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of Cy's earliest radio appearances was as part of a two‑piano
team with Gil Bowers on NBC's "Piano Time", where
he played for at least a year (1937‑1938). Cy also
performed live with Gil Bowers at NYC's Ruban Bleu nightclub;
and the two recorded together and were commissioned to play
at prestigious private events. Walter Winchell praised
Cy in his September, 1938 Daily Mirror "New
Yorchids" column for Cy's Cole Porter show recording.
Indeed, this early favorable press recognition
only presaged the many positive articles to come. During
Cy's career, his unique piano performing was lauded time and
again by musical reviewers in national and local media (in
magazines such as Time, Newsweek, Metronome, Downbeat, Radio
Mirror, Radio Hit Songs, Cue, Playbill, Park East, Social Spectator,
and Playbill; and in newspapers such as the New York Times,
Daily News, World Telegram and Sun, to name a few).
In the late thirties, Cy appeared as
part of the orchestra for a Jerome Kern musical, "Very
Warm For May". Though not a commercial success,
this show's score included one of the more famous of all standards,
the song "All The Things You Are". Cy would
recall that, on the eve after Kern composed this piece following
one of the musical's rehearsal performances, Kern presented
it to him to play, with the comment that it would be going
into the show the next day. Being the first to play this
piece may explain why it later was clearly one of Cy's favorites;
but its beauty also deeply touched Cy then, leaving him in
tears after that first playing.
Shortly thereafter, Cy accompanied Viennese
chanteuse Greta Keller at the New York City Algonquin Hotel's
Supper Club, launching a successful live and recorded partnership
that also brought them to performances in San Francisco's Palace
Hotel. Cy's recordings with Greta Keller were released
on the classy Liberty Music Shop label, which likewise released
Cy's solo performances of his arrangements of Gershwin's, Kern's,
Rodgers', and other noted composers' songs.
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