Accompaniments

Cy is best known for his solo piano playing, on radio and in live performances elsewhere.  He did, however, accompany many famed singers during the course of his career, including Frank Sinatra, Greta Keller, Lee Wiley, Mabel Mercer, Eileen Farrell, and Marlene Deitrich, among others.  In the early years of Cy’s recording career, when he was producing records on the Liberty Music Shop label, he acted as a sort of “house pianist” for the company, and so appears as accompanist on several vocalists’ separate 78-rpm releases.  These included Audrey Christie and Wynn Murray (with Gil Bowers in a two-piano team); Eve Symington; Vincent Curran; Milli Monti; Elsie Houston; Greta Keller; Adelaide Moffett; Mabel Mercer; and Jean Cavall.

Cy was widely respected as a talented accompanist, able to blend the beauty of his pianistic talent perfectly with the strengths (and weaknesses) of his companion performer’s voice.  Some of these accompaniments may be listened to on the website page offering Cy’s music.

Greta Keller Biography In The New York Daily News 01.12.1940

Greta Keller Record Review — This Is My Vienna LP — Undated, But Circa March 1957

Portrait of Mabel Mercer by Lisa Rhana