Eddie Layton was born Edward Litvin in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He graduated from the West Chester State Teachers College (Now West Chester University) majoring in meteorology with a minor in music. He began playing the organ when he was 12 years old. While serving in the United States Navy during World War II, he learned to play the Hammond organ. After the war, he studied with theatre organ great, Jesse Crawford. He began a career as a professional organist writing scores for soap operas on CBS. Four noted CBS soap operas were "The Secret Storm,""Love is a Many Splendored Thing,""Love of Life," and "Where the Heart Is." During that time, he recorded nearly 27 albums of organ music.
Eddie Layton had a smooth style that many appreciated. He used many special effects on the Hammond drawbars such as clopping horses, the wind, Big Ben and many more. The Hammond Organ Company retained him as a demonstrator for over 50 years, concertizing both in America and abroad. He made the first album on the “new”
Hammond X-66, a collection of favorite Lawrence Welk tunes. He also came out with music books of special effects and arrangements for Hammond organ. Although he recorded exclusively on Hammond, he did make one album on a theatre pipe organ.
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In the mid to late 1960s, there was a British organist named Ashley Tappen, who sold records in America from recordings at the Piccadilly Gardens in London. He recorded several albums as tributes to Ken Griffin. This was, in reality, Eddie Layton in the United States, and the reverberation was added to the recordings to simulate
a large hall. Piccadilly Gardens never existed.
Layton joined the New York Yankees franchise in 1967 when CBS purchased the Yankees from Dan Topping. Because of pressure from the success of the New York Mets, their new Shea Stadium facility and the popularity of their organist, Jane Jarvis, Topping had installed an organ in Yankee Stadium at the beginning of the 1965 season. Lowrey organ demonstrator Toby Wright was the first Yankee organist and did the 1965 and 1966 seasons. Team president E. Michael Burke brought Layton in to play organ music at the stadium in 1967. At the time, he had never been to the stadium and knew nothing about baseball.
He went on to play the organ for the Yankees for over three decades, taking a break from 1971 to 1977 to pursue other musical commitments. (Wright had returned as organist during that time.) When he retired on September 28, 2003, he played a final performance of "Take Me Out to the Ball Game", while fans chanted "Eddie! Eddie!" Current New York Yankees organists Ed Alstrom and Paul Cartier were recruited by Layton to take his place at Yankee Stadium.
Layton never married, but his passion was sailing and he owned his own tugboat which he cruised up and down the Hudson River. He also owned a huge collection of model trains he maintained at his Forest Hills, New York home.
Eddie loved demonstrating organs to the public, and giving organ lessons. In 2009, Soapluvva established a YouTube tribute channel to both Eddie Layton and Charles Paul, who were colleagues of each other at the CBS Broadcast Center in Manhattan.
On December 26, 2004, Layton died of natural causes at his home in Forest Hills, New York at age 79, according to various reports following a brief illness. He was buried at Mount Hebron Cemetery in Queens, New York City, with his feet pointed away from Shea Stadium.
(Edited from Wikipedia & TheatreOrgans.com)