“C.C. Rider Blues/Jenny Jenny” is David Cassidy cutting through the screams to find the roots—a fast, fearless reminder that beneath the pop idol glare lived a real rock ’n’ roll heartbeat.
When David Cassidy roared into “C.C. Rider Blues/Jenny Jenny” on stage in 1974, it wasn’t just a nostalgic detour—it was a declaration. This medley (running about 4:56–4:57 on modern releases) appears on Cassidy Live!, his 1974 concert album recorded live in Britain, and it sits in the show like a charged wire: the moment he stops being a poster on a bedroom wall and becomes a bandleader driving straight back to the source.
For chart context—the “arrival” you asked for—this track didn’t debut on its own as a charting A-side single. Its chart story comes through the record that carried it. In the UK, Cassidy Live! entered the Official Albums Chart on 03/08/1974 at No. 28, then rose to a peak of No. 9 the next week (10/08/1974). Around the same time, the album’s featured single was his cover of “Please Please Me” (yes, the Beatles title)—and the 7″ release paired it with “C. C. Rider Blues/Jenny Jenny” as the B-side (Bell catalogue 1371). That single first charted on 27/07/1974 at No. 29, eventually peaking at No. 16. So if you want the honest “debut position at release” for this medley’s public moment, it’s intertwined with that single’s first step onto the UK chart at #29, and with the live album’s first step onto the albums chart at #28.
But the real story lives in what he chose to sing.
“C.C. Rider” (also known as “See See Rider”) is an old blues standard—first recorded by Ma Rainey in 1924—built from the kind of lyrics that don’t decorate pain, they simply name it: betrayal, wandering, the ache of someone you can’t reform. “Jenny, Jenny,” on the other hand, is pure 1950s rock ’n’ roll voltage: recorded and released by Little Richard in 1957, written by Little Richard and Enotris Johnson. Put those together and you get a clever emotional arc: blues resignation snapping into rock-and-roll defiance—sorrow turning into motion, heartbreak turning into sweat.
That’s why it works so well live. Cassidy Live!—his fourth solo album and final release on Bell Records, produced by Cassidy with Barry Ainsworth—was explicitly designed to capture the atmosphere around him onstage, the mass excitement that followed him through that era. And in that atmosphere, a medley like “C.C. Rider Blues/Jenny Jenny” is almost strategic: it cuts through glamour with grit. No coyness. No wink. It’s a sprint straight into American musical bedrock—blues and early rock—delivered with the urgency of someone who wants to be taken seriously right now, not later.
There’s a bittersweet beauty in hearing this choice from David Cassidy specifically. Because the 1970s loved to freeze people in a single pose: teen idol, TV face, the convenient story everyone repeats. But this track pushes back against the freezing. It says: I grew up on records, too. I can shout the old syllables. I can ride a groove that existed long before my fame and will outlive it. In that sense, the medley’s meaning is bigger than its lyrics—it’s about identity. Not the one printed on magazines, but the one you earn in front of a microphone when the band is loud and the room is trembling.
Even the way the medley sits in the album’s flow tells you something. On the record’s track listing, it’s grouped with a broader rock medley section—an onstage pivot into classic rock ’n’ roll momentum, not ballad sentiment. It’s Cassidy placing his roots where you can’t miss them: right there in the set, amid the noise, where only commitment survives.
So when “C.C. Rider Blues/Jenny Jenny” plays today, it isn’t merely “a live track” or “a B-side.” It’s a small time capsule of a performer stepping out from under a spotlight that could be blinding—and choosing a different kind of light, the older glow of jukebox history. Blues into Little Richard. Hurt into heat. And somewhere in that fast turn, you can hear what he was really chasing all along: not just applause, but authenticity.