Cover Me: I Sold My Heart to the Junkman

About the only things that I can tell you for certain about “I Sold My Heart to the Junkman” are that it was written by Leon René (who also wrote “Rockin’ Robin” and other hits) under the pseudonym Jimmie Thomas, first recorded in 1946 by The Basin Street Boys…

…and then translated into a wonderful arrangement by Etta Jones the following year.

From there, it gets confusing.

The most famous version of the song was released in 1962 by The Blue-Belles, with lead vocals by a destined-for-fame Patti LaBelle.

Except maybe not.

It turns out the track was actually recorded by a Chicago girl group known as The Starlets and improperly credited to The Blue-Belles upon release.

The Blue-Belles made it a #15 hit, The Starlets sued, and everyone settled out of court.

Except to this day, it’s almost impossible to tell who’s actually performing on the record. Is it The Starlets? Patti LaBelle’s lead vocals and The Starlets on backing vocals? Just the Blue-Belles against the original backing track?

No one seems to know for sure, or at least they’re not saying. The fact that The Starlets re-recorded their own version is of little help–their version sounds very close to the more well-known version.

What’s less of a mystery is the beautiful girl Bruce refers to in his introduction to his one-and-only cover of this controversial song in 1974. She’s most likely the “drug-taking, hell-raising wild child who played by nobody’s rules” that Bruce “fell in obsession” with a few years earlier and wrote about in his autobiography four decades later.

Or as he put it in Western Stars: “I had a gal in New Jersey who broke my heart, ripped it to shreds, trampled on it, and sent it to me C.O.D. in a paper bag.”

Now, I don’t know why Bruce was thinking about her that day in 1974, nor do I know why Bruce picked that night to cover an obscure jazz standard turned controversial girl group R&B hit.

But cover it he did, and the band’s unique arrangement (which draws from both the 1940s and 1960s versions) and polished performance strongly argues against it being an audible.

That performance was clearly planned and rehearsed, and it turned out great. So why didn’t Bruce ever cover it again? Just add that to the list of mysteries surrounding “I Sold My Heart to the Junkman.”

(Bonus trivia: the performance you just heard–from May 9, 1974–is the first known show where Bruce’s band was referred to as the E Street Band. It was the earlier of two shows that night, which means Jon Landau missed Bruce’s one-time-only performance. Landau only attended the late show that night, and while there’s no audio from that show, it’s clear that Bruce must have put on quite a performance–because Landau would write a review of it leading with the words “I saw rock and roll future and its name is Bruce Springsteen.”)

I Sold My Heart to the Junkman
First performed: May 9, 1974 (Cambridge, MA)
Last performed: May 9, 1974 (Cambridge, MA)