Billy Joel reached No. 1 on the US album chart for the first time with 52nd Street in Billboard’s issue dated November 18, 1978. His sixth studio album climbed from No. 5 in its fourth chart week, beginning a run that would keep it at the top through the end of the year.
The breakthrough followed an album that had already changed his commercial standing. Released in 1977, The Stranger produced four US Top 40 singles, including “Just the Way You Are” and “Only the Good Die Young,” but peaked at No. 2 on the album chart. It also began Joel’s recording partnership with producer Phil Ramone, who worked with his touring band in the studio. For the follow-up, Joel kept Ramone and gave jazz musicians a larger place in the arrangements.
The setting connected those musical choices to the record’s identity. Joel recorded 52nd Street during July and August 1978 at A&R Recording in Manhattan, where he had also made The Stranger. The main tracking room was at Seventh Avenue and 52nd Street; overdubs and mixing also used A&R’s other location on West 48th Street. The album’s title pointed both to its working surroundings and to a street associated with New York’s jazz history.
“Zanzibar” made that connection audible. Freddie Hubbard played trumpet on the track, adding a featured jazz soloist to an album whose nine songs were all written by Joel. Its place in the running order mattered: it followed “Big Shot,” “Honesty” and “My Life,” the three songs that became the album’s US Top 40 singles. Listeners arriving through those hits reached Hubbard’s playing before the first side was over. The collaboration gave the record room for jazz within the same sequence as its most commercially successful songs.
The trumpet in Joel’s cover photograph suggested the same connection, although it wasn’t Hubbard’s instrument. In a 2012 recollection published on his official website, Joel explained that the prop belonged to Ramone: “That was an old horn that Phil Ramone had laying around.” The photograph was taken outside the studio’s service entrance, tying the sleeve to the place where the music was made.
The singles extended the album’s chart presence beyond its initial climb. “My Life” reached No. 3 on the Billboard Hot 100, followed by “Big Shot” at No. 14 and “Honesty” at No. 24. On the album chart, 52nd Street held No. 1 for seven consecutive weeks before dropping back in January 1979. It returned to the summit later that month, bringing its total to eight weeks.
The recognition continued at the 1980 Grammy Awards. 52nd Street won Album of the Year, with Ramone credited as producer, and earned Joel Best Pop Vocal Performance, Male.
