Rockin' All Over The World

Following the ugly and public breakup of Creedence Clearwater Revival in 1972, John Fogerty began tentatively forging a solo career, originally using the name of The Blue Ridge Rangers for his 1973 solo debut. Fogerty played all of the instruments on covers of country hits, such as "Jambalaya", which became a Top 20 single. The two John Fogerty penned songs on the album were "You Don't Owe Me" and "Back In The Hills". In early 1974, Fogerty released two rock 'n roll tunes on a 7" single, again as The Blue Ridge Rangers. The two songs were "Comin' Down The Road" b/w the instrumental "Ricochet".

The Asylum album, now a pricey rarity.

His second solo album, entitled simply "John Fogerty", was released in 1975 by the Asylum label. It's a great album, but sales were inexplicably slim, even though it yielded a top 40 hit for Fogerty in North America, "Rockin' All Over The World". The album also featured the song "Almost Saturday Night" which has been covered by Dave Edmunds, The Searchers, John Hiatt and several country artists.  Persistent legal problems with Fantasy Records dating from the Creedence days delayed a followup; an album called "Hoodoo" which Fogerty reportedly finished, but then had the masters destroyed.

After all these years, nobody sounds like John Fogerty except him and no one else ever will. That's what the other surviving members of Creedence still don't understand. Here's "Rockin' All Over The World" from that 1975 album. Enjoy!

 

Two years later, in 1977, British boogie rockers Status Quo recorded their version of "Rockin' All Over The World", which became a huge hit for them and made the song world famous; reinforced by the Quo's opening of the 1985 worldwide Live Aid concert in London with it. By then, it had become one of their best known anthems. While the Status Quo version of the song does punch things up a bit, it's not all that different. But it worked for the Quo because at its heart, the song is all about one of rock 'n roll's favorite pastimes; Rockin'!

So, in the manner of a salute to the tens of thousands of bands around the world who can be found schlepping their instruments and equipment in broken down vans from one end of town to the other  to play their music in grungy taverns, sketchy clubs and echo-plagued school gymnasiums, here's friend of the blog, Michael Carpenter with his cover band, Too Many Guitars, doing their properly raucous, set closing version of "Rockin' All Over The World", recorded at Michael's very cool home studio. Incidentally, Michael and friends hail from New South Wales, Australia! That's just southwest of Sydney, for you travel aficionados. You'll find that the guys have the right band name as you observe the whirlwind of guitars being played in the video. It's a gear freak's dream. Oh, and Michael's on the drums, y'all. Play this loud!

The John Fogerty album, the one on Asylum Records, is available at Amazon, but is also crazy expensive, due to being long out of print. Your best bet is to look for it used on vinyl. The rest of Fogerty's catalog is in print and is much more affordable, as is a good anthology of Status Quo. Music by Michael Carpenter is very much worth your while to find. Try Bandcamp for this great digital sampler of his work.