Word: harmonica
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Like some Michelangelo who carves peach pits, or a Shakespeare whose medium is the haiku, Harmonica Virtuoso Larry Adler has found that there are grave drawbacks to being the best of a rare breed. His tongue-twisting technique and feathery phrasing have dazzled concert audiences for more than a quarter-century; but purists still dismiss his performances of classical music as gimmickry, akin to playing horn concertos on a length of garden hose. Now and then, such composers as Ralph Vaughan Williams and Darius Milhaud have written pieces for him, but the repertory for harmonica remains woefully thin; most...
...image, somebody who lets his interests run a little bit, who can converse. Someone who can put words together easily, who can relate to what's going on"-someone like Lee Marvin, for example, or Gore Vidal, George Plimpton or Greer Garson (who once played a tiny harmonica held between her teeth). Some of the liveliest moments have been provided not by celebrities but by people with unusual interests. Carson had a hilarious workout recently with William Ottley, a sky diver who gave Johnny a lesson in the art right on-camera. On the other hand, the worst guests...
...with a flamethrowing cigarette lighter, a high-explosive lavaliere, and a jolly pink giant of a bodyguard (Tom Reese) with a shiny steel plate in the top of his skull that looks like a chromium yarmulke. But Matt strikes back with a delayed-action automatic, a bugged harmonica and a rocket-launching cigarette...
Noon Wine is close in feeling to Peckinpah's prizewinning movie, Ride the High Country. A strange, withdrawn, harmonica-playing Swede (Per Oscarsson) arrives at the small Texas spread owned by an ignorant farmer named Thompson (Jason Robards Jr.). The Swede signs on as a handyman, and in the course of three years not only tunes up the farm operations to perfect pitch but slides, in his remote way, into the heart of the family...
...Contrary to what you say in "The Blues Is How It Is" [Sept. 2], I am not retired. I am playing harmonica at the Copacabana three nights a week and at Mother Blues one night...