Cover Me: Detroit Medley

One of Bruce Springsteen’s most popular cover songs is a actually a mash-up of two different cover medleys, each of which covers two other classic rock-and-roll and R&B songs. It’s also a musical history lesson dating back to the early days of the blues era.

Got that?

Here’s the backstory:

“Devil With a Blue Dress” was first recorded in 1964 by Shorty Long, who wrote the song with Mickey Stevenson. If you’re not familiar with Long’s version, you might be startled by how different his original blues stomp arrangement is from the version Bruce performs. (I actually prefer the original version, especially that tasty guitar solo.)

Two years later, Mitch Ryder and The Detroit Wheels took a run at it with a much more uptempo version, and right smack in the middle, the band takes a right turn and launches into a cover of Little Richard’s “Good Golly, Miss Molly.” The result: a #4 smash hit for Ryder, matching the peak chart performance of Little Richard’s own “Good Golly, Miss Molly.”

But if the shift from “Devil” to “Miss Molly” was electrifying, the shift back near the end of the song is just awkward.

So when Bruce decided to cover Ryder’s Devil/Molly mash-up, he solved that problem by appending yet another Ryder medley: his earlier Top 10 hit from 1965, “Jenny Take a Ride.”

With Jenny, however, we need to take a ride much further back in time, because Jenny started life as Johnny.

“Johnny Johnny” was a 1952 single by Johnny Moore’s Three Blazers, one of their last. (You may not have heard of Johnny Moore’s Three Blazers, but you certainly know one of their most beloved contributions to Bruce’s seasonal set lists.)

Five years later, Little Richard gave “Johnny Johnny” his own treatment, giving Johnny a gender change in the process.

Lyrically, “Jenny Jenny” is actually a very different song, but there’s no mistaking its inspiration: the two songs share a virtually identical first verse, save for the gender of the titular character.

Little Richard’s version not only charted, it peaked at #10 on the Billboard Hot 100. By strange coincidence, when Ryder covered “Jenny Jenny” (re-titled “Jenny Take a Ride”), once again Ryder’s version peaked at the exact same spot as Little Richard’s version.

But even though Ryder’s version featured Jenny as the title character, she doesn’t appear until halfway through the song. Instead, Ryder starts the song with the blues classic “C.C. Rider.”

“C.C. Rider” goes back even further than “Johnny Johnny” — all the way back to 1925, when Ma Rainey recorded it as “See See Rider Blues.”

By a decade later, the song was now known as “C. C. Rider,” with a notable recording by Big Bill Broonzy.

The song went to #1 twice on the Billboard charts, first in 1943 by Bea Booze (whose version topped Billboard’s “Harlem Hit Parade” chart)…

…and again in 1957 by Chuck Willis, who topped the Billboard R&B chart with his version.

But it was Ryder who had the most chart success with it, when his version stealthily made the Top 10 on the Hot 100 as the front half of “Jenny Take a Ride.”

Fast forward to September 23, 1975 in Ann Arbor, Michigan, where Bruce Springsteen celebrated his 26th birthday on stage at the Hill Auditorium at the University of Michigan. Bruce kicked off the encore that night with a very special world debut, worked up for the local crowd.

That first-ever performance of “Detroit Medley” is already very close to the version Springsteen fans know and love: the mash-up of mash-ups is in place, featuring all four songs from the Ryder medleys. Of note in this early version, however, are Roy’s brief piano solo and the medley-closing “Back in the U.S.A.” (the band does not return to “Devil” to close the song out).

“Detroit Medley” stayed in the set, and when Bruce’s show at the Hammersmith Odeon was professionally filmed not even two months later, we can hear the medley coming together. “Back in the U.S.A.” is gone now, and the instrumental bridge is present (although we still don’t have the “Devil” reprise).

As incredible as that 1975 clip is, we’re extremely fortunate to have several professionally filmed “Detroit Medley” performances in circulation. By the time Bruce and the E Street Band performed in Houston on the Darkness Tour three years after that Hammersmith show, they’d performed the song almost 100 times, and their comfort, confidence and command are in full display in the clip below. (Those dance moves!)

Two years later, Bruce had traded up to arenas, and “Detroit Medley” proved even more energizing as an encore in a larger setting with a louder crowd. In the clip below, Bruce inserts a brief “I Hear a Train” and closes with the “Devil” reprise.

With each passing tour, the medley grew in scope (Bruce would often incorporate local tributes) and antics…

…and while it’s seen a lot less often during the post-Reunion era, “Detroit Medley” is a virtual lock to appear at least a few times on any given E Street Band tour.

In fact, since its introduction on the Born to Run Tour in 1975, “Detroit Medley” has made an appearance on every single E Street Band Tour except for the Reunion Tour.

To date, Bruce has performed “Detroit Medley” over 400 times.

And counting.

Detroit Medley
Released: No Nukes (1979), Hammersmith Odeon London ’75 (2005)
First performed: September 23, 1975 (Ann Arbor, MI)
Last performed: September 3, 2023 (East Rutherford, NJ)