One evening at a NIGHT SHIFT gig, (my band), somebody came up and gave the lead guitarist $20 and asked us to play Proud Mary. He said he knew it enough to fake it and to just follow along. Well off we went watching his hands for the chord changes and by the second verse we had it. We played it a little more up-tempo then CCR and we had some people come up and dance to it.
After that, we discussed adding it to the band's repertoire but we really didn't like the CCR version as it's pretty dull when compared to the more well known, (at least for our age group) Ike and Tina Turner version. The problem was we liked the fast part of the Turner's version but not the slow part, and who in the band, (four guys) was going to be able to sing it like Tina?
So I did some looking around and found out that Tom Jones had done a cover of it that was up tempo and had a great funky bass line. So that who's version we do, (well with guitars playing horn parts and guys singing the backing vocals). The dancers always respond!
Have a listen to Tom's version!