LISTEN: Bruce Springsteen - The Great White Boss

Growin' Up

It's Hard To Be A Saint In The City

With the upcoming release of Bruce's 'The Promise' and the new live videos that have been popping up on You Tube over the past few days, mine and Ida's excitement levels have reached an all-time high. I've been digging around and looking for classic Bruce bootlegs and came across 'The Great White Boss', a crackly bootleg, jam packed with everything that I love about Springsteen. Atmosphere, epic stories, the very best musicianship and the ability to take me to other places. One of the highlights of this 2 Disc set has to be the hilarious extended intro for The E Street Shuffle and the story of Clarence and how he joined the band.

"We figured, any guy at four in the morning, dressed in white, walkin’ like no rain with a saxophone was not to be messed with, was let to walk on by…”

Two of the LPs in this three-record boxed set are drawn from Bruce Springsteen’s early-show performance on August 15, 1975, at the Bottom Line club in New York, a set broadcast live on WNEW-FM. Springsteen’s stand at the Bottom Line, just prior to the release of Born to Run, helped to make him a national phenomenon, and you can hear why on this collection of songs drawn from his first three albums, along with such rock & roll covers as the Crystals’ “Then [S]he Kissed Me,” and the Searchers’ “When You Walk in the Room,” and Gary “U.S.” Bonds’ “Quarter to Three,” not to mention the extended introduction to “The E Street Shuffle,” in which Springsteen tells the story of how Clarence Clemons joined the E Street Band…

The Great White Boss includes a third bonus LP (at a 45-RPM running time) that features a version of Springsteen’s “You Mean So Much to Me” (later farmed out to Southside Johnny and the Asbury Jukes), recorded live in July 1973, on one side, and the never-released Springsteen songs “Don’t Look Back” (a powerful rocker that just missed being on Darkness on the Edge of Town) and “Action in the Streets,” recorded live in March 1977, on the other. With most of the album drawn from a radio broadcast, the sound quality is excellent for a bootleg.

Tracks 101 to 203 - Bottom Line, New York, August 15, 1975
Track 204 - My Father’s Place, Roslyn, New York, July 31, 1973
Tracks 205 to 206 - Music Hall, Boston, MA, March 25, 1977

Download the complete show over at Big Ozine.