Pierre Robert hosts an April 7, 2022 playback of Bruce Springsteen’s guest DJ appearance. Guests include Kevin Gunn, MMR’s Creative Director who found the long lost tape and David Dye who hosted Bruce in the Rittenhouse Square studio that Sunday afternoon in 1974.
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From deep in the MMaRchives, comes a long-lost recording of Bruce Springsteen, live on the air at WMMR studios at 19th & Walnut on Rittenhouse Square… playing songs of his choosing and filling in the MMR audience of his next moves.
Bruce was in between the release of his 2nd and 3rd albums, doing a college tour with a setlist that included songs from his debut 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, WXPN’s former World Café host, and in the small ‘MMR studio that day remembers, “ I am pretty sure this was a weekend shift, probably Saturday afternoon. The only way I ever set up having Bruce on the air was to ask him at a gig.”
Bruce spent an hour + there playing a wide variety of songs. Dye recalls, “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.”
The 10 inch reel to reel recording was found by current MMR creative services director, Kevin Gunn, an avowed Bruce-head. He gently badgered our engineering department to repair an old reel to reel tape machine back to serviceable order to dub the recording from analog tape to digital form and ready it for playback.