Creedence Clearwater Revival recorded this song for their self-titled debut album of 1968. It had originally been written (as with-an-s-not-z “Susie Q”) in 1956 by a rockabilly star named Dale Hawkins, and the Rolling Stones and Johnny Rivers (among others) had covered it already. (You can catch both of their performances on YouTube.) CCR — recently so renamed from (egad) The Golliwogs — were looking about for a song and a sound which would set them apart from the mass of psychedelia-driven bands in the San Francisco area. They didn’t quite succeed right away on that score; the guitar flourishes took a sort of trippy flight every now and then. But John Fogerty’s voice sounded nothing like anyone else’s.
