Lighting up movie palaces right after Franklin Roosevelt took office, 42nd Street was the ultimate Busby Berkeley musical, yolking black jazz and Russian-Jewish yearning of songwriters Al Dunin and Harry warren to the energy of a particular time and place. Bluesman supreme Jim Byrnes gives us a guided tour, with Chris Davis’s trumpet blowing down the doors of Times Square.

Lyrics

 

Come and meet those dancing feet, On the avenue I'm taking you to,
Forty-Second Street.
Hear the beat of dancing feet, It's the song I love the melody of,
Forty-Second Street.

Little nifties from the Fifties, Innocent and sweet;
Shady ladies from the Eighties, Who are indiscreet.

Side by side, they're glorified. Where the underworld can meet the elite,
Forty-Second Street.