Cdfe

After knocking out an astonishing amount of work in just three years, CCR released their final album MARDI GRAS in 1971. In retrospect, it was probably time for them to disband. Interpersonal tensions had heightened, and all three members were pulling in different directions. These problems had taken their artistic toll on John Fogerty, whose songs no longer bore quite the same carefree, easy-as-falling-off-a-log feel as they had before…

Opening slowly with the dark, swampy "Born on the Bayou," Bayou Country reveals an assured Creedence Clearwater Revival, a band that has found its voice between their first and second album. It's not just that "Born on the Bayou" announces that CCR has discovered its sound – it reveals the extent of John Fogerty's myth-making. With this song, he sketches out his persona; it makes him sound as if he crawled out of the backwoods of Louisiana instead of being a native San Franciscan…

It could be argued that Creedence Clearwater Revival were the greatest American rock & roll band, and one convincing argument would be that no other of their peers had such a commanding grasp on a variety of American music and could synthesize them in such a bracingly original fashion. It's that synthesis that makes a genre-specific compilation like Creedence Country so difficult to pull off – it's hard to single out one strand from that mix, particularly since CCR didn't so much perform country as absorb its influence…