Willy & the Poor Boys is just a fun record, perhaps the breeziest album Creedence Clearwater Revival ever made. Apart from the eerie minor-key closer “Effigy” (one of John Fogerty’s most haunting numbers), there is little of the doom that colored Green River. Fogerty’s rage remains, blazing to the forefront on the track “Fortunate Son,” a working-class protest song that cuts harder than any of the explicit Vietnam protest songs of the era, which is one of the reasons that it hasn’t aged where its peers have. Also, there’s that unbridled vocal from Fogerty and the ferocious playing on CCR, which both sound fresh as they did upon release.
“Fortunate Son” is one of the greatest, hardest rock & rollers ever cut, so it might seem to be out of step with an album that is pretty laid-back and friendly, but there’s that elemental joy that by late ’69 was one of CCR’s main trademarks. That joy that runs throughout the album, from the gleeful single “Down on the Corner” and the lazy jugband blues of “Poorboy Shuffle” through the great slow blues jam “Feelin’ Blue” to the great rockabilly spiritual “Don’t Look Now,” one of Fogerty’s overlooked recording gems.
This is an anti-establishment song of defiance, both anti-Washington and against the Vietnam War. John Fogerty and Doug Clifford (drummer) both enlisted in the Army Reserves in 1966 (to avoid being drafted and shipped to Vietnam) and were discharged in 1968 after serving their military commitments.
John Fogerty: The thoughts behind this song – it was a lot of anger. So it was the Vietnam War going on… Now I was drafted and they’re making me fight, and no one has actually defined why. So this was all boiling inside of me and I sat down on the edge of my bed and out came “It ain’t me, it ain’t me, I ain’t no senator’s son!” You know, it took about 20 minutes to write the song
“The song speaks more to the unfairness of class than war itself,” “It’s the old saying about rich men making war and poor men having to fight them.”
This is one of three political songs on the Willy And The Poorboys album. The others were “It Came From the Sky” and “Don’t Look Now (It Ain’t You or Me).”
Richard Nixon was president of the US when group leader John Fogerty wrote this song. Fogerty was not a fan of Nixon and felt that people close to the president were receiving preferential treatment.
This song spoke out against the war in Vietnam, but was supportive of the soldiers fighting there. Like many CCR fans, most of the soldiers came from the working class, and were there because they didn’t have connections who could get them out.
The covers don’t feel like throwaways, either, since both “Cotton Fields” and “The Midnight Special” have been overhauled to feel like genuine CCR songs.
It all adds up to one of the greatest pure rock & roll records ever cut.
The Fat Angel Sings 