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. He briefly ran his own club, Cy Walter's Night Cap, 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." , 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. 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." 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 lung cancer in 1968. charcoal portrait of Walter, 1947
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". 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." ==Discography==