FREAK OF FATE.

Auckland Star, Volume LXX, Issue 148, 26 June 1939, Page 10

FREAK OF FATE.

ROAD TO SUCCESS.

LARRY ADLER'S START.

VIRTUOSO OF MOUTH ORGAN.

A dark-complexioned young man who turns a humble mouth-organ into a living, colourful form of musical expression when he takes it in his extraordinarily expressive hands, passed through Auckland in the Monterey to-day. His name i* Larry Adler—and of all the New Zealand homes which possess a radio set there are few in which he is not known, Adler. who can't read music, who has to dictate his arrangements to someone else, and who found his niche hy a freak of chance, has attracted through his work the attention of eminent musicians, among whom amazement has been expressed at the things he can do with a. harmonica. American-born though he is, |ieople of the l T nited States, where he is now hound, know him comparatively littlfc, since he ban been away for five voars.

Unknowingly at that time, he took his first stop on the road to fame ami fortune in I!>2H. as a 11-year old Baltimore boy. A local nowsnapcr -oonsored a contest for amateur mouth-organ players. With only three weeks in which to master the iiwi runient. Adler bought a harmonica —and wen the contest.

"■Sheer luck." he says. "Most of the other contestants were seasoned players. and I should have had no chance against them. Rut the judges were eminent men in the Held of classical music, and when I played Beethoven while the others offered Tin Pan Alley songs I won the contest.

"My guess is that the judges observed the quality of Beethoven's composition rather than the quality of Adler's playing. The decision wasn't very popular with the audience, and in fact there were a few boos."

Bitten six months later with the stage "bug,'' Adler slipped away one week-end to New York. Two harmonica bands who granted him auditions turned him down, but then he "cornered" Rudy Vallee, famous dance band leader, in a night club dressing-room, made him listen, and got a job. Ups and downs followed until 1934, since he found it a hard task to persuade show managers that mouth-organ players did not need to dress up like cowboys or "hill-billies" and play the kind of music that goes with such costumes. Adler didn't want it that way. His aim was. as \( is now, to play his music as music and not as atmosphere, and he finally proved himself to be right.

C. B. Cochrane, the eminent producer, took him to Knglaiul in 1934, and with the exception of an occasional riving visit to Hollywood for motion picture purposes, he remained there until last year, when, he found, war scares distracted public attention from entertainment, and he took up an engagement iy Australia. Accompanied by his wife, he is now returning to America to play at the New World's Fair.