“Greatest I’ve heard in my life”: Bruce Springsteen names the best living soul singer
Rock and roll isn’t a genre that prides itself on having the greatest singers in the world. Although there have been some knockout singers throughout history, like Freddie Mercury and Chris Cornell, some of the best frontmen of all time know how to use their voices to work the crowd rather than reach for any soaring high notes. Bruce Springsteen never claimed to have the best voice in the world, but he knew he was listening to a master at work when hearing this background singer harmonise.
Then again, the titans that Springsteen looked up to didn’t always use vocal harmonies. After all, the genre was about making something that seemed a little bit dangerous, so why would anyone want to make voices blend together the same way that they did in a local school choir? There were still exceptions like Buddy Holly’s close harmony lines, but The Beatles helped blow the doors wide open.
Outside of having some of the best pop songs of all time, hearing the Fab Three harmonise whenever they played live was a thing of beauty. While we will give Ringo Starr an honourable exemption from that list, his groove helped give John Lennon, Paul McCartney and George Harrison a firm basis to sing over, going from R&B vocal runs to classical style harmony on ‘Because’.
But even the greatest band in the world needs to learn it from somewhere else, and Sam and Dave weren’t that far behind them in terms of raw vocal strength. If John Lennon was moved by the smooth sounds of Smokey Robinson, Sam and Dave brought the grit back into soul music, usually taking the basis of blues music and putting a healthy dose of attitude into the mix like on ‘Soul Man’.
Whereas Springsteen was rock and roll to his core, he still felt that Sam Moore hadn’t lost his touch as one of the finest singers he had ever heard when taking a stab at his own soulful covers, saying, “I’ve known Sam for 30 years. He sang on the Human Touch record, on ‘Real World’ and ‘Soul Driver.’ He’s the greatest high harmony, high tenor I’ve ever heard in my life. When we sing on anything together, it’s just incredible. He’s probably the greatest living soul singer right now.”
Even though it’s hard for some people to see the common ground between soul and rock, ‘The Boss’ always put it in the centre of his music. He could still rock out like no one else could in his prime, but listening back to ‘Hungry Heart’ or the Bo Diddley rhythm of ‘She’s The One’, he was always pitch-perfect in bringing the soulful sense of drama to every one of his tunes.
Because for him, soul wasn’t far removed from any other music he liked. Soul music simply meant anything that was from the heart, and by that logic, Springsteen has been a soul singer since the very first time he stepped up to the microphone with a song in his heart.
