Feelin' Blue
Background
“Feelin' Blue” is the closing track of side A of the Willy And the Poor Boys album by Creedence Clearwater Revival.
It took 2-3 years for John Fogerty to assemble the song. He had the idea for "Feelin' Blue" already in 1967. Fogerty planned adding it to Bayou Country but never could make it work. In 1969, he got another chance to make all the essential ingredients blend together (Ralph J. Gleason, Interview with John Fogerty, The Rolling Stone, February 21st, 1970).
The time taken to get it right starts to make sense when one considers that it is essentially a one chord song throughout, and thus takes great invention and control to make it work. It also takes confident musicianship and trust in one another that really starts to gel by the time of this album. It also featured probably the only time that Fogerty has chosen to overlap the fade of a previous track (“Poorboy Shuffle”), with the intro to another - and it works exceedingly well; with Doug Clifford’s bass pedal and overall feel probably never being better showcased.
Equipment
John Fogerty played a Gibson Les Paul Custom guitar in the recording sessions of the song. It's not the one which currently residing the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame but the other one he bought later (Art Thompson, Interview with John Fogerty, Guitar Player, March 2008).
See also "Bad Moon Rising".
Live versions
Creedence Clearwater never performed the song in concerts. Neither has John Fogerty played it during his solo career. Given the points above, one is led to wonder if it was one of those songs that really came together that time in the studio and capturing what is very much a “feel” song is best left “as is” for all time.
Creedence Clearwater Revisited played "Feelin' Blue" in soundchecks but never in regular concerts (interview with Stu Cook, The Hustle, March 24, 2019).
Critical reception
"--- a fine example of how the rhythm and blues and early soul music John and his bandmates loved so much had infiltrated his songwriting: they'd played so many cover versions of this stuff in their early days that John began to write his own." --Ed Ward, liner notes of the 1989 CD release of Willy and the Poor Boys.
"'Feelin' Blue' is so damn looong, they overdid the cool guitar lines on that one; in terms of repetitiveness and overwhelming monotonousness, it is a legitimate successor to 'Graveyard Train', the only good point being that they substitute the rudimentary harmonica lines for rudimentary guitar lines. It could have been a nice passable two-minute groove, but it goes on and on and on with just the same stuff repeated over and over." -George Starostin.
"---a rhythm & blues number so authentic it’s easy to assume it’s a cover, but John is credited as the writer. It oozes “smooth” as they shuffle along and create one of the few CCR tunes to make out to." -Gordon S. Miller, Blogcritics, November 5th 2008.
"---locks into a steady muscular rhythm, a slow swampy soulful groove --- and stretches out for over five minutes with effective understated solos with neat twists and turns." -Thomas M. Kitts, John Fogerty: An American Son, 2016.
Legacy
Members of the “John Fogerty Swamp Mailing List” in the Internet voted “Feelin' Blue” the best album track of Creedence Clearwater Revival in 2004.
Written by John C. Fogerty.
Recorded at Studio C, Wally Heider Studios, San Francisco, CA, USA, in October 1969.
Appears on Willy And the Poor Boys album.
Released on November 2nd, 1969.