Larry Adler

Larry Adler
City Center NYC (January 1947) photo by William Gottlieb
Born	Lawrence Cecil Adler (1914-02-10)February 10, 1914 Baltimore, Maryland, United States
Died	August 6, 2001(2001-08-06) (aged 87) London, England
Occupation	Composer; actor; musician
Years active	1931–2001
Spouse(s)	Eileen Walser (1952–1957) (divorced) 3 children Sally Cline (1959–1963) (divorced) 1 child

Lawrence "Larry" Cecil Adler (February 10, 1914 – August 6, 2001) was an American musician, one of the world's most skilled harmonica players. Ralph Vaughan Williams, Malcolm Arnold, Darius Milhaud and Arthur Benjamin composed for him. During his later career he collaborated with Sting, Elton John, Kate Bush and Cerys Matthews.

Adler was born in Baltimore, Maryland, to Sadie Hack and Louis Adler. They were a Jewish family. He graduated from Baltimore City College high school. He taught himself harmonica, which he called a mouth-organ. (actually a generic term for instruments that include the harmonica.) He played 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, Adler got his first theatre work, and caught the attention of orchestra leader Paul Ash, who placed Adler 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, it has been written, harmonica sales increased 20-fold and 300,000 people joined fan clubs.".