Web Page No 2752

 

23rd  January 2021

 

1^st Picture: Larry Adler

2^nd Picture: Tommy Reilly

3^rd Picture: Morton Fraser Harmonica Gang

4^th Picture: Max Geldray

 

Harmonicas

 

 

Lawrence Cecil Adler (February 10, 1914 – August 6, 2001) was an American harmonica player. Known for playing major compositions by Ralph Vaughan Williams, Malcolm Arnold, Darius Milhaud and Arthur Benjamin. During his later career he collaborated with Sting, Elton John, Kate Bush and Cerys Matthews.

He was born in Baltimore, Maryland, to Sadie Hack and Louis Adler a Jewish family. He graduated from Baltimore City College high school, taught himself harmonica, which he called a mouth organ and was playing professionally at 14. In 1927, he won a contest sponsored by the Baltimore Sun, playing a Beethoven minuet, and a year later he ran away from home to New York. After being referred by Rudy Vallée, he got his first theatre work, and caught the attention of orchestra leader Paul Ash, who placed him in a vaudeville act as "a ragged urchin, playing for pennies".

From there, he was hired by Florenz Ziegfeld and then by Lew Leslie again as an urchin. He broke the typecasting and appeared in a dinner jacket in the 1934 Paramount film Many Happy Returns, and was hired by theatrical producer C. B. Cochran to perform in London. He became a star in the United Kingdom and the Empire where, harmonica sales increased 20-fold and 300,000 people joined fan clubs.".

He was one of the first harmonica players to perform major works written for the instrument, often written for him. Earlier he had performed transcriptions of pieces for other instruments, such as violin concertos by Bach and Vivaldi. 

During the 1940s he and the dancer Paul Draper formed an act and toured nationally and internationally, performing individually then together in each performance. One popular number was Gershwin's "I Got Rhythm". During the McCarthy era he was accused of being a communist and refused to cooperate with the House Un-American Activities Committee. After being blacklisted and an unsuccessful libel suit decided in 1950, he moved to the United Kingdom in 1951 and settled in London, where he remained the rest of his life.

The 1953 film Genevieve brought him an Oscar nomination for his work on the soundtrack, and great wealth. His name was originally removed from the credits in the United States due to blacklisting.

In 1994, for his 80th birthday, he and George Martin produced an album of George Gershwin songs,  on which they performed "Rhapsody in Blue" it reached number 2 in the UK albums chart in 1994. He opened each performance with Gershwin's "Summertime", playing piano and harmonica simultaneously.

He appeared in five movies, and was a prolific letter writer, his correspondence with Private Eye becoming popular in the United Kingdom.

He wrote an autobiography  in 1985, and was food critic for Harpers & Queen. He appeared on the Jack Benny radio program several times, entertaining disabled soldiers in the US during World War II. A further biography appeared in 1994.

He married Eileen Walser in 1952; they had two daughters and one son. They divorced in 1957. He married Sally Kline in 1959; they had one daughter, Marmoset. They divorced in 1963. At the time of his death, in addition to his children, he also had two grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.

His son Peter Adler fronted the band, Action in the late 1960s. Larry Adler was an atheist and his brother, Jerry Adler (1918–2010) was also a harmonica player.

He was an outspoken critic of Ronald Reagan because of Reagan's right-wing behaviour when in the actors' union during the McCarthy era.

He died of cancer in St Thomas' Hospital, London, aged 87, on 6th August 2001. He was cremated at Golders Green Crematorium, where his ashes remain.

 

But there was another harmonica player in that era.

 

Thomas Rundle Reilly MBE (known as Tommy Reilly)

He was a Canadian-born harmonica player born in 1919 but was predominantly based in England. He began studying violin at eight and began playing harmonica at eleven as a member of his father's band. In the 1940s, he began parallel careers as a concert soloist and recitalist, a popular radio and TV performer, and a studio musician-composer.

In 1935 the family moved to London. At the outbreak of the Second World War he was a student at the Leipzig Conservatory. He was arrested and interned for the duration of the war in prisoner of war camps. However it was there that he developed his virtuosity on the harmonica, basing his ideas of phrasing and interpretation on the playing of Jascha Heifetz.

Returning to London in 1945 he began championing the cause of the harmonica as a serious solo concert instrument. He was a popular BBC radio and TV performer, and a studio musician-composer. He performed with most of the major European orchestras and toured Europe several times. He also played the theme tune and musical breaks to the BBC Radio series The Navy Lark, from 1959-77.

More than 30 concert works were composed for him and he worked with many composers to get more original music written for the instrument, and his recordings also include original harmonica works by Ralph Vaughan Williams, Malcolm Arnold, Arthur Benjamin, and Villa-Lobos.

He was signed to Parlophone in 1951 where his recordings were produced by George Martin. He performed music for the soundtracks of many US and European films and television series, including The Navy Lark (1959) and the TV theme tune for Dixon of Dock Green. In 1967, he initiated the development of the first Hohner silver harmonica. In 1992 he was awarded the MBE for his services to music.

Tommy Reilly died aged 81 in Frensham.  His granddaughter Georgina Reilly is a Canadian film and television actor. Larry Adler admitted in The Guardian obituary of Tommy that "He never even had a close second".

 

Max van Gelder, professionally known as Max Geldray, was a jazz harmonica player. Best known for providing the musical interludes for The Goon Show, he was also credited as being the first harmonica player to embrace the jazz style.

He was born in the Netherlands in 1916 and played jazz in England, Belgium, France and his home country, before settling in Britain at the outbreak of the Second World War; he was wounded during the Invasion of Normandy. He appeared in nearly every episode of The Goon Show, providing one of the musical interludes and the closing music for each programme. After The Goon Show series finished in 1960, he settled in the US, where he worked as an entertainer in the Reno casinos alongside the likes of Sarah Vaughan and Billy Daniels. Moving to Palm Springs, he eventually became a part-time counsellor at the Betty Ford Center. He was married twice and has one son. He died in 2004 at the age of 88.

 

Morton Fraser's Harmonica Gang were a group of harmonica players whose act revolted around comedy. The band consisted of Morton Fraser, Don Paul who later joined The Viscounts, Royston Smith who was a dwarf and Tiny Ross. The group relied on the fact tat they could all play harmonicas in different keys and of different sizes.

The group could often be seen in such programmes as:-

1961  The Wheeltappers and Shunters Social Club

1959  Crackerjack!

1958  The Lenny the Lion Show

1956  Alan Melville Takes You from A-Z 

1956  The Jimmy Wheeler Show

 

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On this day 23rd January 1960 – 1965

 

On 23/01/1960 the number one single was Why - Anthony Newley and the number one album was South Pacific Soundtrack. The top rated TV show was not listed and the box office smash was North by Northwest. A pound of today's money was worth £13.68 and Burnley were on the way to becoming the Season's Division 1 champions.

On 23/01/1961 the number one single was Are you Lonesome Tonight? - Elvis Presley and the number one album was Tottenham Hotspur. The top rated TV show was The Russ Conway Show (ATV) and the box office smash was One Hundred and One Dalmations. A pound of today's money was worth £not very interesting and 13.25 were on the way to becoming the Season's Division 1 champions. The big news story of the day was Bootsie & Snudge (Granada).

On 23/01/1962 the number one single was The Young Ones - Cliff Richard & the Shadows and the number one album was Blue Hawaii - Elvis Presley. The top rated TV show was Coronation Street (Granada) and the box office smash was Lawrence of Arabia. A pound of today's money was worth £12.89 and Ipswich Town were on the way to becoming the Season's Division 1 champions.

On 23/01/1963 the number one single was Dance On - The Shadows and the number one album was Out of the Shadows - Shadows. The top rated TV show was Coronation Street (Granada) and the box office smash was The Great Escape. A pound of today's money was worth £12.64 and Everton were on the way to becoming the Season's Division 1 champions.

On 23/01/1964 the number one single was Glad All Over - Dave Clark Five and the number one album was With the Beatles - The Beatles. The top rated TV show was Labour Party Political Broadcast (all channels) and the box office smash was Dr Strangelove. A pound of today's money was worth £12.24 and Liverpool were on the way to becoming the Season's Division 1 champions.

On 23/01/1965 the number one single was Yeh Yeh - Georgie Fame and the number one album was Beatles For Sale - The Beatles. The top rated TV show was Coronation Street (Granada) and the box office smash was The Sound of Music. A pound of today's money was worth £11.69 and Manchester United were on the way to becoming the Season's Division 1 champions.

 

 

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