John Fogerty - Hoodoo (1976)

With this blog, I've been concentrating on posting albums that I've compiled myself. But there also are "albums that should exist" that have been bootlegged but never released, don't need any changing, and should reach a wider audience. I plan on posting lots of those too, by and by. Here's one.

Here's a short history of this album. Although John Fogerty was wildly successful with his band Creedence Clearwater Revival in the late 1960s and early 1970s, he had trouble getting any momentum going with a solo career after CCR broke up in 1972.

He put out two solo albums, "Blue Ridge Rangers" in 1973 and "John Fogerty" in 1975, but neither of them sold very well. "Blue Ridge Rangers" is all covers of country songs, so you probably won't like it if you're not into country music. But 1975's "John Fogerty" sounds exactly like a CCR album and is just as good as any CCR album, so you should definitely hear that if you like CCR at all. Two of the songs on it, "Rockin' All Over the World" and "Almost Saturday Night," weren't hits at the time for Fogerty, but have been covered by many other artists since, and sometimes have been hits.

Fogerty submitted a new album, "Hoodoo," to his record company in 1976. A single of two songs from it, "You Got the Magic" backed by "Evil Thing," was released, and barely scraped the bottom of the charts. After that failure, Fogerty and the record company agreed not to release the album. It's been sitting in the vaults ever since. Although it's been widely bootlegged, Fogerty has made clear in interviews that he never plans on releasing it, though he's said he might want to redo some of the songs from it someday.

So, was it a good call not to release the album? Admittedly, it's not a great lost treasure, and it's not even as strong as "John Fogerty" from the year before. But Fogerty has been remarkably consistent in his career, so even a "bad" Fogerty album is pretty good. The main problem, I think, is that Fogerty's music was out of sync with what was popular at the time. Remember, already by 1976, disco has essentially taken over. Disco fever was so overwhelming that artists from the Rolling Stones to Ethel Merman recorded disco songs, and those who didn't often had plunging record sales. Fogerty kept on doing his chooglin' CCR thing regardless of musical trends - and still does to this day. In retrospect, that was much better than him getting trendy with disco, but he suffered for it at the time.

Sadly, Fogerty was so discouraged by the failure of this album to even get released that he stopped making music for several years. He finally would have a big comeback with his "Centerfield" album nine years later.

This album is 30 minutes long.

01 You Got the Magic (John Fogerty)
02 Between the Lines (John Fogerty)
03 Leave My Woman Alone (John Fogerty)
04 Marchin' to Blarney [Instrumental] (John Fogerty)
05 Hoodoo Man (John Fogerty)
06 Telephone (John Fogerty)
07 Evil Thing (John Fogerty)
08 Henrietta (John Fogerty)
09 On the Run (John Fogerty)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15218841/JohnFoge_1976_Hodoo_atse.zip.html

The "Hoodoo" album was so close to being officially released that all of the artwork for it had been completed. So this is just the exact intended cover. The only problem is it's a bit low-res. If anyone has a better version, please let me know and I'll upgrade it.