Word: harmonicas
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...primitive rhythm in the orchestra and percussion-punctuated declamation by the singers. The work was typical, too, in its close welding of music to text (by 18th century German Poet Friedrich Hölderlin). The oddly assorted orchestra-which included four pianos for eight players, four harps, a glass harmonica, marimbaphone, xylophones, bongos, congas, gongs and no strings except for nine double basses-served less to score Sophocles' tragedy than to underscore it. Every word of dialogue took precedence over the music...
...with all the pathos of their poverty-stricken days in Carolina and Tenessee. They began with Midnight Special and Can't Stop Me Now Because I'm Climbing On Top of the Hill, during which Terry, a man with a rhythmic soul, seemed to be singing and playing his harmonica at the same time. Sticking to the tried and true, they followed with John Henry, Take This Hammer and Poor Howard's Dead and Gone, an old Leadbelly song which Terry recorded at the memorable Carnegie Hall Christmas concert with Pete Seeger...
...point out a typographical error in your story on Larry Adler, quoting my explanation of how to play the harmonica? Your text read: "All you have to do is move the left framiscle on the portisduble from hardistack with the muscles, using a frammisanic embouchure . . ." This should have read "right framiscle on the portisduble from pardistack with the muscles." I hope that aspiring harmonica players have not been attempting an impossible technique...
Mamma pleaded: "Larry, be a doctor. Be a lawyer. Be somebody." But Larry looked up the leader of a harmonica troupe. One audition and he got the word: "You stink." A few weeks later he was signed on for a tour of the Paramount vaudeville circuit-then the boss of the show came to rehearsal. The voice rumbled across the theater: "This boy stinks." In retrospect, says Adler, "there seems to have been a certain unhappy unanimity of feeling about...
...long while show business was tough indeed. Larry was in Chicago looking for work when he read a Variety ad: Sid Grauman was casting in Hollywood. A wire went out to Grauman: THE WORLD'S GREATEST HARMONICA PLAYER IS AT THE CHICAGO THEATER. The Wire Was signed "Louie Lipstone," the name of the head man at the Chicago Theater. Next morning, mildly conscience-stricken, Adler went around to explain. He walked in on a telephone conversation. "But I didn't send you a wire!" Lipstone was shouting. Then he saw the harmonica player. He covered the mouthpiece...