Larry Adler, Political Exile Who Brought the Harmonica to Concert Stage, Dies at 87
Premise Checker
"A Classical Recital on the Harmonica," Concert Hall Society.CHS 1161. The
disc features mostly Walter Goehr, Winterthur SO, but contains an
arrangement of the Mozart Oboe Quartet, with members of the Winterthur SQ,
whose leader was Peter Rybar, whose recordings I do collect. It is these
byways of collecting that I come to know artists and music that I
otherwise would not have.
Doubtless there were acoustic recordings of the harmonica, but I traced no
sets of classical music.
NYT AUG 08, 2001
Larry Adler, Political Exile Who Brought the Harmonica to Concert Stage,
Dies at 87
By RICHARD SEVERO
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 Joaqun Rodrigo, to create works
specifically for him. On three occasions, he proved that the unadorned
harmonica could provide an eloquent score for an entire motion
picture.
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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.
"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.
Lawrence Cecil Adler was born on Feb. 10, 1914, in Baltimore, the
eldest of two sons born to 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.
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).
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.
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."
john.fryer
Gershwins, and his anecdotes have done much to inform us about them.
He was also something of an expert on film.
Andrys Basten
Premise Checker <che...@clark.net> wrote:
>There's an Adler disc on my want list:
>"A Classical Recital on the Harmonica," Concert Hall Society.CHS 1161. The
>disc features mostly Walter Goehr, Winterthur SO, but contains an
>arrangement of the Mozart Oboe Quartet, with members of the Winterthur SQ,
>whose leader was Peter Rybar, whose recordings I do collect. It is these
>byways of collecting that I come to know artists and music that I
>otherwise would not have.
>
>Doubtless there were acoustic recordings of the harmonica, but I traced no
>sets of classical music.
For classical, you can find "The Genius of Larry Adler" at
Amazon-UK. His 'Virtuoso' one is mainly faster music. The
'Genius' LP has slow movements also. I have a European page at
http://andrys.com/music-eur.html and you can find it by using the
first searchbox, putting in just ' larry adler '...
A friend sent an mp3 of his (Carmen Fantasy - Bizet) last week.
I'd never heard the fellow before, but there is some very sweet
playing you'd think not possible on a harmonica. To hear the whole
mp3 you can download it from http://andrys.com/adler-bizet.mp3 this
week but I'll take it off after in a week or so.
- Andrys
--
http://andrys.com/find-classical.html - Classical Music searchboxes
http://andrys.com/music-eur.html - JPC/Amazon.de/Zweitaus...in English
http://mp3.com/andrys - My free amateur offerings (we get paid though)
http://andrys.com/freddyk.html - Freddy Kempf on CD
http://andrys.com/argerich.html - Available Argerich recordings
Ed Dente
:>Doubtless there were acoustic recordings of the harmonica, but I traced no
:>sets of classical music.
: For classical, you can find "The Genius of Larry Adler" at
: Amazon-UK. His 'Virtuoso' one is mainly faster music. The
: 'Genius' LP has slow movements also. I have a European page at
: http://andrys.com/music-eur.html and you can find it by using the
: first searchbox, putting in just ' larry adler '...
: A friend sent an mp3 of his (Carmen Fantasy - Bizet) last week.
: I'd never heard the fellow before, but there is some very sweet
: playing you'd think not possible on a harmonica. To hear the whole
: mp3 you can download it from http://andrys.com/adler-bizet.mp3 this
: week but I'll take it off after in a week or so.
: - Andrys
In the mid-'70s I attended an unusual concert at Brandeis Univ.
in honor of Louis Armstrong. Opening act, Eubie Blake, second was Larry
Adler, and third act was Sarah Vaughan (all for 10 bucks!)
Vaughan -- in her most annoyingly rococo period -- was utterly
overshadowed by Adler, who stole the show. Solo harmonica, - no
backing instruments - was both exciting and deeply moving.
Unless someone can correct me, I believe that he did not know
how to read music.
Ed Dente
Peter T. Daniels
> In the mid-'70s I attended an unusual concert at Brandeis Univ.
> in honor of Louis Armstrong. Opening act, Eubie Blake, second was Larry
> Adler, and third act was Sarah Vaughan (all for 10 bucks!)
> Vaughan -- in her most annoyingly rococo period -- was utterly
> overshadowed by Adler, who stole the show. Solo harmonica, - no
> backing instruments - was both exciting and deeply moving.
> Unless someone can correct me, I believe that he did not know
> how to read music.
In the utterly charming interview with Terry Gross that was excerpted
(unfortunately) last week, he said he didn't read music until one of his
composers -- it may have been Vaughan Williams -- pointed out that he
wouldn't be able to play what was written for him unless he did, so he
did. (Had a great story about RVW, too.)
--
Peter T. Daniels gram...@worldnet.att.net