Cover Me: Wedding Bells

“What I’ve been listening to now… is a lot of Hank Williams. He was fantastic. God, he’s just incredible.” — Bruce Springsteen to Ed Sciaky, August 19, 1978

In the summer of 1978, Bruce Springsteen was practically obsessed with the music of Hank Williams. It was the beginning of his fascination with country music and his determination to infuse some of Hank’s spirit into his own material.

It wouldn’t be long before Williams’ influence made itself known in Bruce’s songwriting, but it turned up on stage right away.

Just two days after Bruce gave that interview to Ed Sciaky, he soundchecked Hank’s “Jambalaya (On the Bayou).” A week later, he included his first Hank Williams song in his main set, “(I Heard That) Lonesome Whistle.”

In the bootlegged audio from that show, the crowd sounds respectful but disengaged, which may be why Bruce decided to save his Hank Williams covers for soundchecks.

Over the remainder of the summer, Bruce continued to soundcheck Hank Williams covers, although only a few were surreptitiously captured on tape. One of those was Williams’ “Wedding Bells,” which kicked off the E Street Band’s soundcheck before their homecoming show at the Capitol Theater in Passaic on September 20, 1978.

“Wedding Bells” was a hit for Williams, peaking at #2 on the Retail Folk chart in 1949. It also inspired a series of covers by notable artists that included Jerry Lee Lewis and Glen Campbell, both of which may have crossed Bruce’s path in the preceding years. (He’d performed it at a soundcheck once earlier in 1975.)

Something in the sad, broken-hearted lyrics of “Wedding Bells” called to Bruce, and when he soundchecked it that night, he treated the song with warm, reverent vocals. Amazingly, his performance to an empty room was captured on video, so we can admire his interpretation all these decades later.

By the autumn, Bruce moved on from his fascination with Hank Williams… on stage, at least. In private, though, Bruce started channeling Williams through his songwriting. The Darkness Tour ended just a few months later, but when Bruce resurfaced at the M.U.S.E. concerts in 1979, he would debut a new song that owed a large debt to Williams.

We’ll pick up that story in tomorrow’s Roll of the Dice entry.

Wedding Bells
First performed: December 12, 1975 (Greenvale, NY) – soundcheck only
Last performed: September 20, 1978 (Passaic, NJ) – soundcheck only