Hit Parade | Music History and Music Trivia - The Bad Moon on the Rise Edition

Slate Culture Feed

Slate Podcasts

Music, Tv & Film, Arts

4.2 • 2K Ratings

🗓️ 28 February 2019

⏱️ 60 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

In just a couple of years, Creedence Clearwater Revival generated one of the most amazing runs of hits in

American pop history: from “Proud Mary” to “Green River,” “Bad Moon Rising” to “Travelin’ Band.”

Reportedly, they even outsold the Beatles in America in 1969. But for all their success with those John

Fogerty–penned classics, CCR never held the No. 1 spot on the Hot 100. All of those hits were No. 2s: a

dubious Billboard chart record they hold to this day, for most No. 2s without a No. 1. True, it was the late ’60s,

and CCR had the bad luck to be competing with such chart titans as Paul Simon and Sly Stone…but

sometimes they were held back by No. 1 songs that are barely remembered today. In this episode of Hit

Parade, we break down the sequence of events that relegated CCR—a future first-ballot Rock and Roll Hall of

Fame band—to the charts’ permanent runner-up slot.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	You're listening Ad-Free on Amazon Music.
0:14.7	Welcome to Hit Parade, a podcast of Pop Chart History from Slate magazine Magazine about the hits from coast to coast.
0:22.4	I'm Chris Malanfi, chart analyst, pop critic, and writer of Slate's Why Is This Song Number
0:27.8	One series? On today's show, 50 years ago this month, in February of 1969, a Roots Rock
0:36.9	single broke into the top ten on the charts.
0:40.2	A song that's now so woven
0:42.2	into the fabric of classic rock,
0:44.6	it's almost hard to believe
0:46.2	it was ever a new hit
0:48.1	only half a century ago.
0:51.2	Maybe you'll keep on pointing,
1:04.2	crowd mirror, keep on boy. ago. It was the first top ten for a four-man
1:07.2	from California who you could have sworn were from Bayou Country. Indeed,
1:13.5	the album that spawned this song, Proud Mary, was even called Bayou Country. But Credence
1:21.1	Clearwater Revival, a swamp rock band led by the Berkeley-born El Cerrito-raised singer-songwriter John Fogarty
1:29.5	were, in a way, from everywhere and nowhere. Their sound encompassed rock, blues, country,
1:38.0	folk, R&B, and roots music. They were the sound of American pop at the twilight of the 1960s.
1:50.0	By March of 69, proud Mary would reach its Billboard Hot 100 peak of number two. That's an excellent performance for the first big hit by a still new rock band.
2:06.5	But that chart position, number two, would prove to be a familiar one for Credence and a bit of a curse.
2:14.8	Don't go around tonight.
2:16.6	Let's follow take your life. Yeah. and a bit of a curse.
2:33.4	From 1969 through 1971, CCR generated one of the most amazing streaks of classic pop hits ever generated by a rock and roll band,
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Slate Podcasts, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Slate Podcasts and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.