Part of the reason Bruce Springsteen's 30-year plus musical career has proven so enduring, so vital and so essential—he has produced eight stone cold classics—is that he somehow manages to strike a perfect balance between meaningful criticism and joyous celebration of American life on each of his albums. Unafraid to turn an eye from the low-income, futureless people living in dusty America towns, yet unable to shake his conviction that there are things in this world that make living such an ecstatic, glorious experience, Springsteen has proven himself an unfailingly interesting artist and one of rock's greatest poets.
That is also part of what makes Bruce's latest outing, his 14th record overall, such a curiosity: Why would one of the greatest lyricists of the last century even bother to record an album made up entirely of covers? Each song on We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions is either written by or popularized by Pete Seeger during his 60-year plus career in music (that still continues to this day). Even more confusing is that Springsteen himself confesses in the liner notes that he wasn't too terribly familiar with or in love with Seeger's songs until eight years ago when he recorded a song for a tribute album to the folk icon.
But after hearing the album's first 15 seconds, curiosity and questions give way to sheer unthinking enjoyment. Old Dan Tucker\ begins with the crystal-clear playing of Mark Clifford's banjo, which before long is complemented by Bruce's familiar, life-affirming growl, shouting out lines like ""Old Dan Tucker was a fine old man / washed his face in the frying pan"" as if they were the greatest words ever put to paper.
""Old Dan Tucker"" is one of those old rural songs that no one really knows what it's about, but Springsteen's Seeger Sessions Band—composed of a fiddle, banjo, washboard, upright bass, trombone, accordion and violin—attacks the song as if their life depended upon it, imbuing it with a Dixieland-style energy and joy so amazing it's practically painful when the song ends at only two and a half minutes.
The next song, ""Jesse James,"" is a traditional song first played by Seeger almost 50 years ago. Though it may have been written decades before he was born, Springsteen wastes no time making this song his own. Backed by bouncing horns, a sliding accordion and knee-tapping-worthy banjo pickin', Bruce sings about James, the American outlaw who ""Stole from the rich and gave to the poor"" until a ""dirty little coward ... laid poor Jesse in his grave."" His guttural vocals strike a perfect balance between righteous anger for a slain hero of folklore and joyful celebration of a man who lived life on his own terms. Springsteen can seemingly take any song and make it his own.
On ""My Oklahoma Home,"" the Boss takes another song meant to be played on porches in the South and makes it his own. As with so many songs in his catalogue—""Glory Days,"" ""Hungry Heart,"" ""Born in the U.S.A.""—Bruce takes a song with miserably depressing lyrics about real-life troubles but sings and plays it with so much joy you can't help but smile. Even while Springsteen sings about a twister blowing away his house, his wife and his life, the band behind him plays a joyous ruckus of horns, accordion, guitar, violin and tambourine.
It is as if Springsteen knows the world has a lot of hardship to throw at a lot of people, but is still unwilling to lie down and admit defeat. Openly addressing dead-end life in the United States but refusing to abandon his ecstasy over music and life—and seemingly incapable of losing the irrepressible scruffiness he brought to rock three decades ago—Springsteen has produced a complex album of simple country and folk tunes. Pete Seeger was perhaps the most important folk musician and curator of folk music culture the last century saw, and We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions does all it can to add to the sterling legacies of Springsteen and Seeger.
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