Roy Eaton
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Roy Eaton (born May 14, 1930) is an American pianist and advertising creative. He is cited as the first black American prominent in the field of advertising.


Life

The son of Jamaican immigrants, Eaton grew up in
Harlem Harlem is a neighborhood in Upper Manhattan, New York City. It is bounded roughly by the Hudson River on the west; the Harlem River and 155th Street on the north; Fifth Avenue on the east; and Central Park North on the south. The greater ...
, New York. His father was a mechanic and his mother a governess. He took up classical piano when he was six and shortly after, in 1937, played at
Carnegie Hall Carnegie Hall ( ) is a concert venue in Midtown Manhattan, New York City. It is at 881 Seventh Avenue (Manhattan), Seventh Avenue, occupying the east side of Seventh Avenue between 56th Street (Manhattan), 56th and 57th Street (Manhattan), 57t ...
, winning the gold medal in a Music Education League competition. In June 1950, he won the first
Kosciuszko Foundation The Kosciuszko Foundation is a charitable foundation based in New York City. It was created by Stephen Mizwa to fund programs that promote Polish-American intellectual and artistic exchange. History The Polish American Scholarship Committee ...
Chopin Award. He made his concert debut with the
Chicago Symphony Orchestra The Chicago Symphony Orchestra (CSO) is an American symphony orchestra based in Chicago, Illinois. Founded by Theodore Thomas in 1891, the ensemble has been based in the Symphony Center since 1904 and plays a summer season at the Ravinia F ...
performing Chopin’s F Minor Concerto under George Schick in 1951. He was reengaged to perform Beethoven’s 4th the following season, and also made his New York
Town Hall In local government, a city hall, town hall, civic centre (in the UK or Australia), guildhall, or municipal hall (in the Philippines) is the chief administrative building of a city, town, or other municipality. It usually houses the city o ...
debut in 1952. His education included the
City College of New York The City College of the City University of New York (also known as the City College of New York, or simply City College or CCNY) is a Public university, public research university within the City University of New York (CUNY) system in New York ...
, the
Manhattan School of Music The Manhattan School of Music (MSM) is a private music conservatory A music school is an educational institution specialized in the study, training, and research of music. Such an institution can also be known as a school of music, music a ...
, the
University of Zurich The University of Zurich (UZH, ) is a public university, public research university in Zurich, Switzerland. It is the largest university in Switzerland, with its 28,000 enrolled students. It was founded in 1833 from the existing colleges of the ...
, and
Yale Yale University is a private Ivy League research university in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Founded in 1701, Yale is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States, and one of the nine colonial colleges ch ...
; he subsequently became a music instructor at the Manhattan School of Music. He was drafted for two years into the U.S. Army at the time of the
Korean War The Korean War (25 June 1950 – 27 July 1953) was an armed conflict on the Korean Peninsula fought between North Korea (Democratic People's Republic of Korea; DPRK) and South Korea (Republic of Korea; ROK) and their allies. North Korea was s ...
, serving all of that time in a hospital radio station, WFDH in
Fort Dix Fort Dix, the common name for the Army Support Activity (ASA) located at Joint Base McGuire–Dix–Lakehurst, is a United States Army post. It is located south-southeast of Trenton, New Jersey. Fort Dix is under the jurisdiction of the Air Fo ...
, NJ, where he wrote and produced radio and TV programs. In 1955, on leaving the Army, Eaton was taken on as a copywriter and composer at
Young & Rubicam VMLY&R was an American marketing and Marketing communications, communications company specializing in advertising, Digital media, digital and social media, sales promotion, direct marketing and brand identity consulting, formed from the 2020 mer ...
, and in his first two years created 75 percent of all the music produced there. In 1957, physicians gave him a 10 percent chance of surviving an automobile accident in
Utah Utah is a landlocked state in the Mountain states, Mountain West subregion of the Western United States. It is one of the Four Corners states, sharing a border with Arizona, Colorado, and New Mexico. It also borders Wyoming to the northea ...
that left him comatose and killed his wife of under one year. He worked almost three decades in advertising, with Young & Rubicam,
Benton & Bowles Benton & Bowles (B&B) was a New York–based advertising agency founded by William Benton and Chester Bowles in 1929. One of the oldest agencies in the United States, and frequently one of the 10 largest, it merged with D'Arcy-MacManus Masius to ...
, and later his own company, Roy Eaton Music Inc. In 1986, he returned to regular concert performance at Alice Tully Hall, in Lincoln Center, with a unique program format, "The Meditative Chopin", a subsequent "The Meditative Chopin II" in 1987 and a third recital in the same hall in 1992. Eaton is a long-time practitioner of Transcendental Meditation. Beginning in 1968. He was inducted into the Advertising Hall of Fame in 2010. After suffering a stroke in 2017, Eaton has continued to perform.


References


External links

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Meet the Ad Industry Pioneer Behind Some Very Memorable Jingles
Fox News {{DEFAULTSORT:Eaton, Roy 1930 births 20th-century African-American musicians 20th-century American classical pianists 20th-century American male musicians 21st-century African-American musicians 21st-century American classical pianists 21st-century American male musicians African-American classical pianists American advertising executives American male classical pianists Living people People from Harlem United States Army personnel of the Korean War