Creedence Clearwater Revival ( B2 )

 

History

Early career: 1959–1968

John Fogerty, Doug Clifford, and Stu Cook met at Portola Junior High School in El Cerrito, California. Calling themselves the Blue Velvets, the trio played instrumentals and "jukebox standards", and backed John's older brother Tom at recordings and performances before he joined the band. In 1964 they signed with Fantasy Records, an independent jazz label in San Francisco. For the band's first release, Fantasy co-owner Max Weiss renamed the group the Golliwogs (after the children's literary character, Golliwogg). Bandmembers' roles changed during this period: Cook switched from piano to bass guitar and Tom Fogerty from lead vocals to rhythm guitar; John became the band's lead vocalist and primary songwriter. In Tom's words: "I could sing, but John had a sound!"

In 1966, Fogerty and Clifford were conscripted into the U.S. armed forces; Fogerty joined the U.S. Army Reserve while Clifford joined the U.S. Coast Guard Reserve. Speaking of his experience in the US Army Fogerty has said: "I would become delirious and go into a trance. And I started narrating this story to myself, which was the song "Porterville"."

In 1967, Saul Zaentz bought Fantasy Records and offered the band a chance to record a full-length album. He changed their name from the original "Blue Velvets" to "the Golliwogs", which the band hated from day one. The band then decided on their own name, Creedence Clearwater Revival (CCR), which they took in January 1968. According to interviews with band members twenty years later, the name's elements came from three sources: Tom Fogerty's friend Credence Newball, whose name they changed to form the word Creedence (as in creed); a television commercial for Olympia Brewing Company ("clear water"); and the four members' renewed commitment to their band.^[ Rejected contenders for the band's name included "Muddy Rabbit", "Gossamer Wump", and "Creedence Nuball and the Ruby", however, the last was the starting point from which the band derived their final name. Cook described the name as "weirder than Buffalo Springfield or Jefferson Airplane."

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