“A Hundred and Ten in the Shade” is John Fogerty turning Southern heat into a moral weather report—where sweat, faith, and endurance hang in the air like thunder that refuses to break.
Important context first, because it frames how the song feels: “A Hundred and Ten in the Shade” is Track 4 on John Fogerty’s comeback-defining album Blue Moon Swamp, released May 20, 1997. The track runs 4:19, and Fogerty wrote it himself. The album climbed to No. 37 on the Billboard 200, and the following year it won the GRAMMY Award for Best Rock Album at the 40th Annual GRAMMY Awards—a rare late-career coronation that felt less like nostalgia and more like vindication.
Now the thing many listeners remember first isn’t the chart peak—it’s the voices behind his voice. On this recording, Fogerty brought in the legendary gospel group The Fairfield Four for backing vocals, and their presence changes the song’s entire temperature: suddenly the heat isn’t only physical, it’s spiritual. Fogerty himself confirmed their involvement in an interview, and explained how he even came to them—he’d heard their name recommended by musicians he trusted (including Jerry Douglas and his bass player Bob Glaub), and realized he needed to “check them out.”
That “need” wasn’t decorative. It was the sound in his head demanding the right human grain.
The story behind “A Hundred and Ten in the Shade” is tied to Fogerty’s reverence for the South’s musical lineage, especially the Mississippi Delta. In a long-form interview excerpted from Goldmine, Fogerty described traveling through Mississippi not as a tourist, but as someone drawn to the sacred details—graveyards, names, history you don’t find on roadside signs. And then comes the key passage: he said at least one song on Blue Moon Swamp grew directly out of those journeys, calling “A Hundred and Ten in the Shade” a kind of “visitation”—a complete feeling and sound that “landed,” carrying a direct memory of Mississippi’s heat and humidity. Even more striking, he credited The Fairfield Four as essential to making that vision real, saying it took years to find the exact sound he needed—and that their harmonies made the track one of the album’s highlights.
So what does that mean for the listener?
It means “A Hundred and Ten in the Shade” isn’t merely “a bluesy tune.” It’s a song that sweats. It carries the grinding repetition of labor—work that doesn’t end because the sun refuses to show mercy. Yet it also carries the dignity of a spiritual: the sense that when the body is pushed to its limit, the soul starts speaking in older languages—call and response, testimony, the rough grace of surviving another day. That’s exactly why the Fairfield Four matter here. Their sound doesn’t “sweeten” the track; it sanctifies it.
And Fogerty, famously, has always known how to make American hardship sound like American rhythm. Even down to the credits, the performance is built like a small machine for realism: Eddie Bayers is listed on drums for the song, and John Clayton on bass—players whose steadiness keeps the groove trudging forward like boots on hot ground. Fogerty’s own playing and production anchor the whole album—he produced Blue Moon Swamp himself at The Lighthouse in North Hollywood—so even when he’s singing about Mississippi, you feel it as imagination that’s been earned, not borrowed.
It’s also worth noting what the song isn’t: it wasn’t pushed as the album’s calling-card single. In that same period, Fogerty identified “Walking in a Hurricane” as the first single—loud, attention-grabbing rock meant to hit hard on first listen. “A Hundred and Ten in the Shade” works differently. It doesn’t chase you; it waits for you. It’s the track you come back to when you’re done admiring the shine and ready to sit with the truth.
Because at the end of the day, the title says everything. **A hundred and ten—even in the shade—**is the kind of heat where pretending becomes impossible. You stop performing. You stop posturing. You simply endure. And somehow, in Fogerty’s hands, endurance becomes music: gritty, reverent, and strangely comforting—like a voice beside you saying, Yes, it’s brutal. Yes, it’s real. And yes… you’re still here.