Doug “Cosmo” Clifford, the iconic Creedence drummer, has a treasure trove of unreleased recordings he’s produced over the years, all safely stored in Cosmo’s Vault. This summer he re-discovered what he thought was a long-lost album called California Gold. It features Bobby Whitlock on lead vocals, singing 10 original songs he and Cosmo cowrote together. The band is slammin’, with Cosmo on drums, Bobby on B3, piano and guitar, Donald “Duck” Dunn and Tom Miller on bass, and alternating guitar players David Vega and Mike O’Neill. The songs are a combination of roots rock and melodic blues, all natural with no filler. Whitlock, the vocalist/keyboardist of Derek and the Dominos fame, is in top form. And Cosmo’s drumming is rock-solid, stretching beyond his well-known Creedence grooves. For reasons that shall remain a mystery, California Gold was somehow lost in time. But now that the album has been re-discovered, perhaps its time is here and now.
