Peter Walters (2)

Peter Walters was an American pianist who played play soft background music, show tunes and light classical.. Born in 1913 in Tonawanda, N.Y., Peter Louis Walters learned the piano from his father, a piano teacher. He studied classical piano at the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston. After graduation he performed with the Boston Pops under Arthur Fiedler briefly. While he wanted to become a classical pianist, Walters had to turn to hotels, restaurants and nightclubs for employment. He played with Johnny Long and Leighton Noble And His Orchestra at the Statler Hotel in Boston. It was there that he met his wife, Barbara Beaumont, a singer with Long’s orchestra. He moved to New York to play on Broadway musicals and never returned to Boston. He played on “Mexican Hayride” Cole Porter's “Let’s Face It.” He subsequently took at job at The Music Box in Greenwich Village, which “needed someone to accompany opera singers who dropped into the place and accompanied Lawrence Tibbett, Eleanor Steber, Eugene Connelly, and Winifred Heidt. By the late 1940s he was playing at many other Manhattan venues such as the Little Club and the Monte Carlo, as well as top hotels. While playing at the Hotel Madison in 1948, he was heard by Victor Gilbert, who had recently created the Stonehenge Inn in Ridgefield. Gilbert hired him to play for two weekends and he stayed for 12 years. He and Barbara moved to Ridgefield in 1950, buying a house next to a pond at the end of Hayes Lane. After Stonehenge, Walters spent 12 years with The Inn at Ridgefield (now Bernard’s). He also performed for the Outpost and Fox Hill Inns in Ridgefield, and the Westnor in Westport. He recorded two albums for Decca Records: “Portraits in Ivory” in 1956 and “Peter Walters’ Velvet Touch” in 1965. He also appeared on Art Linkletter’s “House Party” television show in March 1964, along with his brother, Bob, also a pianist; Walter played a classical work on the show and Bob, jazz. In 1986, the Walters moved to Florida where Peter died in 1988.