Cover Me: Walking the Dog

It’s tempting to define Bruce’s early career as a series of eras characterized by the band Bruce belonged to at the time. From the mid-1960s to the early 1970s, Bruce travelled from The Castiles to Earth to Child to Steel Mill to The Bruce Springsteen Band (with a Dr. Zoom and the Sonic Boom dalliance and a Sundance Blues Band detour) before finally convening the original E Street Band in late 1972.

But any reasonably close inspection of Bruce’s bands from Child onward reveals that there was a whole lot of E Street from Bruce’s earliest days. Vini Lopez and Danny Federici were founding members of Child in 1968; Steve Van Zandt joined them in Steel Mill in 1970; and Garry Tallent and David Sancious enlisted in the Bruce Springsteen Band in 1971.

With so many familiar players carrying over from one band to the next, there was understandably a lot of sonic carryover as well. Early Bruce Springsteen band gigs sounded a lot like Steel Mill, and early E Street Band shows sounded a whole lot like The Bruce Springsteen Band.

The Bruce Springsteen Band was known for loose, jazzy, bluesy performances. If Steel Mill set pieces were all about the guitars, in the BSB every player had a chance to shine.

The original E Street Band was virtually identical to the Bruce Springsteen Band; in fact, new addition Clarence Clemons is the only original E Streeter who wasn’t in Bruce’s previous band. And with so much personnel continuity, it shouldn’t surprise us to learn that the early E Street Band sound was pretty similar to the late Bruce Springsteen Band sound.

Perhaps the best illustration of this can be found in our heroes’ cover of “Walking the Dog,” originally recorded by Rufus Thomas. “Walking the Dog” is an odd song; with verses based almost entirely on a children’s nursery rhyme paired with a non sequitur chorus and dog whistles, it verges perilously close to a novelty song. Despite (or perhaps because of) that, “Walking the Dog” became a hit for Thomas, cracking the Top Ten in 1963.

There’s something irresistibly charming about “Walking the Dog,” which may explain why the Rolling Stones fell under its spell–they recorded and released their own cover the following year.

As for Bruce and his band(s), “Walking the Dog” was frequently set listed from late 1971 through mid-1974. There aren’t any great quality Bruce Springsteen Band performances of “Walking the Dog” circulating, but documents exist of their 1971 and 1972 performances.

The E Street Band didn’t revive “Walking the Dog” until the autumn of 1973, almost a year after they first formed, but once they did it remained a regular set list habitué, making almost two dozen appearances between October 1973 and the following spring.

“Walking the Dog” performances by the E Street Band (although they wouldn’t actually go by that name until after the song had dropped from their set list altogether) were as playful and loose as the Bruce Springsteen Band’s.

No two performances sounded alike. Take, for example, these two early 1974 performances. First, let’s listen to their January 29th performance at Muther’s Music Emporium in Nashville. (Disregard the incorrect date and venue displayed in the video below.)

In this clip, the E Street Band is light on its feet, despite drummer Vini Lopez’s charmingly sloppy propulsion. Bruce commands the band like a drill sergeant (right down to the whistle), even though the band just wans to “Party!”

Bruce keeps the original nonsensical lyrics unaltered, but it quickly becomes clear that the lyrics aren’t the point, anyway. Danny and Davey both take terrific solos on the keys, and Clarence is his usual force of nature self.

By the end of the song, the E Street Band is racing for the finish line, with Bruce barely able to keep up–which makes this next clip all the more astonishing. It’s not even five weeks later (March 3, 1974), but we might as well be listening to an entirely different band.

This E Street Band is sneakier and sultrier, but Bruce is in even tighter control, frequently bringing the band to a halt for a “What it is!” by the Big Man, a primal scream by the bandleader, or a long, loooonnnngggg stone silence.

This “Walking the Dog” is almost an entirely new arrangement from the band’s previous performance, but one thing hasn’t changed: it’s still a showcase for some spectacular solos from Danny, David, and Clarence. (Bruce isn’t bad, either.)

The E Street Band played their last “Walking the Dog” on April 9, 1974, one month to the day before they debuted their official stage name. They haven’t played it in all the years since, but Bruce has played it twice without them. The most recent time was in 2004 at The Stone Pony with Joe Grushecky; no audio circulates from that show, however.

There was one other time, however–way back in 1982, with Sonny Kenn & The Wild Ideas at Big Man’s West in the spring of 1982.

That performance was nowhere near as daring or expansive as any of the Bruce Springsteen Band or E Street Band versions, but it remains the last recorded document of Bruce performing a song that was a staple of his early set lists.

Walking the Dog
First performed: December 11, 1971 (Asbury Park, NJ)
Last performed: July 17, 2004 (Asbury Park, NJ)