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

"Hallelujah!"

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

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.

• Harry Allen and Ehud Asherie at Smalls: swingyoucats

Notes

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

Cite this page: "Hallelujah!": Song History, Commentary, Discography, Performances on Video, Cafe Songbook, https://greatamericansongbook.net/pages/songs/h/hallelujah.html