The Blue Ridge Rangers - The Blue Ridge Rangers

The Blue Ridge Rangers came out a year after the final CCR album Mardi Gras, which marked the end of an era. I cannot imagine the pressure applied to a still young John Fogerty (28) to replicate the magic he had created with his previous band. While Mardi Gras was a gold-selling record, I suspect that was more the general public's muscle memory, as it is generally considered the nadir of the band's output.

I suspect there were words exchanged when The Blue Ridge Rangers was the vehicle John was going with for his first "solo" effort. There were no original songs, and the songs were decidedly country. The only song that even came close to evoking some of that Fogerty charm was Hank Williams's "Jambalaya (On the Bayou)," and even then it wasn't swamp rock. I wonder if the idea was to have this be a crossover in the country market. By going with an alias, the album would sink or float on its own merits.

I don't know if there was ever an insert with lyrics and credits, but from what I've read the album was performed by John, which answers the question "Why do the silhouettes all look alike?" If the goal was to distance himself from his Creedence past, the album succeeded. I guess the hint was the lone credit on the back cover: Arranged and Produced by John Fogerty.

Many years ago, forty now to be exact, when Centerfield came out I remember rummaging in the bins, seeing John Fogerty The Blue Ridge Rangers, and asking my buddy Andy, who was a musical walking encyclopedia, if he knew about the album. He did, and the general sense I got from his reaction was it was best if I avoided getting it.

I'll admit I was always curious about this one, and when I happened to find a copy attributed solely to The Blue Ridge Rangers I couldn't resist. Yeah, there was ringwear on the cover and the album had seen some miles, but it cleaned up remarkably well.

Several of the songs were fairly engaging, but I can see how the general public took a pass on it. It's more a curiosity than anything. While it is enjoyable, especially when considering John performed all the parts, it's just not what you expect from John Fogerty. Andy was right. Twenty-two-year-old me would not have gotten through the first side. Ten-year-old me never knew this existed, and me at sixty-one (I'm almost sixty-two, but hey, I'm not in a hurry) is far more forgiving, and I really did enjoy this, although it's not something I'll revisit very often ... if at all.

Comments

Styx - Paradise Theater

Styx was hands down one of my favourite bands as a kid. They were a strange band, even back then. They were a hard rock band, almost progressive at times, who had a penchant for sucky ballads. I know there's a tendency for people to zero in on "Babe" as the song that killed the band's credibility. The roots go way back to almost the beginning when Styx released "Lady" on their second album. It showed a side to the band that needed to be kept in check, and for the most part the band kept things on a pretty tight leash. The band had been setting a gruelling pace, releasing an album a year (two in 1972) and by the time they released Paradise Theater (if I end up writing theatre later it's because that's how we spell it here) in 1981 they'd dropped ten albums in less than a decade. I snapped this up as soon as I saw it, and it became a fixture on my turntable. Like the band had announced on "Borrowed Time" from 1979's Cornerstone , ...

Billy Rankin - Growin' Up Too Fast

Growin' Up Too Fast was never widely released on CD (if at all), and it was one of the albums I really wanted to get back after a basement flood wiped out my vinyl collection in the '90s (when no one really gave a shit about records, and my insurance gave me a couple hundred bucks for an appraised $10,000 collection). Way back in 1984, my (dearly departed and greatly missed) buddy Dave let me borrow his cassette copy, which included a bonus track of "Get It On (Bang A Gong)." When I eventually bought the album, I didn't know it was a bonus track, or even what a bonus track was. If that sentence was hard to read, just go back and skim it. I'm sure you'll get the gist. I'd find out later Billy was an off-and-on-again member of Nazareth and wrote some absolutely killer songs for them. At the time, though, all I knew was this guy laid it out cold with the opening cut, "Baby Come Back," then proceeded to lay down one killer tune after another bef...

Garfield - Strange Streets

I'd seen this before in the bin, but kept flipping through the stacks. I'd see it a few more times, each time stopping to look at it a little more. There was something kind of cool about the cover where the stylized Celtic knot had the dotted yellow line - it was a strange street for sure. I pulled the record out of the jacket and I was struck by the centre image. There was the familiar Mercury label, the same one I'd seen a thousand times on BTO's Head On album. Well, I'd bought things based on odd associations before - like when I had to buy anything that Solid Rock Records released (this was generally a good thing) - so who knows, maybe this was a hidden gem. There weren't any real scratches or rash, just a lot of dirt and dust. It seemed to clean up okay, but we'll see how it goes. The album opens with the title track, and this wasn't straight-ahead pop or rock. It was leaning toward the progressive, but with a pop bent. Oddly enough, the vocals rem...

Old Enough to Forget

Search This Blog