"Easy Street" is a
jazz standard and
popular song with lyrics and music written by
Alan Rankin Jones in 1940.
It was first recorded by 'Jimmy Lunceford and his Orchestra.'
Background
The term 'easy street' originated in the late 1800s and is
slang
Slang is vocabulary (words, phrases, and linguistic usages) of an informal register, common in spoken conversation but avoided in formal writing. It also sometimes refers to the language generally exclusive to the members of particular in-g ...
for "a state in which everything is going well and one is comfortable.” It's usually meant momentarily.
Musical characteristics
Easy Street is in
thirty-two bar form and includes a
melody that moves the title line to different pitches whenever it recurs in a phrase.
The song is usually played with a slow, slightly swinging melody.
References
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Jazz standards
1940 songs