John Eaton

John Livingston Eaton (May 29, 1934 – May 24, 2026) was an American pianist, musicologist, humorist, educator, and interpreter of jazz and American popular music. He is "considered one of the foremost interpreters of American music." He first learned about jazz from his father, a journalist who played the piano every evening after work.

He attended Yale University. He graduated from Yale University in 1956. He later studied with renowned classical teacher Alexander Lipsky.

Characterized by Nat Hentoff as "the complete pianist... the master of just about the whole spectrum of jazz music", John Eaton is profiled in Leonard Feather and Ira Gitler's Encyclopedia of Jazz, and has been reviewed by prominent music critics.

Personal life and death Eaton lived in American University Park in Washington, D.C.

Works Eaton is known for a CD series project John Eaton Presents the American Popular Song'' in cooperation with the Wolf Trap Foundation for the Performing Arts, the operational partner of the Wolf Trap National Park for the Performing Arts. This includes thirteen separate recorded broadcast programs in concert and conversation with jazz bassist Jay Leonhart. Each program focuses on major artists, composers or collaborators in American music, including Richard Rodgers, Harold Arlen, George Gershwin, Jerome Kern, Cole Porter, Julie Styne, Irving Berlin, Kurt Weill and Vernon Duke, and Hoagy Carmichael and Fats Waller, Duke Ellington, Harry Warren, Jimmy Van Heusen, Frank Loesser, The Beatles, and Bob Dylan.