Cover Me: Soul Days

[“Soul Days”] was a song I stumbled onto. You go on iTunes and you see you see “Drift Away” at No. 1. No. 2, “Soul Days.” What’s “Soul Days?” I’ve never heard of that. All right. Boom. I put it on. Oh, it’s a great narrative. It’s about somebody’s love for soul music… It almost sounds like it could have been one of my tunes.”

— Bruce Springsteen to Raina Douris, NPR, December 9, 2022

If we’d known in advance there was going to be a Dobie Gray song on Bruce Springsteen’s album of soul covers, “Soul Days” is the last song we’d guess.

Heck, it’s probably the last song Bruce expected. As he admitted to his NPR interviewer, he stumbled across it by accident.

There’s a good reason for that: it was one of the very last songs Gray ever recorded, the title track to his final album. Released in 2001, neither the song nor the album attracted much in the way of notice or airplay. Even so, “Soul Days” is a sweet wistful track that transports its listener to a time when their life had a soundtrack. (It would have made a fine and far more fitting title track for Bruce’s album.)

For more than twenty years, “Soul Days” idled in obscurity. However, all it took was the right person stumbling upon it for the overlooked gem to finally find its audience.

“Soul Days” is easily the youngest song on an album widely (and mistakenly) considered to be a collection of 1960s and 1970s classics. It’s also probably the least familiar to his audience. That gave Springsteen the opportunity to take a bit more liberty than he did with most of the album.

Bruce made a few surgical lyrical alterations throughout the song, but the coda is a complete departure.

As the song leisurely fades, Bruce and Stax legend Sam Moore take turns namechecking soul legends, including a sly meta moment when Bruce sings “I wanna hear some Sam and Dave” and Moore responds “oh listen here!”

(Fun Fact #1: Moore also sings backing vocals on Bruce’s 1992 track “Soul Driver,” perhaps the alphabetically closest two songs in Springsteen’s catalog.)

(Fun Fact #2: Dobie Gray’s original version of “Soul Days” features guitar licks that are very reminiscent of Sam and Dave’s iconic 1967 hit single, “Soul Man.” Maybe Bruce’s decision to ask Moore to sing on his version of “Soul Days” was subliminal? If so, I suspect producer/arranger Ron Aniello didn’t listen as carefully, because the backing track to Bruce’s version features no such homage.)

Bruce has only performed a few songs from Only the Strong Survive as of this writing, but with a tour only days away, “Soul Days” seems a good candidate for at least a cameo or two.

After all, like Springsteen himself said, “It almost sounds like it could have been one of my tunes.”

Soul Days
Recorded: 2021
Released: Only the Strong Survive (2022)
Never performed

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