Legendary harmonica player Larry Adler, a widely acknowledged genius of his art and perhaps the last great musical link to
George Gershwin, has died at the age of 87.
The US-born musician, who had been active in his career for a remarkable 73 years, died last night (Monday) at St Thomas's Hospital in London. It is understood he had been fighting cancer and a series of recent health setbacks.
His manager, Jonathan Shalit, said he had been active until the very end, and only three weeks ago was talking of performing a concert in China. He recently appeared at a gala tribute evening for the Duke of Edinburgh's birthday, and his last recording was a duet with a member of pop band Catatonia.
Throughout his life, he was known for his collaborations with other great musicians of all styles, ranging from Gershwin and Vaughan-Williams to Sting, Elton John, Peter Gabriel and Sinead O'Connor. He was friends with George and Ira Gershwin, and often recounted the story of when he first played Rhapsody in Blue with the composer himself - without ever having played it before.
"I was at a party in New York in 1934 when the host, Jules Glaenzer - the president of Cartier Jewellers - suddenly announced that Larry and George were going to play the Rhapsody in Blue," he told an interviewer. "Glaenzer didn't even know if I knew the Rhapsody, but he announced it anyway. I had never played it before, but I had heard the piece, so I was confident that I could play it. So George sat at the piano and I started to play the Rhapsody, and it was as if two people had known each other all their lives; we played the Rhapsody all the way through and when we finished it, George got up, put his hand on my shoulder and said, "You make the god-damned thing sound like I wrote it for you!"
"From then on I was friends with the Gershwin family for the rest of George's life and for the rest of Ira's too."
After Gershwin's death, Adler often played Rhapsody in Blue accompanied by a piano roll made by the composer.
But his talents and his showbiz connections did not stop at playing music. He composed the scores for several films, including the classic 'Genevieve'. He was also a journalist and prolific letter writer - particularly known for his correspondence to the satirical magazine Private Eye, and as a food critic for Harper's & Queen.
As a tennis fanatic, he is reported to have once played in a doubles match with Charlie Chaplin, Greta Garbo and Salvador Dali.
Lawrence Cecil Adler was born on 10 February, 1914, in Baltimore, Maryland, USA. His Orthodox Judaism gave him the opportunity to train in religious music, and he became a cantor at the age of 10. He sang and learned to play the piano and mouth organ by listening to records. After being expelled from the Peabody Conservatory of Music, he won the Maryland Harmonica Championship in 1927. Shortly afterwards, he ran away to New York and joined a Paramount unit, playing in movie theatres between features.
Spotted by an English producer in New York, Adler was then engaged to play at a review show in London. Sales of mouth organs in the UK increased by several thousand per cent.
During the 1940s, Adler entertained the troops in the US, Africa and Middle East. He also entertained in the South Pacific, with artists such as Carol Landis and comedian Jack Benny. But as a confirmed liberal, he insisted on a non-segregation policy between blacks and whites at concerts, and by the 1950s, he had been included on McCarthy's "communist" blacklist - and so decided to live and work in England.
Adler's 80th birthday project - The Glory of Gershwin - for which he was joined by several stars from the rock world, just failed to reach the top of the UK album chart, but led to a rash of sell-out appearances in major international venues. In 1985 he wrote his autobiography - It Ain't Necessarily So - and in 1998, he presented the BBC Radio 2 series 'Larry Adler's Century', which he laced with fascinating anecdotes.
Just this year, the composer Sir John Tavener was commissioned to write a piece especially for Adler, and the cabaret space at Pizza on the Park was re-named 'Larry's Room' as a tribute to the great artist.
