The road to Tenth Avenue started way back in 1972.
The original line-up for what would become Greetings From Asbury Park, N.J. included ten songs, evenly split between full-band recordings and Springsteen solo performances.
That wasn’t so much an artistic decision as a diplomatic one: while Bruce stubbornly wanted his first album to be a full-band rocker, John Hammond and Mike Appel put their thumbs on the scale for a solo debut. So Bruce split the difference, writing and recording five tracks in each vein.
Bruce submitted his balanced album to Columbia in August 1972, but when president Clive Davis listened to it, he sent it back with a veto: the album had too many solo tracks and no hit singles.
Bruce went back to his notebook, and before the month was out he’d written two new songs with radio sensibility in mind: “Blinded by the Light” and “Spirit in the Night.” To make room for the new tracks, he had to jettison three existing ones, so off to the chopping block went “Arabian Nights,” “Visitation at Fort Horn,” and a lovely solo piano character study called “Jazz Musician.”
“Jazz Musician” was no throwaway, though–we have two surviving demo tracks and two studio takes (the last of which you can hear in the clip above) that demonstrate just how hard Bruce worked on his song and just how seriously he took it.
The song itself is a sketch, perhaps a painting of an errant musician who’s made some questionable choices with a presumably underage paramour.
Well, it’s a Saturday night in New Jersey
And you’re feeling kinda wet
Now the summer heat is getting you worried
So you look as innocent as you can as you sweat
You got a woman on the other side of the law
But it ain’t cool to go to see her yet
Because her ex-old man’s some half-shot detective
With his heart set on Dragnet
And so you stand on the corner looking kinda torn
In the Blue Light lounge where Death was born
The jazz musician blows his horn
Bruce wrote “Jazz Musician” in peak wordplay form, so we need to pay close attention to take in the full scene.
Set in his home state, we’re introduced to our titular musician and his romantic troubles. We immediately know that there’s something more going on here than a lover’s spat: the “summer heat” refers to police attention rather then the weather; his sweat stems from his fear of capture by the law.
We can only assume that he’s in trouble for sleeping with someone underage, and his poor choice was compounded by the fact that her father’s an officer himself. In case we harbor any doubt, though, Bruce puts it to rest in the second verse:
You pop a letter to your baby in Richmond
Because you’re feeling kinda down
She’s kinda small but at least she don’t bitch none
And she needs you real bad and sometimes that’s all that counts
Oh, you had a teenage band and flying hands
And, yeah, you were pretty big in the South
But you passed out on stage and flew into a rage
And someone tried to revive you mouth to mouth
And you felt a pain in your chest as you passed the crown
And in the Blue Light lounge the lights went down
And the audience, like monks, slipped silently out of town
Bruce is somewhat circumspect here, cleverly cloaking the sordid details, but even in 1972 Bruce didn’t waste words. “Kinda small” and “teenage band” are clues to the age of the musician’s lover, and “flying hands” and “big in the South” are both terrific examples of double entendre.
Beyond his statutory trouble, though, it looks like he also may have a bit of a drinking or drug use problem, one that played out on stage and lost him his live audience. Still, he’s got an audience for his vinyl, and even if he doesn’t feel his art is completely understood, at least he’s being heard.
Well, now the atheist burns you for laughing out loud
‘Cause he can’t understand what you’re saying
Whoa, and the DJ he’s rattling like a Gatling gun
But man, that’s your record he’s playing
Now up until this point, “Jazz Musician” is an interesting but unremarkable track. We might acknowledge Davis’ wisdom in encouraging its removal. And artistically, the rest of the song isn’t any stronger.
Historically, though, “Jazz Musician” points the way forward to one of Bruce’s most enduring songs. Let’s listen:
Well outside the park is dark
But the sidewalk’s bright in line with the light of the living
Oh, and baby can I walk you home tonight
Because it’s so bad outside but there’s so much for the giving
I was stranded in the jungle
First stage witness at a company killing
And shuffling my feet, clutching my high school diploma
Promised sixty bucks a week and top billing
I’m sure you recognized the lines that would years later end up in or evolve into “Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out.” And there’s more:
And has anybody seen sweet Gabriel
That dark woman with the funny tattoo
The curtain calls of her shadow on my walls
All I got to pull me through
Whoa, and out on the corner there’s no room to move
Because everybody’s trying so hard to groove
And in the Blue Light lounge, Jazzman he plays the blues
But where “Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out” is romantic and celebratory, Bruce uses almost the same imagery and lyricism to paint a much darker picture in “Jazz Musician” — a character study of a forlorn musician exiled from the clubs to the street, pining for a girl who the law keeps out of reach, playing the blues because he’s got nothing else and nowhere else to play.
It’s a sad story, and one that never saw print–but it paved the way to greater and more enduring things to come.
Jazz Musician
Recorded: June 27, 1972
Never released
Never performed
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