"Hallelujah!": Song History, Commentary, Discography, Performances on Video

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Hallelujah!
Written: Music: 1917 Words: 1927	Music by: Vincent Youmans	Words by: Clifford Grey and Leo Robin	Lyrics written for: Hit the Deck (show, 1927 -- See Critics Corner for more.)
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On the Main Stage at Cafe Songbook
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(Please complete or pause one video before starting another.)	Harry Allen (Tenor Sax) and Ehud Asherie (piano) performing "Hallelujah" at Smalls Jazz Club, NYC (Jan. 29, 2009) More Performances of "Hallelujah!" in the Cafe Songbook Record/Video Cabinet (Video credit)

Cafe Songbook Reading Room

"Hallelujah!"

Critics Corner || Lyrics Lounge

About the Show Hit the Deck / Origins of the Song

Other songs written for the show Hit the Deck currently included in the Cafe Songbook Catalog of The Great American Songbook:

1. Why, Oh Why?

2. Sometimes I'm Happy

For a complete listing of songs used in the original production of this show, see IBDB song list.

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Critics Corner

Book cover" William Zinsser, "Easy to Remember"
William Zinsser.
Easy to Remember
The Great American
Songwriters and Their Songs.
Jaffrey, New Hampshire:
David R. Godine, 2001.

Vincent Youmans wrote the music for what eventually would become the song "Hallelujah!" some ten years before it hit the boards in the Broadway show "Hit the Deck." As William Zinsser tells it, Youmans' talents were recognized by march king John Philip Sousa who was bandmaster at the Great Lakes Naval Station just north of Chicago where Youmans was stationed during WWI. Youmans had given a melody to Sousa who liked it so much that soon it was being played at bases around the country.

Ten years later, remembering its success with America's sailors, Youmans resurrected [the melody] on Broadway for Hit the Deck. Titled "Hallelujah!" and given a suitably exultant lyric by [its lyricists] Leo Robin and Clifford Grey, it turned out to be no less popular with civilians and has been around ever since, its call to meeting hard to resist.

Sing Hal-le-lu-jah! Hal-le-lu-jah!"
And you'll shoo the
Blues away . . .

(Zinsser, p. 49-50)

Philip Furia and
Michael Lasser,
America's Songs: The Stories Behind the Songs of Broadway, Hollywood, and Tin Pan Alley, New York: Routledge, 2006.

Philip Furia and Michael Lasser put the song in the category of a 1920s "cheer-up" piece that borrowed its spirit not so much from a military march but from "the white revivalist tradition" of the time: "Satan lies a-waitin' and creatin' skies of gray / But hallelujah, hallelujah, he helps to shoo the blues away" (Furia and Lasser, p. 80).

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Lyrics Lounge

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Credits

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Credits for Videomakers of custom videos used on this page:

Harry Allen and Ehud Asherie at Smalls: swingyoucats

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The Cafe Songbook
Record/Video Cabinet:
Selected Recordings of

"Hallelujah!"

(All Record/Video Cabinet entries below
include a music-video
of this page's featured song.
The year given is for when the studio
track was originally laid down
or when the live performance was given.)

Performer/Recording Index
(*indicates accompanying music-video)

Performer 1 (year)
Performer 2 (year)