touchstone Southern Rock band) broke out.

By then CCR had been recording and touring for a number of years.

If CCR were around today, they'd be classified as "Americana".

[Radical Activist]

30. In the beginning all rock was southern.

Elvis, Lewis, Fats, Haley.
It was only after rock spread that sub-genres had to be defined.