The Big Easy List: Proud Mary

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Yeah, here’s one that hopefully TeamFreak had on his list of songs that reference New Orleans. This is also one of those that can have a lot of versions for you to know. But this time, I’m sticking with the original. Proud Mary - Creedence Clearwater Revival Goodbye “300 club” for the covers. This one has over four hundred listed. Yes, including that smokehouse version from Ike and Tina Turner (who learned it from Checkmate Ltd.)…and a not-nearly-as-bad-as-you-might-think version from Conway Twitty. (A legitimate cover, not “Hello, Mary, nice to see you, it’s been a long time.” ) How does a guy from California capture the spirit and feel of river life in New Orleans so, so well? You know, there are people who think Creedence Clearwater Revival was from the south. South San Francisco, maybe. No, John Fogerty just has the voice and the style for things like this. The song was about a woman named Mary who, like Donna Summer said years later, worked hard for the money. The idea of leaving a “good job” was inspired by Fogerty getting out of the Army National Guard. (Dangerous job in the 60s, with the way all the National Guard units got called up to Vietnam. ) And, oh, by the way, there really was a riverboat (the “big wheel” reference being about the paddle wheel boats) in Memphis named the Proud Mary that went back to 1928, so it wasn’t named after this song. If Fogerty knew that, I don’t know. What I do know is that this is a gem of a classic song. Proud Mary Written by John C. Fogerty Recorded by Creedence Clearwater Revival From Bayou Country, 1968 NEW ORLEANS LYRICS: Cleaned a lot of plates in Memphis, pumped a lot of pain down in New Orleans