Proud Mary
by Creedence Clearwater Revival
- 123
- BPM
- D minor
- Key
- 7A
- Camelot
- 71
- Danceability
- 16
- Acousticness
John Fogerty wrote "Proud Mary" in the two days after he was discharged from the National Guard. The line "Left a good job in the city" came from that discharge. The riffs for it, "Born on the Bayou" and "Keep On Chooglin'" had come to him at a concert at the Avalon Ballroom. He pieced the song together from parts of other songs, one of them about a washerwoman named Mary. The "rollin' on the river" line came from a Will Rogers movie.
Fogerty liked Beethoven's Fifth Symphony and wanted a similar descending opening, a repeated C chord moving to A. He wanted male gospel harmonies like the Swan Silvertones and the Five Blind Boys of Mississippi. In the guitar solo he did his best Steve Cropper.
Fogerty played lead guitar on the basic track, with Tom Fogerty on rhythm guitar, Stu Cook on bass and Doug Clifford on drums, at RCA Studios in Hollywood. Fantasy Records released the single in January 1969, and it peaked at number two in March. Solomon Burke recorded it later that year. Ike and Tina Turner's 1971 version reached number four and won a Grammy.
Proud Mary runs at 123 BPM, the tempo of house, disco and most club dance music. In classical terms it sits in allegro territory. A bar of 4/4 lasts 1.95 seconds, and a quarter-note delay is 488 ms. It is in D minor, Camelot 7A, which shares its notes with F major and mixes cleanly with G minor and A minor.
We use multiple sources as part of our online research for the song story including Wikipedia.