Word: harmonica
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...20th century [MILESTONES, Aug. 20]. In the item on his death, you stated that "by the late 1930s he was performing in Carnegie Hall." But that was only the beginning. In 1942 Darius Milhaud wrote Suite Anglaise for Adler, and in 1952 Ralph Vaughan Williams composed Romance for Harmonica and Orchestra. Ravel left provisions in his will for Adler to be allowed to play Bolero whenever he liked, without paying royalties. When George Gershwin heard a youthful Adler play Rhapsody in Blue, he said, "The goddam thing sounds as though I wrote it for you." THURSTON MOORE Madison, Tenn...
DIED. LARRY ADLER, 87, blacklisted musician who elevated the harmonica to concert-hall status; in London. When a local store owner gave the young Adler a harmonica, he taught himself to play by ear, won a harmonica-playing contest and left his home in Baltimore for New York City at 14. By the late 1930s he was performing in Carnegie Hall, still playing by ear; Ingrid Bergman, with whom he had an affair, was said to have persuaded him to pursue formal music training. In 1947, his liberal politics led to printed charges of communist sympathies; after suing unsuccessfully...
...born Lester Polsfuss (the family soon simplified the name to Polfus) in Waukesha, 18 miles west of Milwaukee. Encouraged by his mother, he learned piano, guitar and harmonica. His acquisitive intelligence led him into all sorts of precocious experiments, like poking new holes in player-piano music to make new melodies, or, at 13, disconnecting a console radio speaker and attaching a phonograph pickup. He bought his first Gibson guitar, an L-5 acoustic, which he promptly electrified. In local performances, he would wire his guitar to radios stage right and left: voil?, stereo! 'If you can be an engineer...
...Billing himself as Rhubarb Red, Paul soon had a country-music act out of Chicago; he'd play harmonica and guitar and, between numbers, peddle rube humor. By the early '30s he was making $1000 a week at the country stuff; but in the bustling Chicago music scene there was so much more to hear and play. 'In the morning I was hillbilly, and at night I was playing jazz with Roy Eldridge, Coleman Hawkins, Nat Cole and Art Tatum.' He cut his first records in 1936, backing blues singer-pianist Georgia White as she belted out Andy Razaf...
...Vagabond is a good example, opening with lonesome hobo harmonica wails and blues guitar. U.S. star Beck provides folksy vocals to a lament on contemporary rootlessness before the whole thing explodes into a galaxy of dissonant synth spirals and stuttering reverb. Radian builds slowly in layers of symphonic strings and acoustic guitar into an achingly beautiful instrumental anthem. Like all Air's tunes, it's a mini-soundtrack in itself, an accompaniment for one of the many moods a day can bring...