Larry Adler born 10 February 1914

 

Lawrence "Larry" Cecil Adler, (February 10, 1914 – August 7, 2001), was an American musician, widely acknowledged as one of the world's most skilled harmonica players. Composers such as Ralph Vaughan Williams, Malcolm Arnold, Darius Milhaud and Arthur Benjamin composed works for him. During the later stage of his career he was known for his collaborations with popular musicians Sting, Elton John, Kate Bush, and Cerys Matthews.
 
Larry Adler was born in Baltimore, Maryland, into a Jewish family and graduated from the Baltimore City College high school. Adler taught himself harmonica and began playing professionally at the age of 14. In 1927, the harmonica was popular enough that the Baltimore Sun newspaper sponsored a contest. His rendition of a Beethoven minuet won him the award, and a year later, he ran away from home to New York.

 

After being referred by Rudy Vallée, Adler got his first theatre work, and caught the attention of orchestra leader Paul Ash, who placed Adler in a vaudeville act as "a ragged urchin, playing for pennies".  From there, he was hired by Florenz Ziegfeld and then by Lew Leslie (again as an urchin). Adler finally broke the typecasting and appeared in a dinner jacket in the 1934 Paramount film Many Happy Returns, and was hired by British theatrical producer C. B. Cochran to perform in a London revue. Adler found stardom in the United Kingdom and the British Empire; where, it has been written, harmonica sales increased twenty-fold and 300,000 people joined fan clubs.
 
Adler was one of the first harmonica players to perform major works written for the instrument, often written expressly for him: these include Cyril Scott's Serenade (harmonica and piano), Vaughan Williams' Romance in D (harmonica and string orchestra; premiered New York, 1952), Milhaud's Suite Anglais (Paris, May 28, 1947), Arthur Benjamin's Harmonica Concerto (1953), and Malcolm Arnold's Harmonica Concerto, Op. 46 (1954, written for The Proms). He recorded all these pieces, some more than once.  

 

Earlier, Adler had performed transcriptions of pieces written for other instruments, such as violin concertos by Bach and Vivaldi - he played his arrangement of Vivaldi's Violin Concerto in A minor with the Sydney Symphony. Other works he played in harmonica arrangements were by Bartók, Beethoven (Minuet in G), Debussy, Falla, Gershwin (Rhapsody in Blue), Mozart (slow movement from the Oboe Quartet, K. 470), Poulenc, Ravel (Boléro), Stravinsky and Walton.
 
Forced to leave the country by false accusations of communist sympathies during the era of McCarthyism (which made it impossible for Adler to find work), he moved to the United Kingdom in 1949, and settled in London, where he remained for the remainder of his life. The accusations, although without foundation, led to a general sentiment of disregard towards him in the USA during the 1950s and early 1960s. Despite his self-imposed exile, he remained an American citizen, and turned down a knighthood for that reason. 

 

 

 

 

 

The 1953 film Genevieve brought him an Oscar nomination for his work on the soundtrack (though his name was originally kept off the credits in the United States due to blacklisting). He scored a huge hit with the theme song of the French Jacques Becker movie Touchez pas au grisbi with Jean Gabin, written by Jean Wiener.

Adler returned to U.S. to perform in 1959, and rejoined Draper for a Carnegie Hall performance in 1975.

 

Throughout the 1960s, however, his activities shifted increasingly from music to writing. He published a book on Jokes and How to Tell Them and write occasional pieces for London magazines. He became a regular contributor to Private Eye, The Sunday Times, and others, and served as the film critic for The Oldie for several years.

 

In 1985, Adler published a lively autobiography, It Ain't Necessarily So, and over 60 years after it expelled him, the Peabody Conservatory invited him back for an honorary degree.
 
In 1994 for his 80th birthday Adler, along with George Martin, produced an album of George Gershwin songs, The Glory of Gershwin, on which Adler and Martin performed Rhapsody in Blue. Adler was an entertaining performer and showman--the concerts in support of The Glory of Gershwin also revealed that he was a competent pianist, when he opened each performance with Gershwin's Summertime, playing piano and harmonica simultaneously.

 

He died peacefully in St Thomas' Hospital, London, at the age of 87, on August 7, 2001. He was cremated at the Golders Green Crematorium, where his ashes remain.
(info edited mainly from from Wikipedia)

"He made wonderful music, you just can't get away from it, the sound he got out of the harmonica was as great as Yehudi Menuhin could get from a violin," (Humphrey Lyttleton)