Willy and the Poor Boys
Willy and the Poor Boys is the fourth studio album by American rock band Creedence Clearwater Revival, released on October 29, 1969, by Fantasy Records. It was the last of three studio albums the band released that year, arriving just three months after Green River.[6] In 2020, Rolling Stone ranked the album number 193 on its list of the "500 Greatest Albums of All Time".
Willy and the Poor Boys
Overview[edit]
The album features the songs "Down on the Corner", from which the album got its name, and "Fortunate Son", which is a well-known protest song.[7] Creedence also released its own version of "Cotton Fields" on this album, which reached the #1 position in Mexico.[8]
The album was planned to be formed around a concept introduced in "Down on the Corner", with Creedence taking on the identity of an old-time jug band called "Willy and The Poor Boys". However, this was dropped rather quickly, except for the cover, where the band remains in character.
Background[edit]
By the fall of 1969, Creedence Clearwater Revival was one of the most popular rock bands in the world, having scored three consecutive #2 singles and the #1 album Green River. In addition, the group had performed at the landmark Woodstock Festival in August and made several high-profile television appearances, including The Ed Sullivan Show. Bandleader and songwriter John Fogerty had assumed control of the band after several years of futility, but, despite their growing success, the other members – bassist Stu Cook, drummer Doug Clifford and guitarist Tom Fogerty, John's older brother – began to chafe under Fogerty's leadership. In 1969, the band released three full-length albums while also fulfilling touring commitments. "That was a bit of overkill and I never did understand that," Clifford stated to Jeb Wright of Goldmine in 2013, "Fogerty told us that if we were ever off the charts, then we would be forgotten... To make it worse, it might sound funny, but we had double-sided hits, and that was kind of a curse, as we were burning through material twice as fast. If we'd spread it out, we would not have had to put out three albums in one year." On that point, Fogerty told Guitar World's Harold Steinblatt in 1998, "Everyone advised me against putting out great B-sides. They'd tell me I was wasting potential hits. And I looked at them and said, 'Baloney. Look at the Beatles. Look at Elvis. It's the quickest way to show them all that good music."