Born on the Bayou
by Creedence Clearwater Revival
- 117
- BPM
- A major
- Key
- 11B
- Camelot
- 66
- Danceability
- 6
- Acousticness
Drummer Doug Clifford said "Born on the Bayou" was meant to be the A-side of the "Proud Mary" single, but it got flipped. He liked "Born on the Bayou" best and called it nasty. "Proud Mary" reached number two. Clifford said he had changed his mind over 40 years and now loved it.
John Fogerty set the song in the swamp even though he had never lived there. He wrote it late at night with no guitar in hand, looking at the bare walls of a tiny apartment. The "hoodoo" imagery came partly from Howlin' Wolf and Muddy Waters. For the intro he used a Gibson ES-175 with amp tremolo, and it was stolen from his car soon after the recording.
Clifford said the song started at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles, where the band was trying out new Kustom amps. John worked with feedback, and Clifford hit a quarter note beat like the one on "Suzie Q" but changed the foot pattern. Creedence played the song at Woodstock. It opens Bayou Country.
Born on the Bayou runs at 117 BPM, the tempo of pop, funk and disco-leaning dance. In classical terms it sits in moderato territory. A bar of 4/4 lasts 2.05 seconds, and a quarter-note delay is 513 ms. It is in A major, Camelot 11B, which shares its notes with F# minor and mixes cleanly with D major and E major.
We use multiple sources as part of our online research for the song story including Wikipedia.