[NOTE: The previous 2 or 3 lines post featured a Creedence Clearwater Revival cover of the Motown classic, “I Heard It Through the Grapevine.” This post features Ike & Tina Turner’s cover of the CCR classic, “Proud Mary.” Turnabout’s fair play – right?]
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Click here to listen to Creedence Clearwater Revival’s original recording of the John Fogarty-penned song about a riverboat traveling up and down the Mississippi. (Holy Mark Twain, Batman!)
Note the opening guitar riff, which concludes by moving down a third (from C to A). Fogarty has said that he liked the famous four-note motif that opens Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony, the last note of which is also a third lower than the previous note.
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CCR’s “Proud Mary” was a #2 hit for the group in 1969. (CCR never had a #1 single, but had five #2 hits.)
Ike Turner wasn’t a fan of the song, but he did like the cover of it by Checkmates, Ltd. Click here to listen to that record.
Ike and Tina first performed their version of the song on Playboy After Dark in December 1969. The Turners’ cover of “Proud Mary” is good, but when you see it performed live, it really comes into its own. Tina’s introduction and the Ike-Tina rendition of the first verse are performed at a very deliberate pace, but then all hell breaks loose and BOOM GOES THE DYNAMITE!
Click here to watch Ike & Tina Turner performing “Proud Mary” live on Italian television.
[NOTE: Creedence Clearwater Revival’s cover of “I Heard It Through the Grapevine” is actually a cover of a cover of a sort of cover. Smokey Robinson and the Miracles were the first to record the Norman Whitfield–Barrett Strong song for Motown, but their version wasn’t the first to be released. The song was next recorded by Marvin Gaye, but his version wasn’t the first to be released either. That honor went to the Gladys Knight & the Pips version, which was released in 1967 and promptly went to #1 on the Billboard “Hot 100.” I think the Creedence version is really a cover of the Marvin Gaye cover, which was released subsequent to the Miracles and Pips records and was clearly the best of the three quality-wise. The Gaye cover surpassed the Gladys Knight & the Pips cover as the best-selling Motown single up to that time. (Got all that straight? There may a pop quiz later.). In any event, the Creedence cover – one of the members of the initial class of the 2 OR 3 LINES “GOLDEN DECADE” COVER RECORDS HALL OF FAME – doesn’t sound much like any of the Motown versions, which is one of the reasons it’s a great cover. What follows is a lightly edited version of my original February 17, 2011 post about this record.]
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If I had to pick one band that personifies good ol' American-style rock and roll music, it would be Creedence Clearwater Revival.
Here's what the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame says about Creedence:
Creedence Clearwater Revival . . . were progressive and anachronistic at the same time. An unapologetic throwback to the golden era of rock and roll . . . [t]heir approach was basic and uncompromising, holding true to the band members’ working-class origins.
The term "roots rock" had not yet been invented when Creedence came along, but in a real way they defined it, drawing inspiration from the likes of Little Richard, Hank Williams, Elvis Presley, Chuck Berry and the artisans of soul at Motown and Stax. In so doing, Creedence Clearwater Revival became the standard bearers and foremost celebrants of homegrown American music.
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"I Heard It Through The Grapevine" was a huge hit – not once, but twice – for Motown artists before CCR recorded it.
Their version of "Grapevine" was released on the Cosmo's Factory album in July 1970. That was only about 18 months after Marvin Gaye's version of the song had reached the #1 spot on the Billboard "Hot 100."
Creedence's cover of the song is eleven minutes long. You might think that's too long, but it isn't. (I wouldn't mind if it was an hour long.)
It has the no-frills feel of a live performance – compared to the Motown versions, it's a white T-shirt and a pair of blue jeans.
By the way, did you know that CCR performed at Woodstock? Thanks to the Grateful Dead's endless jamming, Creedence didn't take the stage until 3 AM. CCR frontman John Fogerty thought their performance wasn't up to snuff, so they are missing from the movie and the original soundtrack album. (The 25th-anniversary Woodstock box set does include six CCR songs.)
CCR at Woodstock
Here's one other odd fact about Creedence, which never got the respect it deserved: the band never had a #1 hit, but had five #2 singles.
Click here to listen to CCR's cover of "Grapevine."
Most of the cover records I’ve chosen for the inaugural class of inductees into the 2 OR 3 LINES “GOLDEN DECADE’ COVER RECORDS HALL OF FAME were recorded only a year or two after the originals.
But Creedence Clearwater Revival’s cover of Dale Hawkins’ 1957 hit, “Susie Q,” wasn’t released until 1968. (CCR titled their cover “Suzie Q” instead of “Susie Q” – I don’t know why.)
Dale Hawkins
Click here to listen to the Dale Hawkins original. The CCR cover is much more similar to it than I would have expected.
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Creedence was the master of long tracks – “Suzie Q” is over eight minutes long.
I remember playing on the jukebox at a Pizza Hut in my hometown (Joplin, MO) when I was in eighth grade. I must have really liked it because I had to spend two dimes to hear the whole thing, not just one. (Because it was so long, the record company had to use both sides of a 45 – the song faded out halfway through at the end of side one, and picked up where it had left off on side two.)
I could listen to the CCR “Suzie Q” for eight hours instead of eight minutes. The CCR rhythm section didn’t believe in frills and furbelows – their approach was so simple that it seemed like anyone should have been able to do the same thing. But I can’t think of anyone as good at that style as they were.
Click here to listen to Creedence Clearwater Revival’s “Suzie Q.” If you didn’t already believe that less is often more, this record should convince you.
[NOTE: “Ramble Tamble” is no doubt the least familiar song in this year’s group of inductees into the 2 OR 3 LINES “GOLDEN DECADE” ALBUM TRACKS HALL OF FAME. (Even I was unfamiliar with it until fairly recently.) I’m not sure why I picked it over Creedence Clearwater Revival’s other great five-minute-plus albums tracks – like “Born on the Bayou,” or Suzie Q,” or “I Heard It Through the Grapevine” – but I did. So just get over it, OK? What follows is a slightly edited version of my February 8, 2020 post about “Ramble Tamble.”]
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You may wonder why I consider Creedence Clearwater Revival to be an underrated band.
After all, the group released five top-10 albums in two years – two of those albums made it to #1 – and had a bunch of hit singles as well.
Drake agrees!
But while CCR had five #2 singles (plus one #3 and one #4), it never had a #1 single. That fact cries out UNDERRATED to me.
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CCR’s music was as respected by the critics as it was popular with the public – that’s a rare combination.
Legendary rock critic Robert Christgau wrote this about CCR in a 1969 review of Willy and the Poor Boys, which was the third of those five consecutive #1 albums: “Creedence’s ecumenical achievement is almost unbelievable: this is the only group since the Beatles and the Stones to turn out hit after hit without losing any but the most perverse hip music snobs.”
I’m guessing that not many people think of CCR as being up there with the Beach Boys when it comes to picking who deserves the “Best American Band Ever” crown. I give the edge to the Beach Boys, but it’s close.
Given the significance of California in the American psyche, it’s no surprise that the two best American bands ever came from there. The Beach Boys embodied the babes-beaches-and-hot-rods culture of sunny Southern California, while CCR represented the plaid-shirt-wearing folks from the farm towns and forests of not-so-sunny Northern California. (NOT including San Francisco and the Bay Area, of course.)
The Beach Boys’ greatest records featured the dazzlingly complicated musical constructions of a true genius, Brian Wilson. Wilson was the master of the recording studio – he threw everything but the kitchen sink into his recordings.
CCR’s John Fogerty was a musical genius, too, but his genius was his ability to strip rock ’n’ roll down to its essential elements. He kept only what was necessary, and mercilessly discarded everything else.
Fogerty wrote a lot of great two-and-a-half-minute rock ’n’ roll songs. But his special talent was turning two-and-a-half-minute rock ’n’ songs into seven-minute, eight-minute, or even eleven-minute album tracks.
Don’t tell me that CCR’s covers of “Suzie Q” (which was 8:37 long) or “I Heard It Through the Grapevine” (which clocked in at 11:05) are too long. If anything, they’re too short.
* * * * *
The same is true of the CCR song that I believe ranks behind only the absolutely perfect “Fortunate Son” – one of the top ten singles of the golden decade of rock music (1965-1974) – in their oeuvre.
You may never have heard of “Ramble Tamble,” which was the first track on the Cosmo’s Factory album. I don’t think I heard it until forty-plus years after its 1970 release.
In 2007, AV Club write Steven Hyden proclaimed “Ramble Tamble” to be “the most rockin’ song of all time”:
Why? Because “Ramble Tamble” is like two super rockin’ songs in one. It starts off as a suped-up, proto-punk take on Sun Records rockabilly. Then, about a minute and a half in, it slows down to a crawl and then dies for just a split-second, starting back up again as a slowly simmering psychedelic blues number anchored by a cascading guitar riff best-described as Abbey Road-esque. Just as drummer Doug Clifford seems spent from pounding the relentless jam into submission, the Sun sound comes back even faster and angrier than before for the closing minute and a half. A perfectly satisfying rock tune that meets all the rockin’ criteria more completely than any song I can think of right now, “Ramble Tamble” essentially is a seven-minute mash-up record encompassing the history of blues, country, punk, and psychedelia. Until I fall in love with a different rockin’ song, I can't imagine anything out-rockin’ it .
(I won’t bother listing all of the criteria Hyden applied in making his decision. Suffice it to say that one of his criteria for a rockin’ song is that it makes you drive fast – HE GETS IT!)
By the way, the middle four minutes of “Ramble Tamble” consists of a four-measure, four-chord riff (Am, C, G, D) that’s repeated (with some variation, but not a lot) exactly 25 times – for a total of 100 measures (if my count is correct).
I like “Hey Jude” as much as the next guy, but I’m ready for it to be over by the time it ends. “Ramble Tamble” is a different story – it could go on for another 100 measures (or even another 200) and I wouldn’t complain.
The same is true of “Born on the Bayou,” “Suzie Q,” and especially “I Heard It Through the Grapevine.” (How Fogerty ever thought that “Grapevine” would be a good song for CCR to cover is beyond me. But he was right.)
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Click here to hear all seven minutes and nine seconds of “Ramble Tamble.”
You may wonder why I consider Creedence Clearwater Revival to be an underrated band.
After all, the group released five top-10 albums in two years – two of those albums made it to #1 – and had a bunch of hit singles as well.
Drake agrees!
But while CCR had five #2 singles (plus one #3 and one #4), it never had a #1 single. That fact cries out UNDERRATED to me.
* * * * *
CCR’s music was as respected by the critics as it was popular with the public – that’s a rare combination.
As legendary rock critic Robert Christgau wrote this about CCR in a 1969 review of Willy and the Poor Boys, which was the third of those five consecutive #1 albums: “Creedence’s ecumenical achievement is almost unbelievable: this is the only group since the Beatles and the Stones to turn out hit after hit without losing any but the most perverse hip music snobs.”
I’m guessing that not many people think of CCR as being up there with the Beach Boys when it comes to picking who deserves the “Best American Band Ever” crown. I give the edge to the Beach Boys, but it’s close.
Given the significance of California in the American psyche, it’s no surprise that the two best American bands ever came from there. The Beach Boys embodied the babes-beaches-and-hot-rods culture of sunny Southern California, while CCR represented the plaid-shirt-wearing folks from the farm towns and forests of not-so-sunny Northern California. (NOT including San Francisco and the Bay Area, of course.)
The Beach Boys’ greatest records featured the dazzlingly complicated musical constructions of a true genius, Brian Wilson. Wilson was the master of the recording studio – he threw everything but the kitchen sink into his recordings.
CCR’s John Fogerty was a musical genius, too, but his genius was his ability to strip rock ’n’ roll down to its essential elements. He kept only what was necessary, and mercilessly discarded everything else.
Fogerty wrote a lot of great two-and-a-half-minute rock ’n’ roll songs. But his special talent was turning two-and-a-half-minute rock ’n’ songs into seven-minute, eight-minute, or even eleven-minute album tracks.
Don’t tell me that CCR’s covers of “Suzie Q” (which was 8:37 long) or “I Heard It Through the Grapevine” (which clocked in at 11:05) are too long. If anything, they’re too short.
* * * * *
The same is true of the CCR song that I believe ranks behind only the absolutely perfect “Fortunate Son” – one of the top ten singles of the golden decade of rock music (1965-1974) – in their oeuvre.
You may never have heard of “Ramble Tamble,” which was the first track on the Cosmo’s Factory album. I don’t think I heard it until forty-plus years after its 1970 release.
In 2007, AV Club write Steven Hyden proclaimed “Ramble Tamble” to be “the most rockin’ song of all time”:
Why? Because “Ramble Tamble” is like two super rockin’ songs in one. It starts off as a suped-up, proto-punk take on Sun Records rockabilly. Then, about a minute and a half in, it slows down to a crawl and then dies for just a split-second, starting back up again as a slowly simmering psychedelic blues number anchored by a cascading guitar riff best-described as Abbey Road-esque. Just as drummer Doug Clifford seems spent from pounding the relentless jam into submission, the Sun sound comes back even faster and angrier than before for the closing minute and a half. A perfectly satisfying rock tune that meets all the rockin’ criteria more completely than any song I can think of right now, “Ramble Tamble” essentially is a seven-minute mash-up record encompassing the history of blues, country, punk, and psychedelia. Until I fall in love with a different rockin’ song, I can't imagine anything out-rockin’ it .
(I won’t bother listing all of the criteria Hyden applied in making his decision. Suffice it to say that one of his criteria for a rockin’ song is that it makes you drive fast – so he gets it.)
By the way, the middle four minutes of “Ramble Tamble” consists of a four-measure, four-chord riff (Am, C, G, D) that’s repeated (with some variation, but not a lot) exactly 25 times – for a total of 100 measures (if my count is correct).
I like “Hey Jude” as much as the next guy, but I’m ready for it to be over by the time it ends. “Ramble Tamble” is a different story – it could go on for another 100 measures (or even another 200) and I wouldn’t complain.
The same is true of “Born on the Bayou,” “Suzie Q,” and especially “I Heard It Through the Grapevine.” (How CCR ever thought that “Grapevine” would be a good song for it to cover is beyond me. But they were right.)
* * * * *
Click here to hear all seven minutes and nine seconds of “Ramble Tamble.”
Some folks are born silver spoon in hand Lord, don't they help themselves?
But when the taxman comes to the door,
Lord, the house looks like a rummage sale
[NOTE: I wrote about Creedence Clearwater Revival’s in-your-face, tear-you-a-new-one single, “Fortunate Son” – a 1969 hit that I simply had to include in the initial group of inductees into the 2 OR 3 LINES “GOLDEN DECADE” HIT SINGLES HALL OF FAME – way back in 2010, shortly before I headed off to Joplin, Missouri, to attend my 40th high-school reunion. What follows is an updated version of my original post.]
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"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 were as well.
I remember my mother expressing exactly the same sentiment expressed in the lines quoted above 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 just enough to get by on. Not surprisingly, they were somewhat resentful (envious?) of the "silver spoon" types.
Also not surprising was their conservatism when it came to spending their hard-earned money. We lived in a very modest house – we had to share one bathroom, which is a horror I pray my children will never have to experience – and ate out very infrequently. Our summer vacations were usually trips to Springfield or Tulsa for a few days in a motel with a swimming pool.
But somehow my father managed to save enough money to pay cash for the brand-new 1970 Olds Cutlass he gave me shortly after my 18th birthday.
A couple of years earlier, he had promised me a new car when I turned 18 if I fulfilled certain conditions. I never forgot the promise, and to his credit, he lived up to his end of the bargain. (About 10 years ago, we bought a used Toyota Camry from my mother-in-law as a third car for my oldest son and daughters to drive to school. That used Camry cost less than my 1970 Cutlass had cost 30 years earlier – and I made a whole lot more money than my parents did.)
I don't think this was really a Republican/Democrat issue for Fogerty. If Lyndon Johnson had been reelected in 1968 instead of dropping out of the race, Fogerty could have written the same song about one of LBJ's sons-in-law. The singer of the song "ain't no senator's son" and "ain't no millionaire's son" – and in this country, there are senators and millionaires in both political parties. What mattered for the typical Vietnam draftee wasn't whether his father voted Republican or Democrat – it was that his father wasn't a high-ranking government official or a millionaire.
Ironically, neither President Nixon nor President Eisenhower grew up as "fortunate sons" – both of their fathers struggled to make a living. The two men succeeded despite not having wealthy or politically influential relatives to pave the way for them. While David Eisenhower was certainly a "fortunate son" and he did not have to serve in Vietnam, he was on active duty in the Navy for three years, which he mostly spent on a guided-missile cruiser in the Mediterranean.
By the way, Fogerty never went to Vietnam either. He managed to get into an Army Reserve unit before he was drafted, and spent only six months on active duty -- all of it in the United States. Maybe he felt a little guilty about that.
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At least one of the key characters in the 2010 movie, "Winter's Bone," was a Vietnam vet whose father wasn't a senator or a millionaire either. "Thump" Milton is a meth dealer who is the most feared man in the part of the Missouri Ozarks where the movie takes place. (His wife – who beats the snot out of Ree Dolly, the teenaged girl who is the protagonist of the film – is a close second.)
"Winter's Bone" was filmed on location in the hills near Branson. Take away the pickup trucks and satellite-TV dishes and things are much as they were 100 years ago – one memorable scene shows Ree (portrayed by Jennifer Lawrence, who was an unknown at the time) and her younger brother and sister hunting squirrel, and later skinning and gutting their catch before cooking them for dinner.
Click here to watch the trailer for "Winter's Bone."
In one scene, Ree and her younger siblings are looking at an old family photo album. Some of the pictures indicate that the family had been more respectably middle-class a generation or two earlier.
Those days are long gone by the time the movie takes place, however – Ree and her family (like almost everyone else we meet in the movie) live in an isolated, broken-down house surrounded by junk and trash. Her father supports them by cooking crystal meth and shooting the occasional deer, rabbit, or squirrel.
Based on the photos in the family album, you would have expected his family to have ended up in a tidy little tract house in some tidy little town. But somewhere along the way, the family's fortunes jumped the shark.
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One reason that I wanted to see "Winter's Bone" is that some of my ancestors settled in the area where the movie was filmed shortly before the Civil War.
My great-great-great-grandfather, James Hailey – who was one of 14 children – settled in Douglas County, Missouri, in 1853, when he was 29. Douglas County is one of the smallest counties in Missouri, with a population of just over 13,000. The county seat of Douglas County is Ava (population 3000), which is the only incorporated city in the county. Fewer than 10% of the county's adult residents have a college degree, and only 70% have graduated from high school.
James Hailey was kind of a big deal in Douglas County – which local residents used to refer to as "Booger County." He and two other men were appointed to locate a new county seat a few years after the Civil War ended, and James is credited with naming the new city Ava after a city in ancient Mesopotamia that is mentioned in II Kings, chapter 17. (According to one source, James picked Ava as the name because he "wanted to ensure that all could spell the new name." According to another, he picked the name because it meant "overthrowing," a reference to the fact that he and his two comrades stole the county records and brought them to Ava to ensure that it would become the county seat instead of a rival town.)
My great-great-grandfather, William Franklin Hailey, was the oldest of James's nine children. He seems to have been relatively prosperous as well, and was very religious – he helped establish a Christian school and seminary in Ava, and named the oldest of his nine children Moses. A daughter was named Clara Temperance Hailey, so I'm guessing he wasn't a big drinker.
My great-grandfather, the aforementioned Moses Hailey – who had 11 children to support – moved around a lot (from Ava to North Dakota and back, and then on to Oregon). That's sometimes a sign that things aren't going all that well, but things got even worse the next generation.
My grandfather Howard died at age 41, in 1934 – in the middle of the depression – leaving my grandmother with eight children to raise. The oldest was only 18, and the youngest was a newborn. I'm not sure how they survived.
But while it wouldn't have been all that surprising if some or all of them and their kids had ended up cooking meth and eating deer stew and fried squirrel, none of them did. My generation of Haileys is doing fine, and so far it appears that I don't have to worry about any of my kids ending up like the characters in "Winter's Bone." (Knock on wood.)
The Southside Railroad, connected Petersburg and Lynchburg, Virginia. Construction of the railroad 132-mile-long railroad began in 1849 and was completed in 1854.
The Southside Railroad's High Bridge over the Appomattox River (1854)
After the Civil War, the Southside eventually became part of the Norfolk & Western, which later merged with the Southern Railway to form the Norfolk Southern, one of the four largest railroads in the United States. Today the Norfolk Southern operates over 21,500 miles of track and has annual revenues of almost $10 billion.
The Norfolk Southern continued to run trains over most of the original Southside Railroad route until 2005, when it gave the right of way to the Virginia Department of Conservation and Recreation. The DCR ripped up the tracks and converted 31 miles of the former rail corridor into a rail trail that’s been open to hikers, bikers, and horseback riders for about five years.
I recently loaded up my new hybrid bike and drove to Farmville, Virginia, a town that sits smack dab in the middle of the rail trail – which is officially known as High Bridge Trail State Park.
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I arrived in Farmville a little before 3:00 pm, which meant that I had only about two hours to ride before it got dark.
The Prospect postmistress lowering the American flag at closing time
I parked at the former Farmville train station and hit the trail. There wasn’t enough daylight left for me to get all the way to the western terminus of the rail trail and back, so I turned around after riding to Prospect, a tiny hamlet that’s ten miles from Farmville.
On the way to Prospect, you cross Hard Times Road:
Like most rail trails, the High Bridge trail is relatively flat and straight.
There’s not a lot to see along the western half of the trail, which was just as well given that I needed to cover 20 miles in two hours.
* * * * *
After stowing my bike in my SUV, I headed for Third Street Brewing, a small brewery that’s located right on the trail in Farmville.
A flight of four beers from Third Street Brewing
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There aren’t a lot of fine dining choices in Farmville, which is home to only 8000 residents.
My Third Street server and a couple of my fellow tipplers pointed me in the direction of the Fishin’ Pig, a large and popular local joint that specializes in barbecue and fish – but you knew that as soon as you read the name of the place, n’est-ce pas?
The friendly Fishin’ Pig bartender recommended the fried catfish, which was an excellent suggestion. One of the founders of the Fishin’ Pig is a gent named Shorty Osborn, who’s the inventor of both “Shorty’s Famous Seafood & Chicken Breading” – the secret to my tasty fried catfish morsels – and the product’s slogan: “Catch ’n’ Release in the Grease.”
I ordered a doppelbock from Parkway Brewing (Salem, Virginia), which hit the spot. I was tempted to order another, but my hotel was a half-hour’s drive away – discretion is the better part of valor, they say, and I decided that one was enough.
The Fishin’ Pig draft beer list
I hopped on US 460 – a four-lane divided highway that was functionally indistinguishable from an interstate – and headed west to Appomattox, Virginia, where I stopped at a Dairy Queen for a hot fudge malt before checking into my hotel.
* * * * *
Why didn’t I choose a hotel in Farmville instead of one a half hour’s drive away? (My second day’s ride would start where I left off in Farmville, so I’d have to drive half an hour back in the morning as well.)
I’ll tell you why . . .
Here are excerpts from the online reviews of one of the hotels that had rooms available the night I was going to stay in Farmville:
Hotel was very much neglected. The rooms were very dated and worn looking with furniture, carpeting, and bathroom. The mattress was old and uncomfortable. The bathroom was falling apart . . . . Smelled of urine. Found hair in shower, and pink mildew. One of the grossest hotels I have ever stayed in. Should be torn down and rebuilt.
Old rooms, not very clean, room had been smoked in, tub leaked, toilet was loose, carpet was stained and dirty. Refrigerator wasn't very cold and was noisy.
Would not recommend to anyone, room was filthy . . . so much so we were afraid to eat the free breakfast. People partying outside the rooms all night, loud and obnoxious
Filthy rooms, all smell of dirty ashtrays, COCKROACHES!
The next hotel I checked out sounded even worse:
ROACHES. As soon as we turned on the light there were at least 4 roaches – 2 running across the table and 2 on the wall.
Entire hotel smelled like stale cigarettes including our “no smoking” room and the lobby/breakfast area where a “no smoking” sign was clearly displayed. The continental breakfast was as sparse as any I have ever seen.
Unclean, noisy, green substance in sheets, beetle-looking bugs inside of bed sheets, and unfriendly man at front desk.
The shower curtain smelled so bad of mildew. The toilet bowl and seat were dirty. The knobs on the air conditioner were broken off.
The room had an odor so we had the window open for a few hours to air out. There was a live cockroach in the bathroom. The sheets were not clean (there was hair from the last person who slept in the bed). The staff didn't smile, and didn't act friendly.
Here’s what some of the recent visitors to a third Farmville hotel had to say about it:
VERY OLD. Needed updating badly. The bathroom was the smallest bathroom I've ever been in. The shower was so small (perhaps a 48" square) you couldn't bend down to wash your feet.
Literally the worst place I have ever stayed. The room was gross and had one towel. There were bugs and the room smelled awful. At night, there were men hanging out outside of room having a party who I’m pretty sure were not guests. Never again.
My wife woke up with bed bug bites all over her body. Day one I took the bed bug to the office to show the hotel staff. My wife noticed something on my shirt and killed it with a napkin and [it was] nothing but blood. She freaked out with all the bites on her. . . . Basically didn't get any help from any staff workers about the bites.
Is it any surprise I chose to drive half an hour to stay at the Appomattox Inn & Suites after reading dozens of customer reviews like these?
Great location for visiting the [national historical park]. Hotel appears to be new so it’s in perfect condition. Our room was immaculate and the bathroom had a glass shower and plenty of room. For me, the mattress was the best thing about the room – it was soooo comfortable and I had a great night's sleep. The breakfast included in our reasonable rate was good and the entire staff was friendly and helpful. Parking was plentiful.
Appomattox Inn & Suites
This stunning hotel is maybe 2 years old at best, but it shines like brand new! . . . This hotel has it all: inclusive breakfast, wine and snack bar, outdoor pool, exercise room, impeccably clean everything! Very nice beds and bedding, perfect A/C that actually really works, kind and accommodating staff throughout the hotel. You won't be disappointed; we will certainly return.
The cost for my night’s stay? Only $80 (plus various taxes) – which was no more than what the Farmville hotels would have charged.
* * * * *
“Green River” was the title track on Creedence Clearwater Revival’s third studio album, which was released in August 1969. I remember buying the album shortly after its release – I was a senior in high school in the fall of 1969 – but I never listened to it much. (The big single from the Green River album was “Bad Moon Rising,” which is one of my least favorite CCR songs.)
CCR’s Green River album
The song’s title refers to Putah Creek, a large creek in Napa County, California, that was dammed in the 1950s to form Lake Berryessa. John Fogerty, CCR’s lead singer and principal songwriter, enjoyed family vacations on Putah Creek when he was a child.
Fogerty took “Green River” from the name of a once-popular lime-flavored soft drink that was bright green in color.
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