Creedence Clearwater Revival – "Fortunate Son" (1969)

But when the taxman comes to the door

Lord, the house looks like a rummage sale

I don’t know much about Jelly Roll other than that he has a goofy name and a lot of disturbing tattoos.  (If I’ve ever heard one of his records, it was purely by accident.)

Jelly Roll

But of the 90 actors, athletes, authors, businesspeople, comedians, filmmakers, journalists, musicians, and politicians who were asked by the CBS Sunday Morning show to name three essential Americans songs, Jelly Roll did the best job.

Yes, he ignored CBS’s instructions and picked two songs instead of three.  But as we learned in the previous 2 or 3 lines, it’s very American not to do what they tell you to do.

And the two he picked – Rage Against the Machine “Killing in the Name” and Creedence Clearwater Revival’s “Fortunate Son” – exemplify quintessential American character traits as well or better than any other two records I can think of.

That’s why those two records were unanimous choices for the 2 OR 3 LINES QUINTESSENTIAL AMERICAN SONGBOOK.

So kudos to Jelly Roll for a job well done.  You f*cking nailed it, dude!

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There’s a scene in the 1971 movie Big Jake where John Wayne yanks a mouthy young whippersnapper off his horse and shoves him down into a big mud puddle.  “It’s time you learned to respect your betters,” the Wayne character snarls at the smart-ass kid.

Generally speaking, Americans don’t believe they have any betters.  We’re not intimidated by the rich and powerful.  (After all, we plan to be rich and powerful ourselves someday.) 

When our so-called betters try to throw their weight around and get away with something they shouldn’t, we call them out for it.

That’s what John Fogarty did in “Fortunate Son,” which he said was about David Eisenhower – who was the grandson of one President and the son-in-law of another one.  

The sons of the rich and powerful – like Eisenhower – always seemed to be able to find a way to avoid the draft, and the working-class families whose sons were sent to fight (and sometimes die) in Vietnam didn’t like that one little bit.

Eisenhower may have avoided being sent to Vietnam, but he did serve three years in the U.S. Navy (most of which he spent in the Mediterranean on a guided-missile cruiser).

As for Fogerty, he managed to avoid the draft by getting into an Army Reserve unit.  He was stationed stateside for the entirety of his six-month tour of duty.

So maybe Fogerty’s scorn for Eisenhower and all the other “fortunate sons” who knew how to game the system and stay out of harm’s way was a bit hypocritical – that’s what he did, after all.  But being full of sh*t is another quintessential American character trait.  

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Here’s a lightly-edited excerpt from my original 2010 post about “Fortunate Son”:

“Fortunate Son” is near-perfect two-minute-and-twenty-second work of art.  The words, the music, and the performance are all just right.  (Everyone and their brother has covered the song, but there’s nothing like the original.)

Most importantly, the attitude of this song is just right.  John Fogerty is pissed off at the powers that be, and he’s not afraid to let everyone know it.  That attitude makes it not only a quintessential rock-and-roll song, but also a very patriotic song – the Founding Fathers had some issues with the powers that be as well. . . . 

I remember my mother expressing exactly the same sentiment expressed in the lines quoted at the beginning of this post when I was a kid.  (People around here say “garage sale” or “yard sale,” but my mother always said “rummage sale.”)

It may have been possible to cheat on your personal property taxes back in the day by hiding your more valuable possessions when the tax assessor made his yearly visit to your house, although I doubt that many people were able to get away with very much.  But my mother was convinced that the richer people in town were beating the system one way or the other. 

My parents grew up during the Depression, and both of their families had barely enough to get by on.  Not surprisingly, they were somewhat resentful (envious?) of the “silver spoon” types.  

Also not surprising was their frugality when it came to spending their hard-earned money.  We lived in a very modest house – we all had to share one bathroom, which is a horror that my fortunate sons (and daughters) have never had to experience . . . .

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Click here to listen to “Fortunate Son.”

Click here to buy “Fortunate Son” from Amazon.