Bruce Springsteen’s favourite country singer: “He has got it all”
Far from being the sole preserve of pick-up truck drivers and John Wayne obsessives, country music has a kind of universal power which has infected countless different avenues of the music industry over the years, influencing everybody from Bruce Springsteen to Beyoncé along the way.
Springsteen, in particular, has always held a candle for country music. After all, country played a key role in the formulation of rock and roll back in the 1950s, uniting with the likes of blues, gospel, and R&B in order to create the earliest origins of the rock rebellion which Springsteen would soon follow. What’s more, there are a lot of sonic similarities between the roots rock tales of ‘The Boss’ and the storytelling aspect of country, which has been a core part of its appeal from the very beginning.
If you took some of Springsteen’s many narrative tales of working-class people and their lives in his native New Jersey, stripped them back to their acoustic bones, and perhaps added a banjo here and there, the integral country influences upon his work become much clearer. What’s more, Springsteen records like 2019’s Western Stars place those country influences firmly in the spotlight, for all to see. It is fair to say, therefore, that ‘The Boss’ knows his way around the world of country music.
That fact shouldn’t come as much of a surprise, though, given Springsteen’s outspoken and enduring adoration of figures like Joe Ely. Throughout his time on the upper echelon of rock and roll performers, the New Jersey songwriter has never shied away from discussing his influences, and Ely is one of the fellow musicians who is routinely heaped in praise by Springsteen, and quite rightly too.
First emerging from Texas back in the mid-1970s, Ely has always been among the most inventive and prolific voices in American country music, even if his output has always been a little different to traditional country. In fact, Ely almost single-handedly birthed the alternative country and progressive country scenes during his earlier years, bringing him onto the radar of virtually every songwriter with a similar appreciation for originality and innovation – including, but not limited to, Bruce Springsteen.
So, when Springsteen inducted Ely into the American Music Honours earlier this year, he didn’t waste the opportunity to espouse the joys of the songwriter’s output. “If the world was a fairer place, Joe Ely would have been huge,” he declared. “I mean huge.”
“He had, and has got it all,” ‘The Boss’ continued. “He’s a great songwriter. He looks dead cool. He’s a fabulous stage performer, always with a great band. He’s got that voice, the one I wished I had. It’s got that slight southern country twang, it’s got a hint of rockabilly. It’s got the depth and emotion of Johnny Cash and it’s as deeply authentic as his Texas roots.”
Among various other stunning indorsements of Ely’s work over the years, Springsteen joked, “I’ve been blessed to sing on his records and be onstage with Joe on occasion and the only thing I can say is: Thank God he wasn’t born in New Jersey. I would have had a lot more of my work cut out for me.”
Springsteen’s gushing induction speech, along with the fact that he has shared a stage with Ely on more than a few occasions, should go some way to explaining the lasting influence the country star has had on the songwriter, along with countless other performers over the years.
