Hallelujah!

This song by the American Vincent Youmans is played both by the jazz band at Griboyedov and by the band at Woland's Grand Ball. Youmans claimed the melody was one of his first ever. He wrote it in his days at a Naval Training Station, and it was performed by John Philip Sousa as a march. The English lyric, written by Leo Robin and Clifford Grey, includes the lines "Satan lies a waitin' and creatin' skies of grey, but Hallelujah! Hallelujah helps to shoo the clouds away!" Youmans introduced "Hallelujah!" in Hit the Deck (1927) by vaudeville star Stella Mayhew.

 

LISTEN TO AN EXCERPT

Performed by Robert White, tenor, and William Bolcom, piano.