Cy Walter

Walter at the Copacabana night club in New York City, 1949

Born in Minneapolis, Minnesota, Walter grew up in a musical family and received early classical training from his mother, a professional piano teacher.[2] In 1934, after a summer job playing piano on the overnight New York to Boston night cruise, he enrolled briefly at New York University but soon accepted an offer to join the Eddie Lane Orchestra on a full-time basis.[3] Four years later, he formed a two-piano team with Gil Bowers and played at Le Ruban Bleu when it opened. Solo engagements followed at upscale bars and supper clubs like the Algonquin, the Blue Angel, and Tony's on West 52nd Street.[1] In the late 1930s and early 1940s, Walter explored other musical surroundings: as pit pianist with the Jerome Kern musical "Very Warm for May,"[1] as accompanist for Mabel Mercer and Greta Keller, and as leader of his own orchestra at the night club La Martinique.[4] He briefly ran his own club, Cy Walter's Night Cap,[2] before being called to a fourteen-month stint in the Maritime Service.[3]

From 1944 to 1952,[5] Walter appeared regularly (as part of a duo piano team with Stan Freeman, and later with Walter Gross) on ABC's popular weekly radio series Piano Playhouse. Reaching an international audience over Armed Forces Radio, and with commentary by Milton Cross, Playhouse featured (in addition to the anchor duo) notable guest pianists from the jazz and classical worlds, teamed up "in all sorts of unusual combinations as duos, trios and quartets."[6]

Richard Rodgers, Cy Walter, and Stan Freeman on the Piano Playhouse Show, performed before a live audience, circa late 1940s.

Walter found an ideal showcase for his talents when he opened the elegant Drake Room of New York's Drake Hotel on December 21, 1945.[7] The following year, a Metronome profile noted that "The Cy Walter appeal can be summed up with two t's: taste and the tune. ... Sinatra, Whiting and other bigtimers are constantly dropping by... to pick up on some obscure show tune that he has resurrected from the vast storehouse of his musical mind... obscure little melodies that never made the Hit Parade and great timeless songs that have been lost in the shuffle."[1] Walter continued at the Drake Room from 1945 until 1951, building a reputation as the "dean of Manhattan's piano professors," according to The New Yorker (1950).[8]

By then a fixture on the New York music scene, Walter spent the rest of the 1950s performing at various Manhattan venues and recording both as a solo pianist and accompanist—-for example, on Ahmet Ertegun's fledgling Atlantic label. While not a prolific songwriter, he also crafted a number of songs in an advanced harmonic style. For example, he composed both words and music for "Some Fine Day" (1953), and collaborated with Alec Wilder on "Time and Tide" (1961) and Chilton Ryan on "You Are There" (1960) and "See a Ring Around the Moon" (1961).[9]

In 1959, Walter was invited to resume playing solo piano at the Drake Room. This six-nights-a-week engagement would continue until a week before the pianist's death from cancer in 1968.[2] "I guess by now I know how to work the Drake Room," he quipped with typical understatement to an interviewer in 1966.[4]

Walter fan letter from Richard Rodgers, 1940

The Cy Walter Centennial Celebration and CD Release Party, held at The Cutting Room in New York City on September 27, 2015, showcased Cy Walter's original compositions as performed by eighteen top vocalists, pianists, and dancers. The show featured duo piano performances and original scores by the twelve-piece Cy Walter Celebratory Orchestra, led by music director Tedd Firth, and was a tremendous success. Also celebrated was the release of a two-volume CD set by Harbinger Records entitled Cy Walter: Sublimities Centennial Tribute. A Broadway World review published two days following the event noted that "The jam-packed, three-hour festivity included instrumentals, vocals, and even an exhilarating exhibition [of Fred Astaire's swing trot dance, called The Astaire], and of The Astaire [song], whose melody was composed [by Cy Walter, with lyrics by Andrew Rosenthal] at the behest of the icon himself to launch his dance studios." The article also highlighted performances of other Cy Walter original compositions, including I'll Never Tire of You (written with Richard Kollmar and Jimmy Dobson), observing that it was performed with "conversational espirit" by vocalist Doug Bowles and pianist Alex Hassan. The entire show was professionally captured by filmmaker Michael Stever and sound engineer Rubin Nizri of New Record Studios, and can be viewed in its entirety on The Cy Walter Foundation's YouTube channel.[10][11][12]

Terry Teachout, a noted author and drama critic for The Wall Street Journal, penned an excellent January 14, 2016 article in the Journal profiling Cy Walter entitled Cy Walter's Cocktail Piano, With A Twist. Teachout also highly praised the recent release of the Cy Walter: Sublimities CDs, and cited Richard Rodgers' awed assessment of Walter's talent in what was, in essence, a fan letter: "I have never heard better taste".[13] Closing his profile, Teachout, a pianist himself, exhorted his readers to "[l]isten to the gently rippling 1946 performance of Rodgers' Falling In Love With Love on the first 'Sublimities' CD and you'll hear what he meant.  No, it's not jazz, but who cares?  It's music, and it's gorgeous -- with or without an olive."[14]

• Official Cy Walter site maintained by Walter's family
• Cy Walter Foundation YouTube channel
• Cy Walter on Allmusic
• Works Written by Cy Walter - ASCAP ACE Title Search