John Wallowitch

John Wallowitch is an American composer, songwriter and cabaret performer. He has written over 1,000 songs; his works include Bruce (a favorite standard in Blossom Dearie's repertoire), I See the World Through Your Eyes, Back on the Town, and Mary's Bar. He is also known for his sophisticated takes on the songs of Irving Berlin.

Wallowitch was born in the Methodist Hospital in South Philadelphia. He attended the Edgar Allen Poe Elementary School, Vare Junior High School, Central High School and Temple University in Philadelphia, and the Juilliard School in Manhattan. His first professional appearance was on the Lithuanian Furniture Company Radio Hour (Station WHAT) on which he rendered Irving Berlin's So Help Me.

For over fifty years he has played and sung a catalogue of original songs at nightspots around New York City.

Wallowitch spent his youth in a desolate neighborhood in South Philadelphia, dreaming about moving to New York. He finally arrived there in his late teens to study classical piano at Juilliard. In order to survive he played rehearsal piano for shows, among them Leonard Sillman's New Faces of '52, and began to tinkle the tinny ivories at the Duplex, a Greenwich Village saloon. Soon thoughts of a concert career faded, as he fell in love with the nightclub world that dominates his career to this day. It also fueled his fertile capacity for songwriting, winning him renown for an acid-edged wit that other cabaret composers of the day aspired to, but seldom achieved with such high style.

A master of deadpan, Wallowitch brandishes some of his most outrageous tales with the dutiful look of a boy genius just finishing a model Concorde. But his command of language is anything but pubescent. Wrote Stephen Holden in The New York Times: "While Noel Coward is no longer around to set the standards for a certain kind of sophisticated songwriting sensibility, Mr. Wallowitch nimbly carries the torch." His lyrical prowess is evident on such tunes as "Cosmetic Surgery", in which he sums up the surgical predilections of friends who are "getting younger than ever" with such dexterity.

"In a matter of weeks

With the modern techniques

For improving physiques

They have altered their beaks

And they've lifted their cheeks

And now everyone speaks

In society's cliques

Of the changes that science has wrought

Of the changes that money has bought!"

He delivers lyrics with precision, savoring them, and underscoring each phrase with a piano style that reflects his classical training. Underneath all the campy lunacy, however, is the tender heart of a man who is still enraptured with his adopted hometown and with the special people he associates with it. Often those people are his family. "I See the World Through Your Eyes" is a heartbreaking remembrance of Wallowitch's late brother, photographer Edward Wallowitch (associated with Andy Warhol), whose pictures immortalized Manhattan with a similar affection. "Manhattan, You're A Dream" pays on unashamedly sentimental tribute to Wallowitch's mother, who sparked his big-city dreams when he was just six and still living far away.

But whether the setting of his stories is Philadelphia or ancient Rome, the Netherlands or Warsaw, Kentucky, Manhattan is somehow always around the corner. John Wallowitch's songs form a portrait of a city that may exasperate more often than it enchants, but that still holds the magical sense of wonderment it always did. You just have to look a little harder to find it -- perhaps into the arms of one person, who can transform a big, impersonal town into what he will always regard as a "city of dreams.”

During the 1960s he met three women who would become his greatest champions: singer-pianist Blossom Dearie; Dixie Carter, one of television's Designing Women and a superb club performer herself (Carter recorded a collection of Wallowitch songs in 1984); and the great cabaret songstress Joanne Beretta, whose performances at the Duplex and the Showplace left an indelible mark upon clubgoers of the 1960s and 1970s. Besides Dixie Carter, Joanne Berretta and Blossom Dearie, Wallowitch's compositions have been recorded by Shirley Horn, Tony Bennett, Berri Blair, John Dubois, Marlene VerPlanck, Lynn Lobban and many others.

Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, Wallowitch was part of a popular cabaret act with his longtime partner, the acclaimed Martha Graham choreographer and dancer Bertram Ross. Wallowitch & Ross sang in nightspots ranging from London's Pizza on the Park to the Ballroom in New York City. A CD of their performance cabaret, “Wallowitch and Ross” (Miranda Music) was released in 2003 to accompany Richard Morris' documentary film of the couple, "Wallowitch & Ross: This Moment."

As a solo cabaret entertainer, Wallowitch has performed throughout the world and is famour for his long-running hit revue, "The World of Wallowitch". He has won both the MAC and Bistro Awards for Composer of the Year.

Wallowitch wrote the song "Hilary Oh Hilary," for Hilary Clinton during her run for Senate, set to the tune of the old Groucho Marx song, Lydia Oh Lydia. He was inspired to write it after Clinton's six-hour long visit to his New York studio where he performed for the former first lady.

John Wallowitch lives and performs in New York City.

Discography

• (1964) LP The Other Side of John Wallowitch, featuring cover artwork by Andy Warhol. (Serenus Records)
• (1984) CD Back On The Town [LIVE], (DRG Label).
• (1993) CD My Manhattan, featuring Bertram Ross & Dixie Carter (DRG Label).
• (2002) CD Wallowitch & Ross, John Wallowitch & Bertram Ross.

• (1983) CD Dixie Carter Sings John Wallowitch Live at the Carlyle (DRG Label)
• (2003) CD Frankie and Johnny and Me Lynn Lobban performing the songs of John Wallowitch (LML Music)

External links

• Wallowitch & Ross website: [1].
• Jonathan Frank's Interview with Wallowitch [2]
• A review of Wallowitch's cabaret [3]