Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band
Paul Mellon Arts Center
Choate School
Wallingford, CT
April 10, 1976
Simon M (?) Master Tapes via JEMS
1644 Edition

Recording Gear: unknown microphones > Sony TC-152SD

JEMS 2020 Transfer: Master Cassettes > Nakamichi RX-505 (Dolby on; azimuth adjustment) > Sound Devices USBPre 2 > Audacity 2.0 capture > iZotope RX6 > iZotope Ozone 6 > MBIT+ Resample to 1644 > Audacity > TLH > FLAC

01 Night 
02 Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out 
03 Spirit In The Night 
04 Its My Life 
05 Thunder Road 
06 She’s The One 
07 Born To Run 
08 Pretty Flamingo 
09 Incident On 57th Street 
10 Frankie 
11 Backstreets 
12 Growin’ Up 
13 Saint In The City 
14 Jungleland 
15 Rosalita 
16 Raise Your Hand 
17 4th July Asbury Park (Sandy) 
18 Detroit Medley

Known Faults:
None

Here’s a big upgrade to a wonderful show from an arguably under-appreciated period in Springsteen history. Playing at the request of the man who signed him to Columbia Records, John Hammond, Bruce and the band do a full set at Choate, the private boarding school in Wallingford, CT. Our friend CB who attended says the show wasn’t publicly promoted and you’ll see below how he found out about the gig.

The set is a near-perfect snapshot of the Spring ’76 tour and loaded with highlights, from the return of “Incident On 57th Street” to one of the less than a dozen known period performances and recordings of the first song Springsteen penned after the release of Born to Run, the magical “Frankie.” Throw in Bruce’s marvelous cover of “Pretty Flamingo” and you’d have us sold right there.

But we’re also treated to a double shot of “Growin’ Up” and “Saint In The City,” plus excellent versions of “Night,” “It’s My Life,” “Backstreets,” “Jungleland” and “Raise Your Hand” which had just come into the set.

A recording of Wallingford has circulated for decades and the version that will be familiar to most is the Fanatic label release called Walk Softly Tonight.

For nearly that same amount of time, JEMS has been in possession of two cassettes that have all the hallmarks of being master tapes of the show. First, they are pair of Maxell UD120 cassettes recorded single-channel mono. In fact, tape one is only recorded on Side A, with the show picking up again on the A side of tape two, almost certainly the decision of a taper who wanted to maximize recording length and not cut songs (which he didn’t). No one would make a copy of a show spread out across random sides of 120-minute cassettes in the first place, and fewer still would copy to a single channel.

On top of that, the ticket stub from the actual show is in one of the cassette cases. The last piece of physical evidence is a sticker on the side of the tape that says “send this back-Dolby.” The sound quality of the cassettes matches our master recording assumption and the Dolby encoding fits the Sony TC152SD recorder.

Despite having surely copied these curious Wallingford tapes at some point in the cassette era for somebody (Slipkid68?), we never digitized them, perhaps because the provenance was in question. In fact, I didn’t even recall the show spread across the tapes and being single channel until I ran the transfer this week. But whose masters?

According to our friend CB, the show was recorded by both Joe K and Simon M. Here’s what he recalled about that night:

“My first ‘Frankie.’ Mike Appel’s assistant told me about the show [CB used to call the office just to see if there was any news] and I bought 12 tickets by phone, $6 each from the school. Joe Kivak, Simon M and Ed Sciaky were in my group. When we got there, Ken Viola and his friend were the only ones in line ahead of us. If only i had bought my camera by then as I would have taken some great front-row shots.

Simon chose to sit a few rows back to keep his Sony tape deck out of sight, Sciaky sat with him. When I called for tickets the woman at the box office had a hard time believing that I wanted 12 and they had to hold them for me to pick up on the day of the show. Most of the crowd was made up of Choate students who bought one or two at a time.”

Based the evidence and CB’s story, I believe these cassettes to be Simon’s master tapes, sent to the Pacific Northwest for dubbing decades ago and never returned. The Fanatic release must have come from Joe’s masters or from a copy made of Simon’s cassettes and suffers from a distortion, hiss and frequency imbalance.

This new 2020 transfer from the master tapes changes the sound from marginal to one of the best audience recordings of the Spring ’76 tour, clear, rich and full, perhaps even rivaling JEMS own recording of East Lansing, MI, April 4, 1976. Samples provided. Given the source and the quality, we’re presenting this in standard 1644 and high resolution 2496 editions.

We’re hoping Simon himself will weigh in and when he does we’ll provide an update. Until then, enjoy being transported back to the Spring of 1976 through this warm, wonderful capture of Springsteen and the E Street Band starting a new chapter.

BK for JEMS