2nd Time Around Music at the Beach

Turn up your radio and forget about the snow! Join me at 2pm today (1/24) on 92.7FM for 4 uninterrupted sets from Eastern Shore MD favorites, Bird Dog & the Road Kings! You can also stream LIVE at wgmd.com. You're gonna LOVE these guys. Special thanks to Bethany Blues for keeping the band & the live audience well fed!

John Fogerty found Creedence's signature sound during a soundcheck in San Francisco - then the stage manager pulled the plug.

Creedence Clearwater Revival had been grinding for years without a distinctive sound. They'd started as the Blue Velvets in the late '50s, playing covers at school dances. By 1968, they'd released their debut album, but even that felt like they were still searching. "Suzie Q" had made the charts, but it was a cover.

They'd proven they could play. They hadn't yet proven who they were.

John Fogerty knew what he wanted - a mythical southern world pulled from old movies like Swamp Water, the Mississippi River world of Mark Twain, Bo Diddley's darkness. But dreaming up a concept and actually capturing it in music were two different things.

Then came a sound check at the Avalon Ballroom in San Francisco.

The band was last on the bill, which meant they were first to sound check. Everyone else had finished and left. The venue wanted them to get it over with and leave their equipment so they could open the doors.

They'd just taken delivery of new Kustom amps - solid-state transistor amplifiers that most guitarists had written off as dead-sounding. Fantasy Records owner Saul Zaentz had taken out a loan against his car just so the band could afford them. John didn't care what other guitarists thought. The Kustoms had what he called "the killer vibrato of all time."

John plugged in his Rickenbacker and started playing - probably "I Put a Spell on You" in the key of E. The Kustom's vibrato warbled through the empty venue, swampy and trembling.

Then something hit him.

Struck by "a bolt of inspiration" while playing that vibrato E chord, John started going "Mmmmmmm nahrnahr," yelling sounds that weren't even words yet.

He spun around. "Doug, just give me this 'Doom dat doom bap.'" He yelled at Stu: "Just play in E! Play in E!"

They jammed. John was screaming nonsense vowels and consonants, random sounds that started leading somewhere.

He was inspired, really turned on, ignited. This was going to turn into a song. He could feel it.

The mythical concept he'd been dreaming up had just converged with this burst of energy.

That burst was "Born on the Bayou."

Until... Suddenly everything stopped. John's amp went dead.

The stage manager had pulled the plug.

"You gotta get outta here," he said. "Let's face it: this is a waste of time. You're not goin' anywhere, anyway."

But John already knew what he had.

The song became the flip side of "Proud Mary." When Bayou Country dropped in February 1969 and hit number seven, it changed their lives. Doug Clifford called it his favorite Creedence tune - "I can't tell you how much fun that song is to play. It's almost as good as s*x. I said almost." Years later, when John played those opening notes live, the crowd went wild.

The music even fooled people into thinking these four guys from El Cerrito, California were from deep in the swamp. Steve Cropper and Duck Dunn from Booker T. & the M.G.'s tried to figure out which Louisiana town John was from.

When they learned John was from California, Duck said they broke his records.

But that night at the Avalon, when the stage manager pulled the plug and told John they were going nowhere?

John glared at him. "Oh yeah, buddy? You give me one year and I'll show you who's not goin' anywhere!"

"Well, a year later we couldn't even play that place," John said. "They couldn't afford us."

(Sourced from Fortunate Son: My Life, My Music by John Fogerty, 2015, and Bad Moon Rising: The Unauthorized History of Creedence Clearwater Revival by Hank Bordowitz, 2007)