Green River is the third studio album by the American rock band Creedence Clearwater Revival, released on August 7, 1969, by Fantasy Records.

It was the second of three albums they released in that year, preceded by Bayou Country in January and followed by Willy and the Poor Boys in October.

Going against the grain at the times, Creedence eschewed the acid-inspired free-form jams favored by many rock bands, for tightly structured roots music with an unmistakable rockabilly edge.

CCR's third studio album includes two of their biggest hits, "Bad Moon Rising" and "Green River", both of which peaked on the U.S. chart at No.

It was inspired by a scene in the 1941 film The Devil and Daniel Webster involving a hurricane, with John Fogerty stating that the words told of "the apocalypse that was going to be visited upon us.

[10] Regarding the title track, Fogerty recalled in 1993:Green River is really about this place where I used to go as a kid on Putah Creek, near Winters, California.

It describes the plight of a down-and-out musician whose career has landed him playing a gig in the town of Lodi (pronounced "low-die"), a small agricultural city in California's Central Valley about 70 miles from Fogerty's hometown of Berkeley.

After playing in local bars, the narrator finds himself stranded and unable to raise bus or train fare to leave.

Other significant tracks on the album include the lament "Wrote a Song for Everyone", which, according to the VH1 Legends episode on the group, deals with Fogerty's failing marriage, and the Ray Charles cover "The Night Time Is the Right Time", continuing the Creedence tradition of including classic R&B and early rock and roll songs on their studio albums, as they had with Dale Hawkins' "Susie Q" (1968's Creedence Clearwater Revival) and Little Richard's "Good Golly Miss Molly" (1969's Bayou Country).

In 2012 Uncut called "Cross Tie Walker" "a quintessential Johnny Cash two-step with a nifty bassline and a tale about a hobo hopping a train and starting a new life."

The phrase "cross tie walker" appears earlier in the album, as part of the lyrics for "Green River".

Although Fogerty was producing, arranging and writing all the songs at this point, as well as handling lead guitar and singing duties, bassist Stu Cook insisted to Bill Kopp of musoscribe.com, "We didn't always play the parts we were given.

[2] Rolling Stone called it "a great album" with the reviewer further stating "they are now creating the most vivid American rock since Music from Big Pink".