Creedence Clearwater Revival - Creedence Clearwater Revival

Nowadays, Creedence Clearwater Revival is known for the iconic brand of swamp rock they perfected. A mix of electric blues, knife-concise songcraft and fuzzy guitar tones that somehow evoked hot summers in the wetlands of the American south to a near-perfect degree. Perfect evocation wouldn't have fit, either; CCR was a natural creature, with rough-hewn recordings showing warts and all.

It's strange, then, knowing the archetypal sonic image of CCR, to encounter their self-titled debut album for the first time. The band, making their first recording under their soon-to-be-legendary moniker after years as the Golliwogs, appears to be circling their signature sound without finding it yet. Here, CCR is unrefined (ironic, given how raw their later hits sound, but in retrospect there is tremendous refinement in evidence in their greatest songs.)

The album is loosest when they're reinterpreting others' songs, as they do on three tracks here. They unleash an eight-minute cover of "Susie Q" that would fit at home in a Quicksilver Messenger Service album, fitting considering the San Francisco scene they shared. Their cover of Screamin' Jay Hawkins' "I Put a Spell on You" takes the manic energy Hawkins erupted through his maniacal vocal and transport it to writhing guitars. Lastly, Wilson Pickett's "Ninety-Nine and a Half" rocks out to a groovin' bluesy boogie. The covers don't really relate to a common sound except for a generic classic rock tone, where the guitar solos sound clarion clear in the higher registers but chunky and thick in the chords.

That sound is also where they're writing the originals, like Fogerty's straight-up blues "Get Down Woman." It's a good track, but its just like any other electric blues record from the '60s, there's nothing exceptional about it. The same could be said for "The Working Man" except that would be short-shrifting its lyrics, which move the typical blues lyrics closer to the common-man voice Fogerty would develop for later CCR hits.

The first track on Creedence Clearwater Revival to carve out a unique sound is, "Porterville." It's got the bass surging deep underground on the track, beneath a wiry-thin guitar that snakes behind and around Fogerty's passionate vocals and bright, clear hand percussion. The sound isn't the trademark CCR sound, but it's closer and it's still a great sound. Following it comes a slice of psychedelic rock, appropriately titled "Gloomy," replete with backwards guitars and sound effects. It's a sound they can manage well, but without depth.

Maybe knowing where they were headed colors my judgment of where they were before, but much of Creedence Clearwater Revival is a by-the-numbers classic rock album circa 1968. It's easy, in hindsight, to call this the sound of a band looking for its hook. The truth is it's a good album, but it's also not the band I came looking for at the beginning of their chronology. By the time "Walking on the Water" brings things to a close with Jefferson Airplane-like militance, it strikes me that this album is more reflective of 1968 than Creedence. So it'll likely stay as a document of the sound of a time in my mind, instead of the sound of a unique band. There's nothing wrong with that; I'll just have to go on to the next album.

Jeff Beck - Truth

Jeff Beck isn't your typical guitar god. I've been digging into classic rock for years now, and though his name pops up again and again it's taken me a while to finally arrive at an album with his name on it. The album in question, Truth, was his commercial breakthrough and is part of a tide of albums that took rock's love affair with the blues and turned up the sonic attack, leading the charge in the evolution towards heavy metal. Other albums in that group? Oh, just the early work of Led Zeppelin and Cream. You know... albums that are generally much higher on the Classic Rock journey hitlist.

I imagine Beck has remained more of an enigma because he is a natural sideman. He doesn't sing lead on Truth, that would be Rod Stewart. Beck, therefore, is like a classic rock version of a jazz musician. His name is on the album, but he's more than willing to run his band like a quartet. On an album of rock songs, not instrumentals (there are only two here), how often is the guitarist the spotlight? Not often. This leads to this sense of supremely qualified anonymity around Beck. Oh, one more bit about the band: the bassist on the album is Ronnie Wood, who later joined Stewart in his band Faces before joining a band called the Rolling Stones in the '70s. There's some serious talent here. I should have heard this album sooner.

While Stewart sings over some heavy blues-rock riffs, Beck steps in often with tasteful power. He is a perfect compliment for Stewart; there aren't lulls in the music between lyrics. Songs like "Let Me Love You" and "Morning Dew" have an unending propulsion in the back-and-forth between Stewart's rasping voice and Beck's wailing guitar. The pulse slows for Willie Dixon's "You Shook Me", a blues cover recorded a year before Led Zeppelin put their cover on their debut album (and instigated a feud between Beck and his ex-Yardbirds mate Jimmy Page, who incidentally appears later on the album.) Beck's cover is brief, though, a quick burst of fiery down-tempo blues where Led Zeppelin lets the song boil over six minutes in length.

The next song takes Truth far from the proto-heavy metal rock and turns headlong straight into the Beck-as-jazz-ringleader metaphor. The band transforms the Kern/Hammerstein standard "Ol' Man River" into a simmering blues dirge. Stewart gives a heartfelt rock vocal on par with Janis Joplin's more famous cover of Gershwin's "Summertime" while Wood's bass plumbs the depth of the famous showtune's melody over epic tumbling timpani courtesy of The Who's Keith Moon. It's a stunner of a cover, and easily feels like the classic rock version of jazz's tradition of reinterpreting classic standards.

Following the covers train, Beck turns the clock back even further to traditional folk songs with a delicate acoustic "Greensleeves." Then, after an original blues track, turns to classical reinterpretation with "Beck's Bolero." This single was recorded before the rest of the album proper, and features an entirely different all-star classic rock lineup. Keith Moon returns to bang out the bolero rhythm with increasing intensity while Beck trades guitar licks with Jimmy Page as dual lead guitars (again, recorded before their feud.) The track builds quickly into a fuzz-laden freakout, and I suppose what it lacks in musicality it makes up for influence. "Beck's Bolero" gets credit from many sources for being a defining development in both heavy metal and progressive rock, so my misgivings aren't without respect. It's a bit of a flatly-recorded mess, but who am I to argue with its status as groundbreaker?

After a lengthy excursion with straight blues in "Blues Deluxe", Beck ends with another Willie Dixon cover, "I Ain't Superstitious." This was the one track from Truth I'd heard prior to the rest of the album (it was one of Rolling Stone's 100 Greatest Guitar Songs) and it's a rollicking good time. It's also the one vocal number where Beck actually overtakes Stewart's singing consistently; the words just provide the form over which Beck's guitar whelps and whines all over the song.

The 2006 re-issue has six bonus tracks, featured in the Lala widget but which I won't touch here. At it's core, Truth is a worthy entry in the classic rock canon. If it isn't as ensconced in my mind like Led Zeppelin's debut, well I'm giving it time. It's a late entry, but every bit as worthy.