Larry Adler/Gershwin - MUSICIAN mag - FYI

[haandruss@xxxxxxx (Harvey A. Andruss, III)]

Ken Ficara wrote on 8/18/94:

>I wanted to follow up on Winslow's post about the Larry Adler special
>-- he's got an entire album coming out of pop musicians' covers of
>Gershwin tunes, with Adler playing harp and George Martin (yes, THAT
>George Martin) conducting and arranging. The first single is Kate Bush
>doing "The Man I Love" backed with Larry's version of "Rhapsody In
>Blue." It's a great single, I mean, combine Kate Bush with great jazz
>harp, and you'll have me crawling to the record store over broken
>glass. :)

Just got this.  Page 18-19, October 1994 _MUSICIAN_ magazine:  Larry Adler
seated in what appears to be a gymnasium (hardwood floor), sheets of music
are scattered everywhere, dressed in all black (double breasted suit or
sweater?), white shirt, no tie, holding what I think is a Super Chromatic
270 (can't see the slide because of his right index finger, maybe it's a
big Marine Band??), with both hands, between his thumbs and index fingers,
others extended out in a fan. 

Text:

Private Lesson -- Larry Adler:

If you thought Tony Bennett on MTV was something, wait'll you hear the
George Marin-produced "The Glory of Gershwin", a collection of Gershwin
favorites which features octogenarian Larry Adler in collaboration with a
gallery of rock vocalists including Sting, Kate Bush, Elvis Costello and
Oleta Adams.  Adler, who writes in his new autobiography _Me and My Big
Mouth_ that the chromatic keyboard is "easy to master", says that many
harmonica players he hears are "trying to show how clever they can be;
the're not really playing, just showing off.  The most difficult thing is
to sound musical."   As far as technique goes, Adler says that "there's a
certain kind of sound I get where I cover four holes with my mouth and
block the three to the left with my tongue, and there's another very vocal
sound I get by covering just one hole with my mouth and suing my tongue for
the vibrato."

As most harmonica players know, though, this is an instrument where
instinct often is the best guide.  "Honestly," he says, " I can articulate
things about my playing *now*, but, in figuring out how to play what I
could hear in my head, almost all things I do mostly came about by
accident."

Regards,                  haandruss@xxxxxxx                  
Harv                      *Opinions my own*