{"id":5294,"date":"2010-01-11T13:00:44","date_gmt":"2010-01-11T18:00:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=5294"},"modified":"2011-11-06T15:48:31","modified_gmt":"2011-11-06T21:48:31","slug":"clarence-clemons-wikipedia-the-free-encyclopedia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=5294","title":{"rendered":"The Big Man Busts The City In Half"},"content":{"rendered":"

Clarence “The Big Man” Clemons turns 68 today.<\/a><\/p>\n

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Clemons, who’s been playing saxophone (and, briefly on the Rising <\/em>tour, bagpipes) with Bruce Springsteen since 1981, is one of the great rock and roll stories.\u00a0 Son of a fish merchant from Norfolk, Virginia, grandson of a Baptists minister, Clemons went Maryland State College on music and football scholarships, and had a tryout with the Jim-Brown-era Cleveland Browns; an untimely car accident before his tryout sent him to Plan B, working as a social worker by day and a musician by night.<\/p>\n

Over the years, Clemons was a reliable foil for Springsteen in concert…<\/p>\n

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He wasn’t the most flexible sax payer of all time – I think a guy could do serviceable impression learning three or four basic licks on the horn.<\/p>\n

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But what he may lack in major chops, he makes up in distinctiveness; there may not be a sax player anywhere in music with a more identifiable sound.<\/p>\n

Of course, the story of the first meeting between Clemons and Springsteen is known to anyone who ever listened to Born to Run<\/em>; it’s the story in “Tenth Avenue Freezeout” (here’s a particularly frenetic rave-up of a version):<\/p>\n

<\/embed><\/object><\/p>\n

In more prosaic form?<\/p>\n

One night we were playing in Asbury Park. I’d heard The Bruce Springsteen Band was nearby at a club called The Student Prince and on a break between sets I walked over there. On-stage, Bruce used to tell different versions of this story but I’m a Baptist<\/a>, remember, so this is the truth. A rainy, windy night it was, and when I opened the door the whole thing flew off its hinges and blew away down the street. The band were on-stage, but staring at me framed in the doorway. And maybe that did make Bruce a little nervous because I just said, “I want to play with your band,” and he said, “Sure, you do anything you want.” The first song we did was an early version of “Spirit In The Night<\/a>“. Bruce and I looked at each other and didn’t say anything, we just knew. We knew we were the missing links in each other’s lives. He was what I’d been searching for. In one way he was just a scrawny little kid. But he was a visionary. He wanted to follow his dream. So from then on I was part of history.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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Happy Birthday, Big Man – and many more!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Clarence “The Big Man” Clemons turns 68 today. Clemons, who’s been playing saxophone (and, briefly on the Rising tour, bagpipes) with Bruce Springsteen since 1981, is one of the great rock and roll stories.\u00a0 Son of a fish merchant from Norfolk, Virginia, grandson of a Baptists minister, Clemons went Maryland State College on music and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[172],"class_list":["post-5294","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-music","tag-springsteen"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5294","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5294"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5294\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7771,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5294\/revisions\/7771"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5294"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5294"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5294"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}