Who Was Bruce Springstone?

bruce springstone meet the flintstones take me out to the ballgame

Starting in the early 1980s, I haunted the used record stores of Cleveland searching for any music related to Bruce Springsteen. At the time, the Boss had released only a handful of albums, and it seemed like forever between new releases. So, I soon discovered bootlegs with their unusual titles and cheap cover art on the outside and hidden gems inside.

An Accidental Discovery

On one occasion, I found a full-sized 45-rpm album with only two songs on it. The record said it was by “Bruce Springstone” and was titled “Live at Bedrock.” But I figured it was a clever bootleg. I took the 12-inch single home and listened to the first song on side one, “Bedrock Rap/Meet the Flintstones.”

It was definitely in the spirit of Bruce Springsteen. It had a chatty introduction like the ones I had heard on the bootlegs.  And there was the saxophone playing a big part just like it was Clarence Clemons. Plus, the wailing at the end was all “Backstreets.” Yet, I soon realized the voice was not actually Springsteen.  But I still loved it.

Then I flipped it over to listen to “Take Me Out to the Ballgame.” I liked it even better than the A side.

Who Was Bruce Springstone?

In those days, we did not have the Internet to answer every question we had.  So it would be years before I found out more about Bruce Springstone.

The record, which was released in September 1982, featured Tom Chalkley.  He was a Baltimore journalist and editorial cartoonist who also drew the picture on the back of the record showing “Springstone” sliding into home plate carrying his guitar.

The idea for the record came when Chalkley and some childhood friends were playing music at a party and began goofing on Bruce Springsteen’s style. So Chalkley and his friend Craig Hankin arranged the music and released the 12-inch single with Chalkley singing and Hankin playing rhythm guitar on “Meet the Flintstones.”

“Take Me Out to the Ballgame”

Chalkley and Hankin needed a B-side for their Flintstones cover song.  So, Chalkley found inspiration when he saw the 1927 lyrics for the verses to”Take Me Out to the Ballgame” on sheet music in a store.  He thought that the name Nelly Kelly sounded just like a Springsteen heroine (a 1908 version featured the name Katie Casey).

So, using the little-known verse lyrics to “Take Me Out to the Ballgame,” they made the record.  Among others, rock guitarist Tommy Keene played lead guitar and Ron Holloway filled in for Clarence Clemons’s saxophone

In case you are just used to hearing the chorus of the song, here is how the opening Nelly Kelly verse to “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” sounded when sung by Gene Kelly and Frank Sinatra in the movie Take Me Out to the Ballgame (1949).

Response to the Bruce Springstone Record

The album was originally released by Clean Cuts, a local jazz label, but today it is still in print by Rhino. At the time of the record’s release, Bruce Springstone’s version of “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” and “Meet the Flintstones” received airplay on various radio stations. Reportedly, Bruce Springsteen sent Chalkley a postcard complimenting his work.

Springstone’s “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” was even featured in the 1995-96 Guinness Book of Sports Records for Longest Continuous Airplay of a Sports-Related Song. It was played more than 57,000 times straight.

Hanna-Barbara approved the use of “Meet the Flintstones.” But the company complained when MTV was going to show a video that Chalkley and Hanklin made.

Chalkley did write some other songs in the Springsteen style like one called “Ugga Bugga” (excerpt below), but Bruce Springstone never released another album.

Ugga Bugga

A Book About the Record?

People remain curious about Bruce Springstone, so much so that a few years ago Chalkley launched a Kickstarter campaign with Craig Hankin to raise money to create a graphic comic book about the record.  Or, as they describe it, the book is about “the bonds of friendship, creativity, youthful ambition and, of course, the staying power of a well-crafted novelty hit.” The book will be called, If I’d Known Back Then: A Graphic Memoir.

Chalkley and Hankin received the money they needed from the Kickstarter campaign to create the book, so it is too late to pitch in now. The book is not out yet, so it appears they are still working on the project.

Meanwhile, Chalkley and Hankin continue to make music.  Here, in 2015 they created a video for their 1979 song “Jackie” for the Small Guitar in Motion Project.

But their legacy will always be as Bruce Springstone for me. Who would have guessed that thirty years after its release, we would still be talking about this parody record I purchased by accident?

Which song by Bruce Springstone do you like best? Leave your two cents in the comments.

  • Hurricane Sandy Is Rising Behind Us
  • Soul Engines Running Through a Night: “Jungleland” Lives On
  • Land of Hope & Dreams, This Train, and People Get Ready
  • Bruce Springsteen on Jimmy Fallon: Wrecking Ball
  • New E Street Band Sax Player: Eddie Manion?
  • New Clarence Clemons Video Featuring Lady Gaga
  • (Some related Chimesfreedom posts.)

    Hurricane Sandy Is Rising Behind Us

    Wild Innocent E Street Shuffle Amazon For our readers in the path of Hurricane Sandy, we wish you safety through the storm. Here in New York, they are shutting down the subways and making other preparations. Meanwhile, the residents have been out stocking up to prepare for the worst. It’s interesting to see the choices folks are making at the grocery stores in the face of possibly being holed up without power and refrigeration for some time. It seems the pessimists are grabbing up the water jugs, while the optimists are buying ice cream.

    As a Bruce Springsteen fan, I cannot think of the name “Sandy” without thinking of “Fourth of July (Sandy),” one of the great early E Street Band songs. In this early recording, featuring the late Danny Federici and Clarence Clemons, the band performs at the Capital Center in Landover, Maryland on August 15, 1978. (The audio is a little off from the video, but it is still a cool video.)

    Almost every line in the song is an arresting image in itself, whether the singer is telling us about the “tilt-a-whirl down on the south beach drag” or that “the cops finally busted Madame Marie for tellin’ fortunes better than they do.” Here and in the original, Springsteen sings to Sandy, “Love me tonight, and I promise I’ll love you forever.” But I have heard him change the words in other versions to an even more honest line, “Love me tonight, and I promise . . . I promise there won’t be any promises.”

    In Songs (1998), Springsteen explained that he wrote “4th of July, Asbury Park (Sandy)” in mid-1973 after moving in with a girlfriend in a garage apartment five minutes from Asbury Park in Bradley Beach, NJ. The 23-year-old wrote it as “a goodbye to my adopted hometown and the life I’d lived there before I recorded. Sandy was a composite of some of the girls I’d known along the Shore.” He later explained the themes he was trying to address, “I used the boardwalk and the closing down of the town as a metaphor for the end of a summer romance and the changes I was experiencing in my own life.”

    4th of July Asbury Park book Amazon When the band planned to record the song, Springsteen hired a church children’s choir to sing on the track. But the kids did not show up on the day of the recording, so Suki Lahav — the wife of Springsteen’s sound engineer — sang the backing track and they overdubbed her voice to make it sound like a choir. It’s her voice you hear on “4th of July, Asbury Park (Sandy)” on The Wild, the Innocent & the E Street Shuffle (1973).

    In the late 1980s, I took a road trip with a friend from Cleveland to New York, and along the way we stopped in Asbury Park. I was surprised to discover then that there actually was a fortune teller there named Madam Marie. She was closed that day, so I did not get my fortune told. But it made me realize how Springsteen was able to take things from real life and transform them into great poetry. Although Madam Marie is no longer in Asbury Park because she passed away in 2008, here is hoping that Asbury Park and other areas along the shore survive Hurricane Sandy.

    What is your favorite version of “4th of July, Asbury Park (Sandy)”? Leave your two cents in the comments.

  • Hurricane Sandy Concert Ends With Springsteen’s Hope
  • Land of Hope & Dreams, This Train, and People Get Ready
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  • Who Was Bruce Springstone?
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    Soul Engines Running Through a Night: “Jungleland” Lives On

    Jake Clemons Jungleland
    Last night in Gothenburg, Sweden, E Street Band history was made as Bruce Springsteen performed “Jungleland” for the first time on the new tour without the late Clarence Clemons. But the family name lives on as Clemons’s nephew — and new band member — Jake Clemons carried on the family tradition of evoking the pain and joy of the song. Below is his solo in “Jungleland,” which was the next-to-last song of the night (you may watch the entire song from a much further distance here):

    “Jungleland will forever be associated with the Big Man Clarence Clemons, but it would have been a disservice to him to abandon the great song after his passing. Although we already had seen Jake play the song with another band in another setting, Springsteen did the right thing by waiting a short time and then bringing the song back with Jake as an unexpected surprise. As you can see in the video, at the end of the big solo, the crowd shows its appreciation. It was a bittersweet moment, as everyone was happy for Jake but also sad to be reminded of Clarence’s absence.

    There is only one thing to do in the face of such sadness in life. Pause for a moment, and then get up to dance to the show closer “Twist and Shout.”

    What do you think of the new “Jungleland”? Leave your two cents in the comments.

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    Land of Hope & Dreams, This Train, and People Get Ready

    Bruce Springsteen Clarence Clemons Bruce Springsteen released his new album Wrecking Ball (2012) to good reviews. Instead of adding to the reviews of the album, Chimesfreedom takes a close look at the album’s “Land of Hope and Dreams,” a song that the Washington Post claims is like a “pose” full of “[c]artoonishly austere American cliches.” Well, the Post is wrong about the song, which was played during the 1999 reunion tour with the E Street Band, then appeared in a live version on 2001’s Live in New York City and 2003’s Essential Bruce Springsteen.

    Why would Springsteen release a song more than ten years after it had already appeared on an album? Besides the fact that the prolific songwriter has been known to sit on songs for decades before release, the timing is perfect for this one for three reasons discussed in more detail below.  First, it is a beautiful tribute to the late Clarence Clemons. Second, the song brings a little hope to an album about hard times.  Finally, the song is not a “pose;” it is one of Springsteen’s most beautiful songs, evoking Woody Guthrie and Curtis Mayfield while turning a classic folk song on its head.

    (1) A Fitting Tribute to Clarence Clemons

    First, the above new gospel version of the song from the new album is one of the final songs recorded with Clemons, so one may understand that it was important for Springsteen to include Clemons on the album. And because the song goes back to 1999 when Springsteen reunited with the E Street Band, it also evokes the connection among the band mates.

    It was not surprising that when Dave Marsh wrote an essay memorializing Clarence Clemons that he entitled the article, “In the Land of Hope and Dreams.” Springsteen often has included references to the E Street Band members in his songs, ranging from “Tenth-Avenue Freeze-Out” to “The Last Carnival,” a tribute to deceased E Street Band member Danny Federici. Here, the placement of “Land of Hope and Dreams,” featuring Clemons’s sax solo, next to the final song on the regular album, “We Are Alive,” where Springsteen imagines his own death, connects the album to the Big Man and his sweet soul departed.

    In The Guardian, Springsteen noted that when listening to the new album, “When the sax comes up on ‘Land of Hope and Dreams,’ it’s a lovely moment for me.” What a perfect tribute.

    (2) A Song of Hope

    Second, the album Wrecking Ball is Springsteen’s recession-era CD, and the song signals a way out of hard times. Springsteen’s last CD, Working on a Dream, came out during the recent recession, but it had been recorded during a period of hope as then Senator Barack Obama was running for president.

    By the time Springsteen toured to support Working on a Dream (2009), the economy and the mood of the country had changed, so Springsteen had to rework setlists to include more of his past songs about hard times and even included Stephen Foster’s “Hard Times Come Again No More.” During that time, he apparently began thinking about this album, as during the tour he debuted this album’s title song, “Wrecking Ball.”

    While there is a touch of sadness in almost every Springsteen song, including classics like “Thunder Road,” he often mixes dark and light. When he sings about despair and hopelessness, he is rarely hopeless. So, on an album about hard times, it is not surprising that he would signal there is some hope: “Tomorrow there’ll be sunshine/ And all this darkness past.” As in the first single, “We Take Care of Our Own,” he embraces one of his common themes that hope lies in caring for each other.

    (3) The American Songbook and Trains: “This Train”

    Finally, we come to why “Land of Hope & Dreams,” one of Springsteen’s most optimistic songs, is also one of his greatest and not just a cartoon as the Washington Post claims. The song embraces much of the American songbook. With the song’s reference to “bells of freedom” it evokes the Bob Dylan song that inspired the name of this blog.

    But, more prominently, “Land of Hope and Dreams” connects to the long tradition of songs about trains.  This legacy travels from Robert Johnson, Jimmy Rodgers, and Hank Williams through songs like Cat Stevens’s “Peace Train.”

    To understand “Land of Hope and Dreams,” though, we must begin with a classic folk song, “This Train,” which Springsteen has confessed helped inspire “Land of Hope and Dreams.” Big Bill Broonzy recorded the traditional song “This Train,” and the great Sister Rosetta Tharpe had a hit with “This Train” in 1939.

    “This Train” goes back even further in time. Woody Guthrie adapted the traditional song as one about going to glory if you are good, because that train “Don’t carry nothing but the righteous and the holy.” The song specifically excludes gamblers, liars, smokers, con men, rustlers, side street walkers, wheeler dealers, and hustlers.

    One may hear Guthrie’s version in this scene from Bound for Glory (1976), with David Carradine portraying Woody Guthrie.

    It is interesting that Guthrie became associated with a righteous song, when the lyrics seem counter to many of his principles.  Yet, one may also see it as attacking the con men of the establishment.

    When Guthrie’s editor-agent proposed changing his autobiography’s title from Boomhchasers to Bound for Glory because of the book’s descriptions of Guthrie singing the song to homeless men, Guthrie initially balked. He was worried that readers would think he meant “Bound for Glory” to apply to himself.  His understanding of the phrase from the song was that “the common people” are bound for glory. (Joe Klein, Woody Guthrie: A Life.)

    “This Train” may be bound for glory, but many sinners have sung the song. Below is a performance by some of the early Sun Records rockers and admitted sinners, including Johnny Cash, Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl Perkins, and Roy Orbison.

    The song goes back even further in American history, as “This Train” was used by slaves to convey messages to each other on the Underground Railroad, with “glory” meaning “freedom.” Still, despite the history and inclusiveness attributed to the song, in the lyrics the train that is bound for glory limits its ridership to exclude sinners, however that term is defined.

    Springsteen takes that limit and turns it on its head. As he has explained, “Land of Hope and Dreams” is a response to “This Train,” spreading a message of inclusiveness instead of a message of exclusion.

          “People Get Ready”

    In case anyone missed the message of “Land of Hope and Dreams,” on the new studio version one hears the Victorious Gospel Choir repeating the refrain from Curtis Mayfield’s “People Get Ready.” That song originally was a hit for the Impressions in 1955 (discussed in more detail in a previous Chimesfreedom post).

    The gospel songs of Mayfield’s youth inspired him in writing “People Get Ready.” And in looking closer at the lyrics and hearing the song sung below by Alicia Keys, one may understand how the song inspired Springsteen either consciously or unconsciously in writing “Land of Hope and Dreams.”

    People get ready there’s a train comin’;
    You don’t need no baggage, just get on board;
    All you need is faith to hear the diesels hummin’,
    You don’t need no ticket, just thank the Lord.

    Mayfield did not specifically address the sinners of “This Train” in “People Get Ready.”  But his song implied the sinners could still board the train as long as they had faith.

          Climb On Board This Train

    Springsteen, though, goes even further than Guthrie and Mayfield. His train has no requirements and calls everyone to board.

    Springsteen does note that “faith will be rewarded.” Faith in what? God? Rock and roll? He does not say. And that is the beauty of the song. We are all saints and sinners and we are all welcome. Just have faith in something, even if it is each other.

    Yes, Washington Post, the welcoming train in American music is an American cliche. But every decade or so it is good for us lost souls to be reminded that we all are on the same journey together.

    This train
    Carries saints and sinners;
    This train
    Carries losers and winners;
    This Train
    Carries whores and gamblers;
    This Train
    Carries lost souls.


    {This last video from a Springsteen performance at the Civic Center in Hartford, Connecticut on May 8, 2000 is the E Street Band’s wonderful guitar-heavy version of the song that also appeared on 2001’s Live in New York City album. I love the opening riff of this earlier live version of the song, but I will reserve judgment for which version I prefer after numerous more listens of the newer gospel version.}

    Do you prefer the new 2012 version of “Land of Hope and Dreams” at the beginning of this post or the 2001 live version of “Land of Hope and Dreams” at the end of the post? Leave your two cents in the comments.

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    Bruce Springsteen on Jimmy Fallon: Wrecking Ball

    Springsteen Jimmy Fallon Nils Lofgren
    Nils Lofgren Directs the Horns

    Bruce Springsteen’s new album, Wrecking Ball will be released on March 6, and this week Late Night with Jimmy Fallon features a Springsteen theme, with artists covering Springsteen songs as well as the man and his band appearing last night and again on Friday. Last night, Springsteen performed the first single, “We Take Care of Our Own” as well as the title track, which is below.

    The song “Wrecking Ball” may be familiar to Springsteen fans because in 2009 Springsteen debuted the song at the Meadowlands, i.e., Giants Stadium, during his final shows at the stadium before it succombed to the wrecking ball. The song maintains references to the stadium being demolished (“where the blood is spilled, the arena’s filled, and Giants played”), but it holds up on the album because the song connects the stadium’s wrecking ball to more universal themes of aging, hard times, and standing up to both.

    [2020 Update: Unfortunately, the Jimmy Fallon video is no longer available so below is Springsteen performing “Wrecking Ball” at Giants Stadium.]

    While the lyrics on the album are touched by our recent economic troubles, the music of several of the songs are influenced by Springsteen’s uplifting work with the Seeger Sessions Band. This recession-era CD is the first E Street band album without Clarence Clemons, so it seems appropriate that the album is tinged with sorrow while steeped in joyful horns helping us through the rough times.

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