“Hey man, Dave can do it all,” said my college friend Chris matter-of-factly, a stoic guy who was into Shelby muscle cars and never, at least ostensibly, music. The “Dave” in question was Dave Edmunds, the Welsh singer, guitarist and producer who suffered a major cardiac event this week at 81, from which his prospects for recovery seem grim, per a heart-wrenching social media post shared by his wife. I don’t remember just how our conversation had swung to Edmunds being the subject, but I was stunned to hear that Chris not only knew of him but was a gigantic, unabashed fan. Dave Edmunds, was not necessarily on everyone’s rock & roll music short list. By my estimation, though, he sure should’ve been.

A short while after what was essentially my introduction – I’d probably known a few Edmunds songs, but never dug into any of his full albums – Chris presented me with a home-made tape: D.E. 7th, an album which had just come out that year, on side A, and The Best of Dave Edmunds on side B. Few recordings I’ve ever owned have gotten as much play as that one has. Much belated thanks, Chris.

It also sent me backwards, to Edmunds’s incredible, and, to me, tragically overlooked, catalog:

  • Subtle As A Flying Mallet (1975)
  • Get It (1977)
  • Tracks on Wax 4 (1978)
  • Repeat When Necessary (1979)
  • Seconds of Pleasure (1980)
  • Twangin… (1981)

and back up to

  • DE 7th (1982)

What a roster. I’ve worn every one of those out over the years. Including, maybe especially, Seconds of Pleasure by Rockpile, an album which was declared, in one of the earliest posts on this very site, to be the best ever “debut and only” album by a band. Rockpile, of course, was co-headed by Edmunds and his partner in power pop perfection, Nick Lowe, who also played together on a number of each other’s solo releases but only once officially under the name of Rockpile.

What today would likely be highlighted as Roots music, Edmunds’s style bridged American and British rock traditions, from early Rock & Roll and Rockabilly, to Pub Rock and New Wave. With ample influence by Chuck Berry as well as the Everly Brothers, there weren’t a lot of artists making music like Edmunds in the late ‘70’s and early ‘80’s (the emergence of the Stray Cats was a notable exception, whose landmark album debut was produced by, you guessed it, Dave Edmunds).

True pop stardom may have eluded Edmunds – his biggest hit, a 1970 cover of Smiley Lewis’s ‘I Hear You Knocking,’ reached #4 in the U.S. – but he did have his devotees (besides Chris and me, naturally). One of those admirers was a fellow named Bruce Springsteen, who gifted the song ‘From Small Things (Big Things One Day Come)’ to Edmunds. Literally. Springsteen had written the song and recorded it in 1979 during sessions for The River, but it was not released on the album (it would later appear on The Boss’s 2003 collection The Essential Bruce Springsteen). Springsteen, unbeknownst to Edmunds, was an avowed fan and found out that Dave was an attendee at a 1981 concert of his in England. So Bruce invited Dave backstage, with a plan.

“I never met Bruce and I didn’t know he knew me from anyone else, really!,” recalled Edmunds. “I went along to a gig in Wembley and I was in this backstage area, to get drinks and things like that. It was after the gig and I was talking to a friend of mine, a DJ, who had gotten me the tickets who said ‘Come on, he’s a big fan’. And I was just standing there and someone tapped me on the shoulder and it was one of the crew, and he said, ‘Bruce wants to see you’ and I was whisked back to the dressing room. And Bruce said he had a song for me. He sang it on the spot, picked up the guitar and sang it…and it was perfect for me. ‘It’s yours, man!’ he said. A couple weeks later Bruce made a rough cassette – just guitar and vocal – and gave it to me.”

Just handed him a tape. Sounds vaguely familiar.

Bruce’s version…

And here’s a highly recommended deeper Dave dive, 25 sizzling Dave Edmunds tunes on the new SMGM Playlist, “Dave Can Do It All” – my Best of Dave Edmunds compilation.