"Born on the Bayou" (Creedence Clearwater Revival)

Creedence Clearwater Revival's 1968 debut album is solid.  All of the elements that would make them great were already brewing: a rock-solid rhythm section that owed as much to Memphis soul as it did to San Franciscan rock, a knack for knowing when to let it all hang out and when to keep things tight, and a frontman with leonine vocals and the ability to toss out electrifying guitar riffs with ease.
But the band's followup, Bayou Country (1969), was another animal altogether.  Not only had John Fogerty found his songwriting voice, but he'd somehow crafted an entire mythology, steeped in Louisiana lore and sifted from the Delta sand.
Thing is, Creedence wasn't from the bayou.  Fogerty had never even visited the bayou; he was a California boy from Berkeley.  But, by God, he made you believe they'd been raised on crawfish and old Leadbelly records.
And no song established that mythology better than "Born on the Bayou."
In a great May 2013 interview with journalist Lynne Margolis of American Songwriter magazine, Fogerty reveals that idea for the song came during a soundcheck at one of the band's earliest live shows in the Bay Area.  
In a nutshell, he was excited to be playing in front of a real audience in San Francisco, and, born of that excitement, he had a lightning bolt of inspiration hit him.
Says Fogerty, "I turned to the band and said, 'Just start playing E.  Just do this.  Just follow this!'"
Just as the groove was starting to cook, the stage manager cut their power and booted them off stage, but not before telling Fogerty that his band "wasn't going anywhere" career-wise. 
That lit a fire under him.
Not long after that show, he was staring at a wall in his apartment late one night, trying to write lyrics, when the line "born on the bayou" came to him.  Suddenly the chords and guitar sound from the soundcheck jam meshed with the story that was flowing out of his pen and onto the page.
Fogerty admits that he knew little about the Delta, but he drew upon what he did know, which was mostly from music and film.
"I knew that that sound and that story went together.  I can’t tell you why."
 In five minutes, Fogerty lays out a tableau so vivid and Faulknerian that it seems like it couldn't be anything but autobiographical.  You can almost feel the July swelter as he and his hound dog chase down hoodoos through cottonmouth-infested waters, his papa's warnings about "The Man" echoing in his head.