It’s been a long time since Bruce Springsteen went from being “the future of rock” to “elder statesman of rock”. One of the blessings, or curses, that come with that title (depending on your attitude) is that everybody wants to sing with you and have you on their records. Bruce is no exception. The older he gets, the more invitations he seems to receive from other artists who want a little bit of that magic touch Bruce always brings. Or maybe he just accepts more of those invitations these days? The fact is, in the last 10 years, he’s appeared on more tracks by other artists than in the first 30 years of his career combined.

But let’s go back to the beginning. Other artists have recorded Bruce’s songs since the early Seventies, but it wasn’t till 1978 that Bruce appeared on another artist’s album with something besides song-writing credits. It was none other than Lou Reed who sent the invitation, but it wasn’t exactly a duet. More of a spoken word passage about nine minutes into the very avantgarde title track of Reed’s acclaimed album Street Hassle. Bruce’s part included a line from “Born to Run” during a section of the song dubbed “Slip Away”, which bore a slight resemblance to some of Bruce’s “Backstreets” and “New York City Serenade” interludes from previous years.

If “Street Hassle” showed Bruce a bit out of his element, his next appearance with another artist was the exact opposite; maybe because Bruce himself wrote and produced most of the album in question. Gary U.S. Bonds was a somewhat forgotten Sixties rock ‘n’ roller that Bruce took under his wing in 1981 and for whom, with the Dedication album, he created a relatively successful comeback. He lent him the E Street Band as the album’s backing band and did a duet on the opening track, “Jolé Blon”, a song that would become a live staple on his own River Tour that year.

Otherwise, the Eighties were remarkably void of Bruce appearances on anything other than his own releases. Of course, he did participate on both “We Are the World” and Little Steven’s anti-apartheid single “Sun City”, but those kinds of all-star charity releases are a different animal than what we’re discussing here.

It wasn’t until 1991 and his participation on the first single of Nils Lofgren’s Silver Lining album, the beautiful ballad “Valentine”, that he was again utilized in a duet (still the only solo album by an E Street Band member that has Bruce credited for vocals, including Patti Scialfa’s three albums). A few months later he helped out another old friend, Southside Johnny, on the rollicking, nostalgic “It’s Been a Long Time”, which wasn’t a duet as much as a quartet, with Little Steven and Jon Bon Jovi also taking part. Both 1991 appearances were enthusiastically welcomed by fans during a period where Bruce was otherwise all but invisible, and they are still among the most enjoyable third-party projects he has been part of.

1995 - during another period with Bruce not quite sure of what to do next - saw no less than a triple-shot of duets. Again, he decided to help out a few artists who were more or less unknown to the general public. Joe Grushecky, Joe Ely and Elliot Murphy were all friends of his whose careers he felt deserved a boost. In the case of Grushecky, Bruce took him under his wing like no other since Gary U.S. Bonds by producing his excellent album American Babylon as well as singing backup on the song Bruce himself wrote for it, “Homestead”.

The other Joe - Ely - had to settle for Bruce contributing vocals to “All Just to Get to You” on his album Letter From Laredo. The same was the case with Elliot Murphy on the song “Everything I Do (Leads Me Back to You)”, which may be one of the more obscure appearances Bruce has done, but it is nonetheless an incredibly beautiful song that deserved a much larger audience than it got.

Bruce was busy for the next few years with his own music. His last duet of the 1900’s was an unlikely one. Mike Ness of Social Distortion released his first solo album in 1999. Track #3 was a hard-rocking punk-styled tune called “Misery Loves Company”, and yes, that was Bruce singing a couple of verses. No one had ever heard of a Bruce/Mike Ness connection before. They didn’t seem musically related in any way, but who cared? This was the most rocking Bruce had been in ages, and he sounded great.

And that brings us to the 2000’s and a steady stream of duets with Bruce as one of the voices. It started out with Bruce and wife Patti Scialfa singing backup vocals on an Emmylou Harris song called “Tragedy” on her album Red Dirt Girl. They were pretty low in the mix, but that’s them, all right.

Bruce got a much more prominent role next on the dying Warren Zevon’s goodbye-to-this-world album, The Wind, on the song “Disorder in the House”. Not so much because of his vocal performance, but because of the scorching guitar solo that must rank among the best Bruce has ever done in the studio.

Then it was back to more familiar territory with no fewer than two duets on Joe Grushecky’s 2006 album, The Good Life. Apart from the title track, Bruce appeared on a song that was already well known to fans and that the two had written together several years previously. In fact, Bruce had been the first to present it to the public when he opened the first of 10 Madison Square Garden shows with it in 2000. The song is of course “Code of Silence”. Bruce released a live version of it on his Essential collection in 2003. The version on The Good Life, however, is a studio recording made for the occasion.

Joe Grushecky once strived to become famous outside of Pittsburgh, too. Even with Bruce’s help he never quite succeeded (not counting Bruce fans all over the world). More fame was probably not a concern to rock ‘n’ roll pioneer Jerry Lee Lewis when he - or probably his agent - contacted Bruce in 2006 to have him participate on The Killer’s duets album Last Man Standing. Bruce obliged and added vocals to his own song “Pink Cadillac”, which absolutely lent itself to Jerry Lee Lewis’ rockabilly piano.

In 2010 Bruce was once again heard on a duets album. This time it was by Kinks legend Ray Davies, who, unlike Jerry Lee Lewis, stuck to his own songs and had Bruce sing along to the Kinks classic “Better Things”.

One of the charming things about Bruce’s work with other artists is that he will skip back and forth between legends and up-and-coming artists or plain unknowns. There’s no doubt Jesse Malin is a great talent, but his career hasn’t quite taken off yet from a mainstream perspective. In 2007 Bruce did his best to help things along on Malin’s critically acclaimed album Glitter in the Gutter where the duet between Bruce and Malin on “Broken Radio” ranks among the highlights.

In 2009, however, Bruce was back with the legends when he helped out his friend John Fogerty on a cover of the Everly Brothers’ “When Will I be Loved”, which was included on the former Creedence singer’s solo album The Blue Ridge Rangers Rides Again.

The same year he joined the daughter of a legend, Roseanne Cash - Johnny Cash’s eldest offspring - who is pretty big on the country scene in her own right. She asked Bruce to sing along on a cover of Don Gibson’s beautiful country ballad “Sea of Heartbreak”. This is Bruce in his best crooning mode, and if you don’t want to miss it, you should pick up a copy of Roseanne’s album The List, which is worth a listen even if it hadn’t been for Bruce.

This brings us to 2011 and Bruce’s only appearance so far this year on a duet. Very few Springsteen fans had probably heard of The Dropkick Murphys prior to the latest New Year’s Eve. I know I hadn’t. It turned out to be no less than an Irish-American Celtic punk band, and together with Bruce they did a power version of a 1913 song by Alfred Bryan and Fred Fisher called “Peg o’ My Heart”. And trust me, when you hear all of the 2 minutes 25 seconds of it, you’re no longer wondering what Celtic punk means.

No new Bruce appearances on other artists’ albums have been announced at the moment, but if the last 10 years are any indication, we’ll see a lot more of them in the future. As of right now, we can already create our own Bruce Duets CD and fill it to the brim with often very different music from what we’re used to, but always with that special Bruce spice that we know and love. And a lot of predecessors, contemporaries, and successors of Bruce have been fortunate enough to sprinkle their own music with that Bruce spice. Who knows, they may even have opened a few eyes to a world of music outside of Bruce’s that some of us sometimes tend to forget.

Happy listening!

Did I forget any? If so, leave a comment. Also, you can visit the discography section and read more about a lot of the albums mentioned in this article.