Green River

Released as a single in July 1969 with Commotion on the B-side, it reached No. 2 on the Hot 100 for one week and No. 19 in the UK. It ranked No. 31 on Billboard's 1969 year-end list. Fogerty has said it describes a childhood place, Putah Creek near Winters, California, where a cabin belonged to a descendant of Buffalo Bill Cody, whom he called Old Cody Junior. The name came from the label on a lime soda syrup. He called the sound a tip of the hat to Sun Records and had Roy Orbison's Dream Baby in mind. In 2012 he said that although he used settings like New Orleans, the songs were really about things from his own life, and that on Green River he called Putah Creek the Green River in his mind. Steven Spielberg's film The Post (2017) opens its Vietnam scenes with the song, which Pitchfork's Zach Schonfeld cited as an example of Creedence's overuse in Vietnam films.