Harmonicist Adler

This week CBS presents a radio play written around an instrument on which millions of small boys make the air horrible--a mouth organ. This harmonica is tootled with utmost purity by Larry Adler, at 27 the world's greatest harmonicist. Soon The Bronx Symphony Orchestra, 70-piece group which has been rehearsing for months, will play with Larry Adler as harmonica artist. He will blow, note for note, the solo part of a classic concerto originally written for the violin, Vivaldi's A Minor. For Virtuoso Adler, such symphonic antics are nothing new. Nor do most people consider them reprehensible.

At 14, dark, wiry, bug-eyed Larry Adler, son of a Baltimore plumber, won a harmonica contest sponsored by the Baltimore Sun. He shrewdly sized up the judges as serious musicians, played a Beethoven minuet instead of the popular tunes submitted by other contestants. Mouth Organist Adler went to Manhattan, at 16 played a bit in Flo Ziegfeld's Smiles, became a protege of Eddie Cantor, whom he slightly resembled. In his early stage turns, Larry Adler wore ragamuffin garb, a conventional uniform for harmonicists. But after C. B. Cochran took him to London in 1934 nothing less than white tie & tails would do. Since then, Harmonicist Adler has rarely performed with any more modest backing than a 30-piece band.

Larry Adler buys standard $4.50 harmonicas by the hundreds, blows their brass "reeds" out of tune in no time. He broke a tooth in tootling Maurice Ravel's Bolero for a Columbia record which became a best seller in Europe and the U.S. Composer Ravel, who objected violently to the way some conductors (notably Maestro Toscanini) played his piece, took Larry Adler's drastic treatment of it meekly, asked him simply: "Why don't you play it all?"

Harmonicist Adler, by adroit sucking and blowing, along with skillful finger work, can make his mouth organ sound like a violin, oboe, French horn, trumpet. In this week's CBS show--Lip Service, on Norman Corwin's Workshop hour--he is an appallingly corny hillbilly who imitates the sounds of a train, swings part of a Mozart violin sonata, plays Bach and variations on Turkey in the Straw.

Until recently, Larry Adler had not learned to read music. Of his ways with the mouth organ, he says adroitly: "I think it the way I want to hear it, and it comes out that way."

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