BBC News | MUSIC | Larry Adler: Mouth organ virtuoso Tuesday, 7 August, 2001, 08:45 GMT 09:45 UK Larry Adler: Mouth organ virtuoso Larry Adler made the mouth organ a revered artform Virtuoso musician Larry Adler has died aged 87, having elevated the humble harmonica from being a playground toy to a serious concert hall instrument. Larry Adler was the best-known mouth organist in the world. His music for the classic film Genevieve in 1953 made him a wealthy man - and famous in England, his adopted home. His life was a who's who of celebrity associations. He played with everyone from Fred Astaire to Sir Elton John and counted kings and prime ministers among his friends. Lawrence Cecil Adler was born in Baltimore, Maryland, on 10 February 1914, the son of Louis and Sadie Adler. At the age of five, he was taken to a Rachmaninov concert and developed his own musical skills within the framework of the Adler family's orthodox Judaism.

He was the youngest cantor, singer in a synagogue, in Baltimore and made himself unpopular by chiding his schoolmates for their lack of religious piety. Runaway He was enrolled at the prestigious Peabody School of Music to study the piano. Larry Adler: friend of Chaplin and Ingrid Bergman Shortly afterwards he started playing the harmonica, which he always called a "mouth organ". Still a teenager, he ran away to New York where, with his parents' eventual consent, he became a professional musician. Adler's virtuosity was such that he could pick out a tune simply by hearing it once and he brought to the harmonica the musical richness which was once the reserve of purely classical soloists. The Chicago Herald said Adler was able to produce "a tone reminiscent of many instruments, which tone is as varied as those that emerge from a symphony orchestra". After seeing Adler play in New York in 1934, the English impresario C B Cochrane was so impressed that he immediately offered to sign the young man to star in his London review, Streamline. Before long he was playing for, and being f�ted by, the crowned heads of Europe as well as former monarchs like the Duke of Windsor.

Respectable In the 30s and 40s he worked with everyone from big bands to George Gershwin and the British composer Vaughan Williams, who wrote a work especially for him. To many he was the man who made the mouth organ respectable - though he never meant to. George Gershwin was a major influence He once admitted, "All I wanted to do was to get the hell out of Baltimore, which I hated. I wanted to go on the stage, which I was magnetically drawn to." A friend of the stars, Charlie Chaplin was a personal friend and he romanced such screen goddesses as Greta Garbo and Ingrid Bergman. The war years saw Larry Adler entertaining Allied troops. It ended with him personally liberating the Hohner harmonica factory in Germany. The company rewarded him with a crateful of the instruments. But Adler's life changed forever in 1949. While on a tour of Britain, he was called to testify to the McCarthyite House Un-American Activities Committee. Refusing to do so, he stayed and made his home in England. Gershwin Branded a communist in his homeland where he was blacklisted, Larry Adler re-built his life.

A friend of The Duke of Edinburgh, he belonged to theThursday Club, whose members, including the actors David Niven and Peter Ustinov, enjoyed long, boozy, lunches at Wheeler's restaurant in London's Soho. Sir Elton John called him "a genius" Like his hero George Gershwin, Larry Adler understood both jazz and classical music. He introduced Gershwin's music to classical stars like the violinist Yitzhak Perlman. Gershwin produced a piano-roll accompaniment for perhaps his most famous work, Rhapsody in Blue, for Larry Adler to play to. Right into his late 80s, he would delight audiences with the haunting spectacle of the playerless piano backing his music, an echo through the ages which never failed to spellbind. Celebrity In recent years, Larry Adler had become known to a younger audience through The Glory of Gershwin, the platinum-selling album of critically-acclaimed duets with modern stars like Sting, Lisa Stansfield and Meatloaf.

Tom Jones, whom he knew but did not perform with, held him in great affection, as did Sir Elton John who once remarked, "Larry Adler is a genius and the greatest player of his instrument ever." Most recently, he recorded a version of Tony Bennett's The Autumn Leaves, with the Catatonia singer, Cerys Matthews. He had a parallel career as a celebrity, a raconteur and funnyman. He wrote endless letters to the satirical magazine Private Eye. But Larry Adler's real achievement was to take the harmonica, until then thought of as a children's toy, onto the concert stages of the world. WATCH/LISTEN Enjoy Music - Play Hohner - A Tribute To Larry Adler A Tribute to Larry Adler HOME » News » A Tribute To Larry Adler A Tribute To Larry Adler 09.02.2014 Larry Adler and Hohner Hohner’s early advertisements for harmonica’s “Don’t be a loner, get a Hohner” describes the beginning of life long relationship between Larry Adler, the greatest harmonica player in the world, and Hohner. At the age of 13, Mr.

Adler entered a harmonica contest sponsored by the Baltimore Sun and was awarded a silver cup as first prize. Having been thrown out of multiple schools and with a passion for the harmonica, Mr. Adler ran away to New York in 1928 to audition with Borrah Minevitch’s Harmonica Rascals a top vaudeville act at the time. Unfortunately, Minevitch told him he stank, but undeterred Adler stopped by the Paramount Theater where Rudy Vallee gave him a chance and so the story begins of a talented and motivated man and an instrument of inspiration, the Hohner harmonica. In 1934, Adler held his first appearance in London. By 1935, Hohner had introduced two Larry Adler chromatic models for international sale. Adler’s music had driven Hohner’s sale of harmonicas to England to increase by two thousand percent in a single year. Larry Adler’s worldwide influence on the popularity of chromatic harmonica playing sold millions of Hohner harmonicas and inspired generations of players.

During the 1940’s the Larry Adler model chromatic harmonica was the largest selling instrument in the world and the team of Adler and Paul Draper became one of the highest paid concert attractions in America. It was Adler’s amazing gift with the instrument and in promoting his music, his friendships, and his collaboration with Hohner that propelled him to become the greatest. As for Larry Adler’s friendships, his letters to Hohner and his statements in the media illustrate his mastery of talking about himself, revering his many high profile friends, and making you feel like you are just as important in the conversation. In one letter to Hohner’s Marketing director, he writes, “Now I am organizing an 80th birthday album. George Martin will produce. Sting and Elton John have volunteered to appear on it. I only want artists I know personally. How’s your singing voice?” In a casual name dropping contest with Walter Cronkite, Adler mentions that Charlie Chaplin called him in Beverly Hills and asked him to come and make up a foursome for tennis, Bill Tilden’s dropped out. So Adler arrived and Chaplin motions for me to get on the court.

Not long thereafter, Adler learned that the woman badly dressed for tennis was Greta Garbo and the man with the weird mustache was Salvadore Dali. Larry Adler’s sole goal in playing the harmonica was to develop a “singing tone.” “If you can get a singing tone in your playing, that’s as far as you can go. Miles Davis does it on the trumpet; Johnny Hodges did it on the saxophone. That’s what I loved about Rachmaninoff when I heard him play the piano when I was a kid in Baltimore” “Years ago I played Sophisticated Lady with Duke Ellington and his band at the club. Billie Holiday was there and afterwards Duke introduced me to her at the table. She said, “You don’t play that thing, Man, you sing it.” “Now I cannot think of a better epitaph than that.” The Hohner Company is extremely proud to have had such a lifelong relationship with Mr. Larry Adler. He made our mouth organs sing and he became the pied piper of his generation. Clayman B.

Edwards Larry Adler, Political Exile Who Brought the Harmonica to Concert Stage, Dies at 87 - The New York Times The New York Times Arts |Larry Adler, Political Exile Who Brought the Harmonica to Concert Stage, Dies at 87 Search Larry Adler, Political Exile Who Brought the Harmonica to Concert Stage, Dies at 87 By RICHARD SEVERO Continue reading the main story Correction Appended Larry Adler, a harmonica player of enormous sensitivity whose advocacy and artistry helped elevate the instrument to concert status, died yesterday at a London hospital. He was 87 and had lived in Britain since the early 1950's, when he was blacklisted for his political views and his career in America effectively ended. In performances that spanned seven decades, Mr. Adler brought dignity to the harmonica, which was previously regarded as either a toy or an instrument for amateurs. He not only introduced the ''mouth organ,'' as he called it, into the concert hall, but also persuaded important composers, among them Darius Milhaud, Ralph Vaughan Williams, William Walton, Malcolm Arnold and JoaquÛn Rodrigo, to create works specifically for him.

He also proved that the unadorned harmonica could provide an eloquent score for an entire motion picture. Mr. Adler and his performing partner, the tap dancer Paul Draper, were denounced as Communist sympathizers in 1948. They sued for libel but were unable to win full vindication. Mr. Adler, a celebrated star who had been earning up to $200,000 a year, suddenly could not find employment. He departed for Britain, where he remained a star of the first rank. He earned household-name status there as much for his lively and humorous public personality as for his musicianship. Although a self-described ''left-minded kid,'' Mr. Adler steadfastly denied he had ever supported the Communist cause but refused to take a loyalty oath or mute his criticism of the House Un-American Activities Committee. Continue reading the main story ''I can't understand Marx,'' he said in 1971. ''Communist literature, brochures and stuff didn't mean anything to me.'' But he continued to insist that imagined or even real Communists should not be deprived of their ability to earn a living, since being a Communist was not against the law.

Advertisement Continue reading the main story Lawrence Cecil Adler was born on Feb. 10, 1914, in Baltimore, the eldest of two sons of Louis Adler, a peripatetic plumber (''Adler's Plumbing Shop on Wheels'' was the name of his business) and the former Sadie Hack. His parents were both born in Russia and were brought to the United States as infants. He was fascinated by music from an early age, and sang in the neighborhood synagogue. His parents had an old piano and arranged for him to take lessons. He loved it. So much so, in fact, that he walked into a music store in downtown Baltimore and talked the proprietor into sending a new $2,500 piano to his home. The modest piano on which he had started was no longer good enough. When his father recoiled at the cost, the proprietor of the music store, a man named Levin, replied, ''Could you afford 50 cents a week?'' And they worked out a time-payment plan. As a youngster, Larry Adler sold newspapers and magazines on the streets of Baltimore to earn enough money to purchase phonograph records and tickets to classical concerts.

He enrolled in the Peabody School of Music in Baltimore for piano training, but stayed only a short time. Instead of playing a Grieg waltz, as the school had expected, he made a face and pounded out, ''Yes, We Have No Bananas.'' He was expelled from Peabody, he said, for being ''incorrigible, untalented and entirely lacking in ear.'' (In 1985 he returned to Peabody and received an honorary degree.) The store owner who sold the Adlers the new piano also had given the young man a harmonica as a sort of commission. He taught himself to play it. Some of his friends did the same thing, practicing on time-tested favorites like ''Home on the Range'' and ''St. Louis Blues.'' The young Adler also taught himself to play classical selections by ear. One day he learned that The Baltimore Sun was sponsoring a harmonica-playing contest and he immediately entered it. All the other contestants played tunes like ''Turkey in the Straw''; Larry Adler surprised the judges with a patrician reading of Beethoven's ''Minuet in G'' and won the prize.

The harmonica, he said, ''was just a means of getting the hell away from Baltimore.'' In 1928, at age 14, he said, he left home with $7 in his pocket and headed for New York. He lived in cheap rooms and played his harmonica in the streets around Times Square, hoping a talent agent would discover him. He auditioned for Borrah Minevitch and His Harmonica Rascals, which was the biggest harmonica act in show business, but was rejected. Minevitch listened carefully, looked at young Adler, and said, ''Kid, you stink.'' Undeterred, Mr. Adler persuaded the bandleader Rudy Vallee to listen to him play. Vallee heard something that Minevitch hadn't heard and invited him to appear with him at a Manhattan club. That led to other jobs; at one point, Florenz Ziegfeld hired him for ''Smiles,'' a musical revue. Advertisement Continue reading the main story For all his increasing success, Mr. Adler played by ear and from memory after listening to phonograph records; he couldn't even read music until he was in his late 20's and well into his career.

He once said that he agreed to learn only at the behest of Milhaud, who explained that unless he learned to understand what all those little notes meant, he'd never be able to perform the music that was being written for him, music that he'd never be able to hear on a phonograph record or the radio. In 1934, Mr. Adler landed a small role in a movie called ''Many Happy Returns.'' That same year, he was booked at the Paramount in New York, where he was seen by C. B. Cochran, a British producer, and hired to appear in a London production called ''Streamline.'' Audiences liked him in London, so much so that the British built an entire revue around him called ''Tune Inn.'' Soon there was a tremendous increase in harmonica sales and there were Larry Adler fan clubs throughout Britain. By the late 1930's, he realized, he was better known in England than he was in his own country. He returned to the United States and got some jobs playing with the pianist Eddie Duchin. The columnist Leonard Lyons helped him find some spots in New York nightclubs.

He got a few more movie roles, and his credits included ''The Singing Marine'' (1937); ''The Big Broadcast of 1937,'' in which he appeared with Jack Benny; ''St. Martin's Lane'' (1938); ''Sidewalks of London'' (1940); ''Music for Millions'' (1945); and ''The Birds and the Bees'' (1947). Please verify you're not a robot by clicking the box. Invalid email address. Please re-enter. You must select a newsletter to subscribe to. Sign Up Privacy Policy He began his association with the dancer Paul Draper before World War II, appearing with him at Carnegie Hall and at City Center in New York, and on a tour of United States Army camps during World War II. During the war he also entertained the troops with Jack Benny and with Ingrid Bergman, with whom he had an affair. Mr. Adler and Mr. Draper began to hear criticism of their political views in the late 1940's, particularly for their support of 19 Hollywood writers, including Alvah Bessie, Ring Lardner Jr.

and Dalton Trumbo, who had been summoned before the House Committee on Un-American Activities. In 1948, a club in Birmingham, Ala., announced that it was ''exceedingly embarrassed'' because Mr. Adler and Mr. Draper had appeared at the club immediately before speaking at a rally for Henry Wallace, who was running for president as the Progressive Party candidate. Mr. Adler and Mr. Draper issued a joint reply: ''We have done our best as artists and do not intend to let anything stop us from doing our best as citizens.'' The contretemps made headlines, and inspired some angry editorials. In December 1948, a Connecticut woman, Hester T. McCullough, sought to prevent Mr. Adler and Mr. Draper from appearing before the Greenwich Concert Association. In a letter to the group, published in Greenwich Time, a daily newspaper, Mrs. McCullough said the two men were ''pro-Communist in sympathy'' and ''exponents of a line of thinking directly opposed to every democratic principle upon which our great country has been founded.'' As a result of her protest, their performance was canceled. Mr. Adler and Mr.

Draper sued for libel, each asking $100,000 in damages. The suit became a cause célèbre, prompting Westbrook Pegler, the columnist, to call for contributions to help pay for Mrs. McCullough's defense. The suit came to trial in Federal District Court in Hartford, and ended in a hung jury on May 27, 1950. The case was dismissed on Sept. 30, 1951. The performers said they lacked the funds for more litigation. Advertisement Continue reading the main story By 1952, Mr. Adler had left the United States to live in London with his wife and family and remained there for the rest of his life, performing regularly and making recordings of classical and popular music. After his first return engagement in 1959, Mr. Adler's visits to his native land grew more frequent. In 1975 he and Mr. Draper reunited for a concert at Carnegie Hall. Mr. Draper died at 86 in 1996. Mr. Adler's marriage to Eileen Walser, an English model, ended in divorce as did his second marriage, to Sally Cline.

He is survived by a son, Peter, and two daughters, Carole and Wendy, from his first marriage; a daughter, Katelyn, from his second; two granddaughters; and two great-grandchildren. During his years in Britain, Mr. Adler wrote articles for American newspapers and restaurant reviews and articles about food for several British publications. In the mid-1960's, he wrote a book called ''Jokes and How to Tell Them.'' Despite his efforts to bring the harmonica to the concert stage, Mr. Adler said he thought the instrument would always be grounded in cowboy songs and blues. ''I can play it for the next hundred years and it won't change that,'' he said in 1984. He said he wasn't bitter about his political experiences and suggested more than once that if he had to do it over again, he would have chosen the same course. ''Resist the pressure to conform,'' he would tell young people.

''Better be a lonely individualist than a contented conformist.'' Correction: August 13, 2001, Monday An obituary of the harmonica virtuoso Larry Adler on Wednesday referred incorrectly to ''Smiles,'' a Florenz Ziegfeld stage production in which he appeared. It was a musical play, not a revue. The obituary also referred incorrectly to his film role credits for ''St. Martin's Lane'' and ''Sidewalks of London.'' The titles represent a single film -- the first as released in Britain, in 1938, the second in the United States, in 1940. Correction: August 20, 2001, Monday An obituary of the harmonica virtuoso Larry Adler on Aug. 8 misstated the name and release date of a film in which he appeared. It is ''Three Daring Daughters'' (1948, not 1947); ''The Birds and the Bees'' was a working title before its release.

Larry Adler - IMDb IMDb Composer | Music Department | Soundtrack Larry Adler was born on February 10, 1914 in Baltimore, Maryland, USA as Lawrence Cecil Adler. He is known for his work on Genevieve (1953), King & Country (1964) and Three Daring Daughters (1948). He was married to Sally Cline and Eileen Walser. He died on August 6, 2001 in London, England. See full bio » Born: a list of 231 people created 21 Sep 2012 a list of 134 people created 16 Apr 2015 a list of 5865 people created 11 months ago a list of 286 people created 11 months ago a list of 2520 people created 10 months ago Do you have a demo reel? Add it to your IMDbPage How much of Larry Adler's work have you seen? User Polls Nominated for 1 Oscar.

See more awards » Known For Three Daring Daughters Himself (Harmonica Player) (1948) 1976 ITV Sunday Night Drama (TV Series) (1 episode) - Enemy (1976) ...

(music composed by) 1972 The Mad Trapper (TV Movie documentary) 1972 Review (TV Series documentary) (1 episode) 1964 King & Country (musician: harmonica) 1964 The Midnight Men (TV Series) (music played by - 6 episodes) 1961 The Hellions (music played by) 1960 Music for You (TV Series) (harmonica player - 1 episode) 1953 Genevieve (music played by) Hide 2009 Hugh Hefner: Playboy, Activist and Rebel (Documentary) (performer: "Touchez Pas Au Grisbi") / (writer: "Touchez Pas Au Grisbi") 2007 BBC Proms (TV Series) (1 episode) 2001 This Way Up (TV Series) (performer - 1 episode) - Episode #1.3 (2001) ...

(performer: "Young at Heart") 1961 The Hellions (lyrics: "The Hellions") / (music: "The Hellions") 1948 Three Daring Daughters (performer: "RUMANIAN RHAPSODY IN A, OPUS 11, NO.

1" - uncredited) 1944 Music for Millions (performer: "Clair de Lune" (1890) - uncredited) 1937 The Singing Marine (performer: "Night and Day" (1932), "Tiger Rag" (1918), "Night Over Shanghai" (1937) - uncredited) Hide Obituary: Larry Adler | News | The Guardian The Guardian browse all sections close Larry Adler Mouth-organ virtuoso who earned the respect of serious composers and witnessed the golden years of Hollywood and Broadway Larry Adler Mouth-organ virtuoso who earned the respect of serious composers and witnessed the golden years of Hollywood and Broadway Share on Messenger Close Larry Adler, who has died in hospital after a short illness, aged 87, wasn't just the world's best-known player of the mouth organ (he did not like the word "harmonica"; even his pure silver instruments were simply mouth organs, and he was proud of the fact), he was the man who gave it dignity - and earned the respect of serious composers who queued to have him play their work.

He was also the best-known raconteur about the great days of Broadway and Hollywood. It would have been nice to say that the little man with the big eyes and incredibly long fingers was the media's "favourite" raconteur about the great days of Broadway and Hollywood. But he was used so often as a witness to those times that, to their shame, broadcasters in particular began to tire of him. As he said when he wrote his autobiography: "I thought of calling it Name-Drops Keep Falling on My Head after someone said, 'Damn it Adler, can't you even tell me the time without dragging in Sammy Davis Jr?' " In the end he called the book It Ain't Necessarily So - because "I don't know what the hell I'm talking about and when I play It Ain't Necessarily So, I'll be plugging my book." The truth was that he did know what he was talking about. Ignoring that fact was the broadcasters' big mistake - because not only did Adler have first-hand knowledge of the glory years of American showbusiness, but well into his mid-80s he told the stories better than anyone else.

He was, after all, probably the last living link with George Gershwin, with whom he played so often that the composer said he wished he had written Rhapsody In Blue especially for the mouth organ. Adler was an intimate of Fred Astaire. He played with him on Broadway and there are few, if any, other veterans of that show still surviving. The man who gave him that part was the impresario Florenz Ziegfeld. Apart from a very few, very aged "Ziegfeld Girls", he is probably the last in that line, too. Eddie Cantor was one of his early patrons. He played for years with Jack Benny. In the 1930s he made a film with Vivien Leigh. He was at parties with all the Hollywood moguls. Were these just the boastings of an old-time performer? That was probably what the more ignorant media producers thought - except that so much of it was documented. Records, theatre bills, correspondence and a thousand photographs give witness to the fact. Anyone wanting an explanation for all that only has to think about the dates involved. Adler was a child star who, unlike most juvenile performers, went on being a star until the end of his life.

In 1994, he became the oldest artist ever to be awarded a gold disc for a million-selling album - appropriately of Gershwin melodies, accompanying entertainers from a different generation such as Elton John, Sting and Kate Bush. In the same year, he released an album in which he accompanied Gershwin himself - actually, piano rolls made by the composer which are supposed to sound identical to the original. More praise was heaped on him then, although now he was used to getting the plaudits of his public. But when the then 80-year-old entertainer stood to take a bow at one of his numerous birthday celebrations, it was not the music industry he was thanking, but the British people. To the end of his days, he sounded American and his memories were practically all transatlantic. But it was Britain that had given him a home 45 years earlier when he became a victim of McCarthyism. Lawrence Cecil Adler was born in Baltimore. As he said: "The first world war and I began at about the same time, a fact that somebody in the future will, I hope, find to be of significance." It probably wasn't.

As for Baltimore, "I spent my first 14 years plotting my escape." His Jewish parents were both born in Russia. In middle age he discovered that the family wasn't called Adler at all. His grandfather, who ran the family dairy, came to America with the name Zelakovitch. "He got tired of waiting in immigration queues, always last to be called because his name began with a 'z'. Thus he became Adler." He was thought to have musical talent early on, which was why he studied piano at the Peabody Conservatory of Music in Baltimore. That was where he first began to exhibit the kind of bolshevism that was to so upset Senator Joseph McCarthy. When it came to the end-of-term concert, he decided he was being patronised by one of the teachers who asked "What are we going to play, little man?" That was the point at which he decided to play Yes We Have No Bananas, instead of a Grieg waltz. He was expelled at just about the time he discovered he could make better music with a mouth organ. Adler entered a competition and came third. But it was a good enough place to act as a springboard that started his career.

At 14, he ran away to New York. His parents didn't know either that he went or that he had $35 to take with him - the proceeds of selling subscriptions to Liberty magazine and of a couple of amateur contests. He wanted to play with Borrah Minevitch and His Harmonica Rascals, but failed the audition. "Kid, you stink," said the band leader. It was a big favour, he later reasoned. Looking for work, he landed a 40-week contract playing on a country-wide tour in the intervals for film performances. They were important bookings - he earned $100 a week, huge money for those days and almost unknown for a 14-year-old. His next break was working with Eddie Cantor, then next to Al Jolson - Adler's idol - as one of America's most popular entertainers. Cantor didn't employ him as a mouth organ player, but to dress up as a pageboy. The point was that Larry looked very much like Cantor, and the older man thought it was a fact on which it was worth cashing in. "How old are you?" Cantor asked.

"Fifteen, sir." Larry Adler Larry Adler Larry Adler Larry Adler Larry Adler was born in Baltimore on 10th February, 1914. A self-taught musician, he won the Maryland Harmonica Championship at the age of 13 and began his show business career the following year. He appeared in Sky High (1931), Many Happy Returns (1934), The Big Broadcast (1936), The Singing Marine (1937) and Sidewalks of London (1938). He also toured the USA, Europe, Africa and the Middle East. In 1938 he married Eileen Walser and the couple had three children. In the 1940s Adler played as a soloist with some of the world's leading symphony orchestras. Adler was particularly liked for his renditions of George Gershwin . His friend, John Calder , has pointed out: "Adler... moved in jazz, modern music and Broadway musical circles, and he was adapting a wide variety of musical scores for his own instrument, as well as composing for it himself.

He performed as a soloist with an orchestra in Sydney in 1939 as part of an Australian tour, and thereafter toured the world, either as an individual performer, his playing being interspersed with jokes, chats and anecdotes, or as part of a larger show." After the Second World War the House of Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) began to investigate people with left-wing views in the entertainment industry. In June, 1950, three former FBI agents and a right-wing television producer, Vincent Harnett, published Red Channels , a pamphlet listing the names of 151 writers, directors and performers who they claimed had been members of subversive organizations before the war but had not so far been blacklisted. The names had been compiled from FBI files and a detailed analysis of The Daily Worker , a newspaper published by the American Communist Party . A free copy of Red Channels was sent to those involved in employing people in the entertainment industry. All those people named in the pamphlet were blacklisted until they appeared in front of the House of Un-American Activities Committee and convinced its members they had completely renounced their radical past. Adler was one of those named and after refusing to appear before the HUAC.

Adler said, "The only way to get off that blacklist was to go before the committee and shop your friends. There was no way I was going to do that." Adler moved to England where he wrote the music for films such as Genevieve (1953), The Hook (1963), King and Country (1964) and A High Wind in Jamaica (1965). Humphrey Lyttleton commented: "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. He could express himself equally well in pop, jazz or classical music." In 1969 Adler married Sally Cline. The couple had one daughter but the marriage was dissolved in 1977. In his later years Adler also worked as a journalist and was food critic for Harper's & Queen . Books by Adler included It Ain't Necessarily So (1985) and Me and My Big Mouth (1994).

John Calder has commented: "It has often been asked why he did not bring his musicianship to a more conventional instrument, but he was not interested in being just a musician. He enjoyed entertaining an audience and his sense of timing when relating a story on stage made him a stand-up comic and raconteur of considerable charisma. During the last 30 years he had spent much time in night-clubs and small theatres and with a one-man show that employed all his talents." Larry Adler died in London on 6th August 2001. Larry Adler facts, information, pictures | Encyclopedia.com articles about Larry Adler COPYRIGHT 2004 The Gale Group Inc. Larry Adler On the short list of musicians who have played the harmonica at a virtuoso level, Larry Adler (1914–2001) ranks at or near the top. His musical skills were matched by an outsized personality that delighted interviewers, attracted some of the top musicians of the 20th century as collaborators over his seven-decade career, and awakened memories of the classic era of Broadway entertainment in which Adler's career got its start.

Adler brought a level of respectability to the harmonica, often regarded as primarily an instrument played by enthusiastic amateurs. He preferred the term "mouth organ" to "harmonica," and he crossed into the realm of classical music, playing with symphony orchestras and commissioning works from prestigious composers. His playing was lyrical, often melancholy. Yet the public also prized Adler for his fund of stories about the rich, famous, and beautiful. He numbered physicist Albert Einstein and composer Sergei Rachmaninoff among his friends, and, an enthusiastic tennis player, he once participated in a doubles match with comedian Charlie Chaplin, actress Greta Garbo, and surrealist artist Salvador Dali. He and Chaplin won. Family Changed Name to Advance Alphabetically Lawrence Cecil Adler was born in Baltimore, Maryland, on February 10, 1914. His parents were Russian Jewish immigrants (and fluent Yiddish speakers) who had changed the family name from Zelakovitch because they were tired of waiting at the end of long alphabetically organized lines in offices. Though they had faced discrimination in Russia, they told their son not to play with any of the African-American children in the neighborhood.

Adler showed his stubborn streak for perhaps the first time by trying to make as many black friends as he could find, and he often spoke out in favor of civil rights later in his life. Adler seemed to show musical talent, becoming a cantor in the local synagogue by the time he was ten. His parents signed him up for piano lessons and were even talked into buying a piano on an installment plan. The owner of the music store where they made the purchase threw in a harmonica as part of the deal, and Adler took to that instrument enthusiastically. When he enrolled in classes at Baltimore's Peabody Conservatory of Music, however, it was with the intention of studying piano. His lessons there came to an end after one semester (according to London, England's Guardian newspaper) when a teacher at a recital offended him by asking "What are we going to play, little man?" Adler substituted "Yes, We Have No Bananas" for the Grieg waltz he had planned, and he was thrown out of the program. Undaunted, Adler entered a Baltimore Sun harmonica contest and won, playing a minuet by Beethoven instead of the simple folk tunes the other contestants offered.

Not long after that, at the age of fourteen, Adler left Baltimore for New York with seven dollars in his pocket. Playing on the streets and auditioning wherever he could, he was turned down by a group called Borrah Minevitch and His Harmonica Rascals but was befriended by singer Rudy Vallee, who steered him toward work playing on the soundtracks of Mickey Mouse cartoons. That led to a nationwide tour playing the harmonica at intermission in movie houses, and then to opening-act slots for the likes of Eddie Cantor, Jack Benny, and Fred Astaire—top entertainers who straddled the divide between live musical shows and the growing world of cinema. The teenage Adler was spotted by a British promoter and invited to try his luck across the Atlantic. Before he left, he managed to improvise a performance of George Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue on the harmonica, with Gershwin himself accompanying on piano, although he had never tried to play the highly virtuosic piece before.

Adler became an instant hit in England, spending several years there in the mid-1930s as the featured attraction in a musical revue called "Tune Inn." Larry Adler fan clubs were formed all over Britain, and his popularity there would stand him in good stead later on. At the time, however, Adler decided to return to the United States and reactivate his Broadway and Hollywood connections. He had no trouble landing parts in such films as The Singing Marine (starring Dick Powell), The Big Broadcast of 1937 and St. Martin's Lane (1938). Gangster Al Capone was another Adler friend. Claimed Affair with Ingrid Bergman At that time, Adler did not know how to read music. He did learn the skill, however, around the early 1940s, saying that he had been inspired to do so by either French composer Darius Milhaud or Swedish actress Ingrid Bergman (depending on the interview). Adler entertained U.S.

troops on USO tours during World War II, and at one appearance in Augsburg, Germany, he was quoted as saying in the San Diego Union-Tribune, that Bergman entered the room, complimented him on his playing, and asked him if he was going to notate the tune. "No, I can't, and I don't need to," Adler recalled saying, to which Bergman retorted, "You're very smug, aren't you? You're ignorant, and you're proud of your ignorance." According to Adler, he and Bergman embarked on a two-year affair although each was already married; Adler and his first wife, British model Eileen Walser, had three children before divorcing; his second marriage, to British journalist Sally Cline, produced another daughter. After the war, Adler's increasing musical sophistication began to show. He once filled in for Miles Davis at New York's famous Village Vanguard jazz club when the trumpeter failed to show up for a gig, and he appeared with the New York Philharmonic Orchestra. But his efforts on behalf of the troops during the war were not enough to save him from the anti-Communist frenzy that overtook the U.S.

in the late 1940s and early 1950s. Adler found that jobs were drying up as left-leaning performers such as himself and Paul Draper, a dancer with whom he often worked, were blacklisted by Hollywood studios that tried to avoid running afoul of crusading Republican Senator Joseph McCarthy of Wisconsin and his campaign to root out the Communist influences he perceived as having infiltrated U.S. politics and culture. When a Connecticut woman wrote a letter to a newspaper accusing Adler and Draper of Communist sympathies in 1948, Adler and Draper sued. The case dragged out for three years, draining the resources of the pair, and it ended in a hung jury in September of 1951. Shortly after that, Adler departed for Britain. Though he would sometimes return to the U.S. to perform after McCarthy was discredited and the anti-Communist hysteria died down, he lived in Britain for the rest of his life. Building on the name he had made for himself in the 1930s, Adler succeeded in adapting his performing repertoire to the greater frequency with which classical music was heard in Britain.

Some of Europe's best-known composers expanded the tiny classical harmonica repertoire with new compositions for Adler, including the Romance for Mouth Organ, Piano, and Strings by Ralph Vaughan Williams and concertos by Malcolm Arnold an Darius Milhaud. Composer William Walton (as quoted in the Guardian) even said that "the only two young musical geniuses in the world are [violinist] Yehudi Menuhin and Larry Adler." Adler composed the score for the 1953 film Genevieve, which garnered an Academy Award nomination even though Adler's name was stripped from American prints of the film. He composed scores for several more British films, including The Hellions (1961) and King and Country (1963). In 1963 he premiered "Lullaby Time," a George Gershwin work given to him by the composer's brother Ira. Wrote Restaurant Reviews The positive side of Adler's exile in England was that he fit easily into British life.

He learned to play cricket, and when he tried to explain the rules of that arcane British sport to Einstein, the great physicist said (according to an Adler recollection quoted by a letter writer in London's Independent), "You know, Larry, I used to think time was relative, but suddenly I'm not so sure." Adler branched out beyond music, writing a book called Jokes and How to Tell Them and contributing articles to the Spectator and New Statesman periodicals. He served as restaurant reviewer for a magazine called Harpers & Queen. Quick with a one-liner, he told the same Independent letter writer, when she asked whether he had been christened Larry, "Honey, they've done some terrible things to Jews over the years, but christening wasn't one of them." Adler had played "The Battle Hymn of the Republic" on the balcony of Adolf Hitler's abandoned headquarters as American troops overran Berlin at the end of World War II, and he became a supporter of the young nation of Israel, performing there during the Six-Day War of 1967 and the Yom Kippur War of 1973.

Harboring little bitterness toward the U.S., he frequently returned there to perform, and he and Paul Draper staged a reunion at New York's Carnegie Hall in 1975. He never renounced his American citizenship, but he deplored the country's new rightward drift during the later decades of the century. "I come from a generation that revered Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and I admired Harry Truman" (with whom he had once performed "The Missouri Waltz"), Adler was quoted as saying in the San Diego Union-Tribune. "But look who they had later on—Nixon and Reagan. Wow. This does not encourage respect." Though he had lived the high life in California in the 1930s, his life in Britain, in a small apartment in London's Hampstead district, was more modest. Adler's performing career slowed in his old age but never came totally to a halt. He issued several albums that mixed classical music and pop standards, and he wrote a book of memoirs called It Ain't Necessarily So.

In 1994, to mark his 80th birthday, he joined with a host of pop stars—Sting, Elton John, Elvis Costello, Kate Bush, Jon Bon Jovi, and Meat Loaf among them—to record a new album, The Glory of Gershwin. Becoming acquainted with rock musicians prompted one of Adler's rare self-deprecatory sentiments. "I knew their names but not their work," he was quoted as saying in the Union-Tribune. "That is not the kind of music I usually listen to. I realized there's more to this music than I thought. I don't like admitting I was prejudiced." The album made its debut at No. 2 on British pop charts, making Adler the oldest person to ascend to top chart levels in Britain. In 1997 he recorded a new film score, one for a compendium of silent-film chase scenes called The Great Chase. Surviving cancer and two strokes, Adler returned to the studio to record with other rock stars. In his 87th year, he cut a duet with Cerys Matthews, a Welsh rock star.

"I'm surprised not only I'm still playing, but that I'm improving as I get older," the irrepressible Adler told Simon Hattenstone of the Guardian in April of 2001. A bout with pneumonia that summer, however, ended his life in a London hospital on August 6, 2001. "Resist the pressure to conform," he advised young people, as quoted in his New York Times obituary. "Better be a lonely individualist than a contented conformist." Books Larry Adler - Biography - IMDb Larry Adler Jump to: Overview (3) | Mini Bio (1) | Spouse (2) | Trivia (16) | Personal Quotes (3) Overview (3) Lawrence Cecil Adler Mini Bio (1) Larry Adler was born on February 10, 1914 in Baltimore, Maryland, USA as Lawrence Cecil Adler. He is known for his work on Genevieve (1953), King & Country (1964) and Three Daring Daughters (1948). He was married to Sally Cline and Eileen Walser. He died on August 6, 2001 in London, England.

Spouse (2) Trivia (16) Harmonica player. His last recording was a duet of "Young at Heart" with Cerys Matthews from the Welsh pop band Catatonia. Was nominated for an Oscar for his work on the soundtrack of Genevieve (1953), though he was originally kept off the credits because of a McCarthy blacklisting. Surname should be Zelakovitch, however his grandfather changed it to Adler as he was sick of being the last to be called in US Immigration queues. Although both of his trials for having alleged Communist ties ended in hung juries, Adler's U.S. engagements dried up virtually overnight. Soon thereafter, he went into self-imposed exile in England, and never returned to America permanently again. Despite his self-imposed exile, he remained an American citizen, and turned down a knighthood for that reason. Along with fellow American John Sebastian (father of the same named folk-rock performer), Adler was responsible for the harmonica, or mouth organ, becoming accepted in serious musical circles.

Such distinguished composers as Darius Milhaud , Ralph Vaughan Williams , and Cyril Scott, wrote works especially for him, and Maurice Ravel was so impressed with his arrangement of Ravel's "Bolero" for harmonica that he asked to keep it as a souvenir. When he was asked to do the score for Genevieve his agent asked for 750 pounds but was told the studio couldn't afford that much and instead offered him 2.5% of the profits. The agent tried to convince him to decline saying this film was intended to be a 'quota' film which would probably never make back its cost in takings. He decided to take the chance having liked what he had seen of the work thus far and as a result, within four weeks it made back the costs and he found himself able to pay to send his children through college with the money he made from the movie. It took 31 years after the Oscar nomination of the Genevieve score before the committee finally sent him his certificate of nomination. Three months after performing 'Sophisticated Lady' with Duke Ellington , the two of them performed the piece at a nightclub.

After the performance they were introduced to Billie Holiday , whose greeting was claimed by Adler to have been 'Man, you don't play that bloody thing, you sing it'. He said on his tour in Australia, that George Gershwin felt that Rhapsody in Blue had been written for him after hearing how well the song sounded when Larry played it on his harmonica. He always wished he could perform it in public with Gershwin and then realized he could despite Gershwin's death because he had an old recording made of Gershwin playing the piece which he then got transferred to a keyboard. This performance of him with Gershwin's recorded version can be heard on the Live in Australia CD.

Question: American Larry Adler was known for playing which musical instrument?
Answer: Harmonica