Larry Adler: Mouth organ virtuoso

Virtuoso musician Larry Adler has died aged 87, having elevated the humble harmonica from being a playground toy to a serious concert hall instrument.

Larry Adler was the best-known mouth organist in the world.

His music for the classic film Genevieve in 1953 made him a wealthy man - and famous in England, his adopted home.

His life was a who's who of celebrity associations. He played with everyone from Fred Astaire to Sir Elton John and counted kings and prime ministers among his friends.

Lawrence Cecil Adler was born in Baltimore, Maryland, on 10 February 1914, the son of Louis and Sadie Adler.

At the age of five, he was taken to a Rachmaninov concert and developed his own musical skills within the framework of the Adler family's orthodox Judaism.

He was the youngest cantor, singer in a synagogue, in Baltimore and made himself unpopular by chiding his schoolmates for their lack of religious piety.

Runaway

He was enrolled at the prestigious Peabody School of Music to study the piano.

Shortly afterwards he started playing the harmonica, which he always called a "mouth organ".

Still a teenager, he ran away to New York where, with his parents' eventual consent, he became a professional musician.

Adler's virtuosity was such that he could pick out a tune simply by hearing it once and he brought to the harmonica the musical richness which was once the reserve of purely classical soloists.

The Chicago Herald said Adler was able to produce "a tone reminiscent of many instruments, which tone is as varied as those that emerge from a symphony orchestra".

After seeing Adler play in New York in 1934, the English impresario C B Cochrane was so impressed that he immediately offered to sign the young man to star in his London review, Streamline.

Before long he was playing for, and being fêted by, the crowned heads of Europe as well as former monarchs like the Duke of Windsor.

Respectable

In the 30s and 40s he worked with everyone from big bands to George Gershwin and the British composer Vaughan Williams, who wrote a work especially for him.

To many he was the man who made the mouth organ respectable - though he never meant to.

He once admitted, "All I wanted to do was to get the hell out of Baltimore, which I hated. I wanted to go on the stage, which I was magnetically drawn to."

A friend of the stars, Charlie Chaplin was a personal friend and he romanced such screen goddesses as Greta Garbo and Ingrid Bergman.

The war years saw Larry Adler entertaining Allied troops. It ended with him personally liberating the Hohner harmonica factory in Germany.

The company rewarded him with a crateful of the instruments.

But Adler's life changed forever in 1949. While on a tour of Britain, he was called to testify to the McCarthyite House Un-American Activities Committee. Refusing to do so, he stayed and made his home in England.

Gershwin

Branded a communist in his homeland where he was blacklisted, Larry Adler re-built his life.

A friend of The Duke of Edinburgh, he belonged to theThursday Club, whose members, including the actors David Niven and Peter Ustinov, enjoyed long, boozy, lunches at Wheeler's restaurant in London's Soho.

Like his hero George Gershwin, Larry Adler understood both jazz and classical music. He introduced Gershwin's music to classical stars like the violinist Yitzhak Perlman.

Gershwin produced a piano-roll accompaniment for perhaps his most famous work, Rhapsody in Blue, for Larry Adler to play to.

Right into his late 80s, he would delight audiences with the haunting spectacle of the playerless piano backing his music, an echo through the ages which never failed to spellbind.

Celebrity

In recent years, Larry Adler had become known to a younger audience through The Glory of Gershwin, the platinum-selling album of critically-acclaimed duets with modern stars like Sting, Lisa Stansfield and Meatloaf.

Tom Jones, whom he knew but did not perform with, held him in great affection, as did Sir Elton John who once remarked, "Larry Adler is a genius and the greatest player of his instrument ever."

Most recently, he recorded a version of Tony Bennett's The Autumn Leaves, with the Catatonia singer, Cerys Matthews.

He had a parallel career as a celebrity, a raconteur and funnyman. He wrote endless letters to the satirical magazine Private Eye.

But Larry Adler's real achievement was to take the harmonica, until then thought of as a children's toy, onto the concert stages of the world.

(Source: BBC Tuesday, 7 August, 2001)

Phiroze Damri: Mission Mouth Organ

One man struggles to keep alive the dying art of playing the harmonica

Small enough to fit into your back pocket, big enough to bring a party to life. That was the quaint musical instrument, the mouth organ or the harmonica. Boys glued it to their lips, girls danced to its tune and revellers loved it. But for Phiroze Damri, 83, founder of the Hohner Harmonica Club in Mumbai, the mouth organ is more than just a picnic toy. For six decades now, it has been Damri's only means of livelihood. The passion remains strong even today -- as a recent concert in Mumbai proved.

It was a moment steeped in nostalgia last November when greying men and young boys gathered at St Xavier's School in Mumbai for the grand finale of the Hohner Harmonica Club's diamond jubilee celebration. Conducted by Damri, the 35-member band gave rousing renditions of old favourites, and the encores followed loud and clear. Says the beaming conductor: "It was a success primarily because of my 'big boys' (his earliest pupils and fellow musicians)." Says Rusi Mulla, Damri's compatriot and one of the oldest members of the band: "I felt like jumping on to the stage for a medley of La Paloma, Pack up Your Troubles and Shirley Temple's Polly Wolly Doodle. It was just like old times."

Speak about old times and Damri becomes excited. It all started in 1937. He was eking out a living as a part-time violinist when he was introduced to a representative of Matth Hohner, a leading German harmonica manufacturer. "I knew nothing about the instrument then," he recalls. "They just thrust a step-by-step guide -- How to Play Harmonica: The Easy Way -- in my hands and asked me to teach the children!" Undaunted, he took up the challenge for a fee of Rs 80 a month.

In 1938, Damri held his first class in his alma mater, St Xavier's. Within a year, his students had progressed enough for him to organise a concert of the Hohner Harmonica Band at Regal Theatre. But the sunny days did not last long. With the outbreak of World War II, Damri's ties with Hohner in Germany were severed. With his honorarium gone, he was forced to accept fees from his students. He began by charging his students eight annas per month; today, his fee stands at Rs 60. Says his wife and former student, Piloo: "Those days were rough, but the band also thrived by playing for a number of charities."

In the 1950s, Damri renewed his relationship with the Hohner company, which invited him to the first ever World Harmonica Festival in Germany as a guest player. He recalls in amusement: "There I was, dressed in a Parsi dagli playing Indian tunes with world-class harmonicas." But in 1955, the government banned the import of musical instruments. There were no harmonicas to pass on to the students. But that didn't deter the dedicated teacher, who continued his work with cheap instruments collected from street corners and grey markets. Occasionally, the harmonicas would be supplemented by "gift parcels" from fellow musicians abroad, or rejects from the likes of Larry Adler, renowned performer "who threw away his harmonica after each concert". Adler also sent Damri harmonicas regularly. Damri is thus the proud possessor of the rare harmonicas like the tiny Song Bird, Puck and West Pocket as well as bass instruments like the 64 Chromonica and the Acromatic.

But Damri's memories are tinged with sadness at the growing apathy to the instrument and the consequent decline in the number of pupils. Damri once taught in more than 14 schools in Mumbai, but today his students number just 25. The club members meet "once a while", but no one's keen to carry on the trade. "This is not paying enough," laments the octogenarian. It's been a long haul from the 1920s, when, as a pesky child, Damri was entranced by Parsi wedding bands. "I only knew then that I wanted to be a part of the bands." Despite the setbacks, the music plays on because Damri remains determined: "I will teach till I have breath in my lungs."

(Courtesy India Today)

Ramaiya Vasta vaiya : BabanRao Pawar

Lion BabanRao Pawar has been playing the harmonica since 45 years. Engaged in the activities of construction and interior designing is also involved in the social service.
' This is just like a Harmonica festival taking place for the first time in Vadodara, and never enjoyed playing like this before ....' Said Mr.Pawar in the Kamati Baug, Vadodara.

Ye Shaam Mastani : Rupesh

Rupesh a very talented player of Vadodara teaches Harmonica in a few schools , plays Ye shaam mastani.
Cloudy and crowdy evening in the Kamati Baug was real mastani.

Welcome Tapan

I feel greatly relieved, Tapan, now that you have accepted to shoulder the responsibility of managing the harmonica blog. I hope many more members of the club would start showing interest in posting their views, experience, videos, audios, photographs on the blog.

Little Genius : Kavit Shastri

10 year old Kavit from Bhavans Vidyalaya, Nadiad plays indian classical Raga Bhopali on Harmonica.

I am the joint author now: Tapan Bhatt

Thank you Nachiketabhai for allowing me to manage the blog jointly. This is just a beginning to make the blog a community property. I hope gradually more members will start posting on this blog.