Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J. the pre-Christmas crush. Both "Blinded by the Light" and "Spirit in the Night" were released as singles by Columbia, but neither reached the U.S. charts. Manfred Mann's Earth Band released a version of "Blinded by the Light" on their album "The Roaring Silence", which reached number one on Billboard's Hot 100 on 19 February 1977 and #1 on the Canadian RPM chart the same day. This recording of "Blinded by the Light" is Springsteen's only number one single as a songwriter on the Hot 100. His best showing on the Hot 100 as a performer was in 1984, with "Dancing
Asbury Park, New Jersey Asbury Park was the only beach in New Jersey affected by the Beach Commission law. In 1943, the New York Yankees held their spring training in Asbury Park instead of Florida. This was because rail transport had to be conserved during the war, and Major League Baseball's Spring Training was limited to an area east of the Mississippi River and north of the Ohio River. With the opening of the Garden State Parkway in 1947, Asbury Park saw the travel market change as fewer vacationers took trains to the seashore. While the Asbury Park exit on the Parkway opened in