D.E. 7th

D.E. 7th

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D.E. 7th

D.E. 7th is a 1982 album by Welsh rock musician Dave Edmunds. The album was Edmunds' first project for Arista Records (in the UK) and Columbia Records (in the US), following a five-year stay with the Swan Song label.

Besides the label switches, D.E. 7th marked another big change for Edmunds; his band Rockpile had broken up the previous year, forcing him to assemble a whole new group of musicians for the album. The new band coalesced around guitarist Mickey Gee and bassist John David (both of whom had played with Edmunds in Love Sculpture), veteran pub rock pianist Geraint Watkins, and drummer Dave Charles. This group would record and tour with Edmunds throughout the rest of the 1980s.

D.E. 7th would reach #60 on the UK album charts and #46 on the Billboard 200, becoming his highest-charting solo album ever in the United States. The album's sales were helped by the inclusion of a previously unreleased Bruce Springsteen song, "From Small Things (Big Things One Day Come)" (Springsteen's version, an outtake from his 1980 album The River, would remain unreleased until 2003). In his 2005 book The Ties That Bind, author Gary Graff explains:

When (Edmunds) went to see Springsteen perform at Wembley Arena (in 1981), he expected a good show but not necessarily a new song to record. "I was backstage in the hospitality area after the gig," Edmunds remembered, "and one of his crew of road managers tapped me on the shoulder and said, 'Bruce wants to meet you.' I went back and had this great talk with him, and he played me this song and said, 'I'd like you to do this, if you like it.' He said he'd send me the tape, which he did."

Edmunds' recording of "From Small Things" reached #28 on Billboard's Mainstream Rock Tracks chart, and later appeared on his 2004 "best of" collection (also entitled From Small Things). One other D.E. 7th track was selected for that collection: a cover of Brian Hyland's 1962 top-30 hit "Warmed Over Kisses (Left Over Love)". Edmunds transformed the song, originally a countrypolitan waltz, into an uptempo bluegrass romp.