A bright little heartbeat from the very beginning, where young love, Latin swing and the first sparks of Creedence all meet in one word: “Bonita”
Before the world knew Creedence Clearwater Revival as the band of “Proud Mary”, “Bad Moon Rising” and swampy bayou grooves, there was a group of teenagers in the East Bay calling themselves Tommy Fogerty & The Blue Velvets. In that small, hopeful world of early-1960s local singles, “Bonita” shines like a tiny sun—one of the first places where the voices, guitars and instincts that would later define CCR came together on tape.
Strictly speaking, “Bonita” was not released under the name Creedence Clearwater Revival. It came out in early 1962 as the B-side of “Have You Ever Been Lonely” on the tiny Orchestra label (catalog number OA-611010), credited to Tommy Fogerty & The Blue Velvets. Recorded in late 1961 at Orchestra Studios in Oakland, California, the track runs a brief 1:43 and features Tom Fogerty on lead vocal, with John Fogerty, Stu Cook and Doug Clifford supplying the musical backbone. It never touched the national charts, but it did manage to land on the playlist of a local Oakland Top 40 station—no small prize for a group of teenagers still finishing school.
Most importantly, “Bonita” marked one of John Fogerty’s earliest steps as a songwriter. Credited to John and Tom Fogerty, it stands alongside “Have You Ever Been Lonely” as the first officially released compositions bearing John’s name—a small, modest beginning to one of American rock’s most distinctive songbooks. Decades later, when Fantasy Records compiled the Creedence Clearwater Revival: Box Set in 2001, they placed “Bonita” right near the front: disc one, track four, presented as part of the pre-Creedence story under the Blue Velvets banner. It’s a quiet acknowledgment that this little B-side belongs to the same long river of music.
Listen closely, and you can hear why drummer Doug Clifford remembered it so fondly. He later described “Bonita” as having a “snappy, almost Latin” feel. That description fits beautifully. The rhythm has a light, dancing lilt, a gentle sway that leans toward early rock-and-roll’s fascination with Latin accents and Ritchie Valens-style bounce. One writer even noted how surprisingly close it feels to Valens’ “Come On, Let’s Go”—a reminder that the young Bay Area band was listening wide, not just to blues and country but to the broader swirl of late-’50s and early-’60s pop.
Yet for all that, “Bonita” is disarmingly simple. No touches of swamp rock, no bayou fog, none of the darker atmosphere that would later come to define CCR. Instead, it is a bright, straightforward love song from very young men: a tune about a girl whose very name—Bonita, “pretty”—already sounds like the chorus of a teenage heart. The lyric, in essence, is all promise and devotion, the kind of uncomplicated adoration that fits neatly into a two-minute single.
What makes it moving now is not complexity, but context. You can almost picture the scene: four young players in an Oakland studio, cutting a side for a tiny label, hoping that maybe this time the record will travel a little farther, catch a few more ears. Tom out front at the microphone, John still emerging from the rhythm section, his future voice and songwriting power not yet center stage. There is a sweetness in that imbalance—an older brother leading, a younger one quietly sharpening the tools that will eventually carry them all onto a much larger stage.
In musical terms, “Bonita” bears the clean, uncluttered production typical of regional 45s of the era. The guitars are bright and direct, the beat is firm but never heavy, and there is just enough snap in the groove to make it feel like something you might have danced to at a high-school gym or a small town hall. No long solos, no studio tricks—just a short burst of energy and affection that fades almost as quickly as it arrives.
But if you listen with the benefit of hindsight, something else emerges. Within that simple framework you can already sense the band’s strengths: the tightness of the rhythm section, the natural feel for hooks, the ability to make two minutes of music feel complete. The song may be youthful and lightweight, yet the band behind it sounds surprisingly sure of itself. That confidence, even in embryo, is part of what makes “Bonita” so fascinating to revisit.
The later history of the track is almost as interesting as its birth. For many years it survived mainly in the memories of collectors and on worn 45s. Then, with Creedence Clearwater Revival: Box Set, the early singles by The Blue Velvets and The Golliwogs were gathered alongside the famous albums, letting listeners trace the whole arc from teenage hopefuls to one of rock’s defining bands. On that first disc, “Bonita” sits right after “Have You Ever Been Lonely”, like two pages torn from a diary written long before fortune smiled.
For anyone who comes to it now, perhaps after a lifetime of knowing only the hits, “Bonita” can feel almost shockingly intimate. It is not a polished greatest-hits moment; it’s a glimpse into the rehearsal room, the garage, the local dance. It carries the softness of early dreams, the innocence of boys who have not yet faced lawsuits, breakups, or the immense weight of fame. In that sense, it is less a “lost track” and more a family photograph—a snapshot taken before the lines of history hardened.
In the end, “Bonita” is a tiny song with a long shadow. It runs under two minutes, never charted, and for years was all but unknown outside the orbit of devoted fans. Yet inside those seconds lies the first co-written credit of John Fogerty, the early chemistry of the classic CCR lineup, and a charming little Latin-tinted rock-and-roll moment from the dawn of the 1960s. It may not sound like the Creedence the world would one day know, but you can feel them there, just beginning—already tuneful, already tight, already reaching for something that would eventually echo far beyond that small Oakland studio and a girl named Bonita.