Cy Walter
Cy Walter (September 16, 1915 – August 18, 1968) was an American café society pianist based in New York City for four decades. Dubbed the "Art Tatum of Park Avenue," he was praised for his extensive repertoire (with an emphasis on show tunes) and improvisatory skill. His long radio and recording career included both solo and duo performances, and stints as accompanist for such elegant vocal stylists as Greta Keller, Mabel Mercer, and Lee Wiley. Career. Born in Minneapolis, Minnesota, Walter grew up in a musical family and received early classical training from his mother, a professional piano teacher . 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. 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. In the late 1930s and early 1940s, Walter explored other musical surroundings: as pit pianist with the  Jerome Kern musical "Very Warm for May," as accompanist for Mabel Mercer and Greta Keller, and as leader of his own orchestra at the night club La Martinique. He briefly ran his own club, Cy Walter's Night Cap, before being called to a fourteen-month stint in the Maritime Service. From 1944 to 1952, 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." 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. 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." 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). 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). 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. "I guess by now I know how to work the Drake Room," he quipped with typical understatement to an interviewer  in 1966.