November 4, 2022     —–     Chart #168

Hello Music Friends,

Hey folks, welcome to another edition of Chart of the Week. Today’s song is a 1969 tune from one of the best rock and roll bands of the era. Creedence Clearwater Revival, later known simply as CCR or Creedence, put this song on the B-side of “Bad Moon Rising” and both songs are keepers in my book. The song Lodi from the album Green River describes the plight of a down-and-out musician whose career has landed him playing gigs in the town of Lodi (pronounced “low-die”), a small agricultural community in California’s Central Valley, located around 35 miles southeast of Sacramento and 75 miles northeast of John Fogerty’s hometown of El Cerrito. After playing in local bars, the narrator finds himself stranded and unable to raise bus or train fare to leave. Fogerty later said he had never actually visited Lodi before writing this song, and simply picked it for the song because it had “the coolest sounding name.” The song’s chorus, “Oh Lord, stuck in Lodi again,” has been the theme of several city events in Lodi.

The song’s arrangement includes a change of key in the final verse of the track, emphasizing the melancholy drama of the lyric, “If I only had a dollar for every song I sung….”

CCR disbanded acrimoniously in late 1972 after four years of chart-topping success. Tom Fogerty had left the previous year, and John was at odds with the remaining members over matters of business and artistic control, all of which resulted in lawsuits among the former bandmates. Fogerty’s disagreements with Fantasy Records owner Saul Zaentz led to more court cases and John Fogerty refused to perform with the two other surviving members at Creedence’s 1993 induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Though the band has never officially reunited, John Fogerty continues to perform CCR songs as part of his solo act, while Cook and Clifford have performed as Creedence Clearwater Revisited since the 1990s.

CCR’s music is still a staple of U.S. classic rock radio airplay; 30 million CCR records have been sold in the U.S. alone. The compilation album Chronicle: The 20 Greatest Hits, originally released in 1976, is still on the Billboard 200 album chart and reached the 500-weeks mark in December 2020. It has been awarded 10 × platinum.

Keep rockin my friends,

Stan Bradshaw