Jump For Joy!

Sunday on the boardwalk at Pier Village in Long Branch...

A group of girls ("from around here," they said) were out for the day.

When I first saw them, they were running across the boardwalk, some of them leaping as they ran. After I took their picture, I asked them if they would do what I called "the flying thing" again.

They happily obliged, forming a line, joining hands, and on their own count of three, jumping for joy.

BTW, the 1940-41 Duke Ellington band's recording of  "Jump For Joy" is, like everything that edition of the band recorded, amazing and unique. It is the title song of a musical Ellington wrote that did not meet commercial success, but was full of great music. You can find it in CD collections, often under the title, The Blanton-Webster Band, for two of Ellington's defining musicians of that Camelotian couple of years, bassist Jimmy Blanton and tenor saxophonist Ben Webster.

The song itself swings powerfully, with a lilting melody sung by either Herb Jeffries or Ivie Anderson (two versions were recorded). The song is the musical incarnation of its title, and here are some of the playful lyrics, a balm for those darkening times:

Don't you grieve little Eve
All the hounds I do believe
have been killed.
Ain't 'cha thrilled?
Jump for Joy

When you stomp up to heaven and you meet old Saint Pete
Tell that boy
"Jump for joy!"
Step right in
give Pete some skin and
Jump for Joy

Tags: Long Branch | boardwalk | Pier Village

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