28 May 1997 Chicago - 3

And yet it's a measure of Fogerty's impact on the music of the last three decades that it seemed like he barely scratched the surface. The singer, who turned 52 Wednesday, could have easily performed another two hours of music without seriously diminishing his reserve of top-shelf songs.

Consider the dream set Fogerty didn't play, a set consisting of Creedence's "Up Around the Bend," "Molina," "Have You Ever Seen the Rain," "Hey Tonight," "Run Through the Jungle," Wrote a Song for Everyone," "Sweet Hitch-Hiker," "Someday Never Comes," and "It Came Out of the Sky," and Fogerty solo material such as "Almost Saturday Night," "Rockin' All Over the World," "Jambalaya (On the Bayou)," "Rock and Roll Girls," and "Change in the Weather."

Not that these songs were missed. Fogerty dug deep into the well of Creedence classics, songs he hadn't performed on a tour in 25 years because of an acrimonious legal battle with a former record label. The singer reclaimed that music with a vengeance, added mightily by the human howitzer, drummer Kenny Aronoff, and the deft bassist Bob Glaub. With Fogerty playing guitar rifts and solos every bit as melodic as his vocal lines, "Born on the Bayou," "Green River" and "Lodi" sounded fresh as the day he recorded them.

Fogerty rigorously reproduced the oldies without embellishment, which made guitarists Johnny Lee Schnell and Mike Canipe somewhat superfluous. But the ardor of Glaub and especially Aronoff ensured that this would not be a mere re-creation of past glories, but a vibrant tour of one of rock's greatest songbooks.

"Proud Mary" is almost taken for granted, watered down by countless wedding band versions, but as sung by the artist who wrote it, the song can be heard for what it is: a mini-movie full of vivid imagery, the desperate yearning of a Southern laborer, the almost human qualities of the big queen rollin' down the river.

Fogerty never was a slave to fashion, sartorially or musically; he came to work in the '60s in his flannel shirts and jeans, and on this night he was only slightly better attired in black. Looking remarkably fit, his voice a tad thinner but still capable of pole-axing most of the high notes, he remains an unapologetic disciple of early rock 'n' roll, blues and gospel.

So it was appropriate that he brought out the venerable gospel singers the Fairfield Four to accompany him on the traditional "Midnight Special" and on his "A Hundred and Ten in the Shade," the best of his new songs. A few songs later, Fogerty turned up the temperature even higher with "Long as I Can See the Light," in which his pleading, rasping voice was shadowed by string-bending guitar fills worthy of B.B. King.

Here was where Fogerty made his stand, on music now so familiar that it feels part of the air, on songs so sturdy they resist aging and have instead become ageless.