52nd Street

Billy Joel's 52nd Street is the sound of a guy who just made it and can finally afford to hire the best players in New York for a late-night jazz-pop session. It's his most sophisticated album, one that swings, stings, and still sounds like a bottle of scotch in a booth at Patsy's. Essential for anyone who thinks Joel was just a piano man.

Billy Joel had the world at his feet in 1978. The Stranger had sold millions, “Just the Way You Are” had won Grammys, and he could have coasted on ballads for the rest of the decade. Instead he walked into A&R Recording on 48th Street with producer Phil Ramone and the same band that had been playing his songs live for years and said, basically, let’s make a jazz album.

Not a fusion record or a smooth-jazz snooze. 52nd Street is a New York jazz-pop hybrid that wears a suit and tie but keeps its collar unbuttoned. The core band — Richie Cannata on sax and flute, Liberty DeVitto on drums, Doug Stegmeyer on bass, David Brown on guitar — had been cutting their teeth in Joel’s live shows since the early seventies. Ramone miked them like a jazz combo: close, dry, with enough bleed to feel the air in the room.

The horns matter here. Joel brought in the Brecker Brothers — Randy on trumpet, Michael on sax — plus Dave Tofani on woodwinds and a string section arranged by Dave Grusin, the man who made The Graduate soundtrack unforgettable. Grusin’s charts for “Rosalinda’s Eyes” and “Until the Night” don’t float above the band; they lock in with DeVitto’s snare and Cannata’s flute like they’re all reading the same newspaper.

The album’s centerpiece, for my money, is “Zanzibar.” That piano intro, the false start, the way Cannata’s sax solo floats in like a cigarette smoke through the crack of a stage door. Then Freddy Hubbard comes in with a trumpet solo that Ramone captured so cleanly you can hear the spit valve click. Hubbard was a legend — seventy-one albums as a leader by then — and he plays like he’s telling a dirty joke in a packed club. Joel wrote the song around that solo. That takes guts.

“Stiletto” is the other forgotten gem. A paranoid, syncopated groove with a stop-time chorus that DeVitto locked into with a rimshot that sounds like a handcuff closing. David Brown’s guitar is all sharp angles, and Joel’s vocal doubles the bassline in the verses. Ramone mixed the track with a hair-trigger compression that makes every piano chord sting.

“Honesty” and “My Life” became radio staples, and they’re good, but they’re the bait. The real meat is in the midsection — “Half a Mile Away” with its doo-wop backing vocals, the title track’s one-minute instrumental that functions like a palate cleanser between courses. 52nd Street is sequenced like a set at the Village Vanguard: fast, slow, jagged, smooth, and always swinging.

Billy Joel never made another album like this. He fired the band after the tour, telling them he wanted to “try new things.” (Cannata got the news via a letter. DeVitto found out through the press.) But on 52nd Street, they’re a unit. It’s the sound of five guys who’ve played hundreds of shows together, plus a few ringers who show up, blow, and leave the room smelling of bourbon and snake hips.

🎵 Key Takeaways

• Joel proposed making a jazz album for 52nd Street
• Core band played live together since early seventies
• Ramone used close dry miking with bleed for jazz combo
• Hubbard's Zanzibar solo captures a spit valve click
• DeVitto's rimshot on Stiletto sounds like a handcuff closing

What does the album title '52nd Street' refer to?

52nd Street was the legendary block in Manhattan that housed many jazz clubs and recording studios in the 1940s and 1950s. Joel used it as a tribute to that era and as a nod to the street where his own studio, A&R Recording, was located for a time.

Was Billy Joel trying to make a jazz album with 52nd Street?

Not exactly, but he deliberately leaned into jazz and swing influences more than on his previous albums. He hired jazz session legends like the Brecker Brothers and Freddy Hubbard, and the arrangements give the players more solo space than typical pop fare. Joel called it 'a rock album that happens to swing.'

How did the critics and public receive 52nd Street compared to The Stranger?

It was another huge commercial success, reaching No. 1 and winning the Grammy for Album of the Year. Critics were slightly more divided — some loved the jazzier direction, others missed the direct pop hooks of The Stranger. But over time, it's become one of Joel's most respected albums.

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