John Wallowitch

John Wallowitch (February 11, 1926 – August 15, 2007) was an American songwriter and cabaret performer. He wrote over 2,000 songs; his works include "Bruce", "I See the World Through Your Eyes", "Back on the Town" and "Mary's Bar". For over 50 years he played and sang a catalogue of original songs at nightspots around New York City. 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 Edgar Allan Poe Elementary School, Vare Junior High School, Central High School and Temple University in Philadelphia. 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 play at the Duplex, a Greenwich Village saloon.

His first professional appearance was on the Lithuanian Furniture Company Radio Hour (Station WHAT) on which he rendered Irving Berlin's "So Help Me."

Wrote Stephen Holden in The New York Times: "While Noël Coward is no longer around to set the standards for a certain kind of sophisticated songwriting sensibility, Mr. Wallowitch nimbly carries the torch." He displays his predilection for Coward-like wit and satire on such songs as "Cosmetic Surgery", in which he sums up the surgical predilections of friends who are "getting younger than ever" with such dexterity.

He often wrote about growing up in Philadelphia, and of life with his family. "I See the World Through Your Eyes" is a remembrance of Wallowitch's late brother, photographer Edward Wallowitch, close associate of Andy Warhol. "Manhattan, You're A Dream" pays tribute to Wallowitch's mother.

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