There are few rock bands as evergreen as Creedence Clearwater Revival. The band’s greatest hits collection remains a top seller and streamer to this day, and the classic rock group recently returned to the news as principle songwriter John Fogerty finally reclaimed the rights to the songs which he wrote fifty years ago. So it’s never a bad time for an artist to pay tribute to the group with their own take on one of the band’s classic songs.
Enter Prinz Grizzley. The Austrian-Alps based Americana singer-songwriter recently released his own take on the classic “Proud Mary”, and deftly reimagines it as a somber, drawling folk number. Played with a wistfully picked banjo and acoustic guitar, the song finds the kind of subtle beauty at the heart of the song that would make you want to listen to it while coasting down a river (as opposed to the equally fantastic, bombastic Tina Turner version that would set the riverboat ablaze).
Grizzley found his inspiration for his take from watching a video of Fogerty performing solo; “I thought he looked really cool, like ‘I don’t give a fuck, I have enough hit singles, just leave me be. My version is like John Fogerty at 40 when he had a lot of lawsuits against him and was depressed. Maybe if he would have played the song then, that’s how I think it might have sounded.”
So take a listen to this refreshing take on the classic track here, and if you need a refresher, here’s the original.
The Indy Review 