August 17 2007
John Wallowitch: An Appreciation
"The music is just plain gorgeous - aching, elegant lines of melody - unexpected, ravishing chord progressions - simple, clean, nothing extraneous. Here we have a classical pianist with a genius for popular song ... John's lyrics are art without artifice. They come from and go directly to the heart." By Dixie Carter (Forward to "Songs From Manhattan")
John Wallowitch left us on August 15, 2007. He slipped away quietly in his sleep. He was only "27."
I first met John Wallowitch on an assignment to review his show at some long forgotten candlelit club in the theater district. I knew nothing about him. It was the early eighties and I was just starting to write about cabaret for a small, widely distributed magazine called Private Lives. It was a press night and people all around me were eating like they had never seen food before. I was shy about ordering anything more than a soda. When I was introduced to him after the show, he asked what I had to eat. On hearing about me and my soda, he boomed, "Oh that's ridiculous. You should have ordered lobster! They have more money than God here. And with what they're saving on me, they could feed half of Bangladesh!" When I told him I was only writing for a small publication, he said, "Nonsense. You are just as important as these other characters who just came here for a free meal." I knew I had a friend.
I later found out this was a pattern with people John met in his life - instant friendships and fierce loyalties. If he liked you, you were a friend for life. His animated stories were filled with pithy and gossipy tales of the rich and famous and others who take themselves too seriously. Yet, he basked in mentioning who he had spoken to that day or run into the night before. Still, he never lost his cozy connection to the "regulars" who made up most of his audience.
"While Noel Coward is no longer around to set the standards for a certain kind of sophisticated songwriting, John Wallowitch nimbly carries the torch." Stephen Holden, The New York Times
He taught himself to read music from a Kate Smith album. He really got serious about the piano when he was in the Army stationed in Florida and Kentucky; "Every time I saw a piano, I got vicious. I would push people off the bench!" He went to Julliard for eight years, "I really didn't learn anything there. I started having some trouble with my hands. So I quit. Then I found this lady, Abby Whiteside, who, in just five lessons taught me how to play the piano. I haven't stopped since."
Christmas Eve at Irving Berlin's home
Bertram Ross, Ann Bastian, John Wallowitch
Courtesy Sheet Music SocietyIn an interview a few years ago, John recalled an anecdote about his beloved Irving Berlin. "One day I walked out the door (of his Beekman Place townhouse,) and there he was standing right outside my door and I nearly died. I thought of all that work coming through that mind and body. He was marching along the street - ninety nine years old - a young woman walking beside him, and I gushed, "Mr. Berlin, I'm the guy who used to come over and sing Christmas carols in front of your house." And he said, "WHAAAT?" and his companion indicated he was hard of hearing. So here I am, standing in the middle of fifty first street at four o'clock in the afternoon rush screaming at the top of my lungs at this little old man, "I love you, I love you." And Berlin said, "Oh, I love you too."
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entire article copyright 2007 by John Hoglund
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