WMMR Excavates Vintage Springsteen
• From deep in the MMaRchives at Beasley’s WMMR/Philadelphia comes an amazing, long-lost 1974 recording of Bruce Springsteen playing guest DJ on the air from the old WMMR studios at 19th & Walnut on Rittenhouse Square. At the time Bruce was in between the release of his second and third albums, doing a college tour with a set-list that included songs from his debut album, Greetings From Asbury Park as well as the follow-up, The Wild, The Innocent & The E Street Shuffle. It would be a year before the world exploded and Born to Run propelled Bruce and the band to unimagined stardom.
David Dye, former host of WXPN‘s World Café, was lucky enough to have been in that small MMR studio that day, and recalls, “I’m pretty sure this was a weekend shift, probably a Saturday afternoon. The only way I ever set up having Bruce on the air was to ask him at a gig.” Springsteen ended up spending over an hour on the radio, playing a wide variety of songs. Dye added, “Believe it or not, Bruce could be shy, as you may hear. That’s why I suggested the guest DJ idea — figuring that would be easier. It was. Particularly got better when he discovered the oldies compilations, and that led to him playing ‘Stay’ by Maurice Williams and the Zodiacs.”
This holy grail 10-inch reel-to-reel tape was discovered by current MMR Creative Services Director, Kevin Gunn, an avowed Bruce-head, who gently badgered the station’s engineering department get an old reel-to-reel machine back into serviceable order to dub the analog recording to digital form and get it ready for playback.
Thursday, April 7 — the 48th anniversary of its original broadcast — WMMR’s own in-house legend Pierre Robert will feature highlights of that session, which also included E Street band keyboardist David Sancious. Roll tape at 1pm on 93.3FM or listen online at wmmr.com.
