The Wild, the Innocent & The E Street Shuffle by Bruce Springsteen

The Wild, the Innocent & the E Street Shuffle, the second of the two albums Bruce Springsteen released in 1973, came out on Columbia and was cut with the E Street Band at 914 Sound Studios in Blauvelt, New York. It's a sprawling, street-corner record that mixes rock and roll with rhythm and blues, and the songs take their sweet time: "Kitty's Back" struts and vamps, "Incident on 57th Street" and "New York City Serenade" unfold like little movies, "4th of July, Asbury Park (Sandy)" is a wistful Jersey Shore ballad, and "Rosalita (Come Out Tonight)" became the band's favorite way to close a show right up to 1985.

Critics liked it, but it barely sold at first, except in the Northeast, where album rock stations played it and turned Springsteen into a local hero. Once Born to Run broke him nationally in 1975, these songs became FM and concert favorites, and in 2009 he and the band played the whole album live at Madison Square Garden for the first time.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.