Whitney Lyon Balliett (April 17, 1926 – February 1, 2007) was a jazz critic and book reviewer for The New Yorker and was with the journal from 1954 until 2001.

Biography

Balliett was born in Manhattan and raised in Glen Cove, New York, on Long Island. He attended Phillips Exeter Academy, where he learned to play drums in a band he summed up as "baggy Dixieland"; he played summer gigs at a Center Island yacht club. He was drafted into the Army in 1946, interrupting his freshman year at Cornell University, to which he returned to finish his degree in 1951 and where he was a member of Delta Phi fraternity. He then took a job at The New Yorker, where he was hired by Katherine White, one of the magazine's fiction editors. He went on to write more than 550 signed pieces for The New Yorker, as well as many anonymous pieces. Acclaimed for his literary writing style, Balliett died at his Manhattan home on February 1, 2007, aged 80, from liver cancer. He was survived by his second wife, Nancy Balliett, and his five children (from both marriages): James Fargo Balliett, Blue Balliett, Will Balliett, Julie Lyon Rose, and Whitney Lyon Balliett Jr.

Books

Essays and reporting

Book reviews

Balliett's life and work