The other day, Scott Burns, a friend of the Spill sent along scans of a rather obscure item:
Thurber’s contribution to this booklet of text with accompanying records is “Harmonica Man,” a piece about Larry Adler (Peter Harrington, A London bookseller selling a copy (for $517.98), has this terrific write-up on the set).
I came up empty-handed when looking through both go-to Thurber biographies for mention of “Harmonica Man.” But Edwin Bowden”s great Thurber bibliography (Ohio State University Press, 1968) has it listed:
I checked the New York Times archive for the piece, but found nothing (which doesn’t mean it isn’t there). Luckily, Harrison Kinney, in his Thurber Letters (Simon & Schuster, 2002) included a Thurber letter (dated October 14 1958, and written in Paris) to Donald Ogden Stewart about attending an Adler performance. It’s a short mention, but it’s something:
“The other night we went to hear Larry Adler, who was a great success, because he is truly a great musciian, and he knows it, too. Various angels must have turned over in Heaven when he suddenly put in a bar of “Tennessee Waltz” when he was playing “St. Louis Blues”.
And one very brief Thurber/Adler mention in Neil Grauer’s Remember Laughter: A Life Of James Thurber (University Of Nebraska Press, 1991), speaking of Thurber’s 1958 visit to Europe, and invitation to sit at the Punch Table, wrote this:
“The Punch lunch*, a wonderful all-night party at the home of ex-patriate harmonica virtuoso Larry Adler (whose political blacklisting back home was something a determined Thurber later helped to end)…”
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Sources, and more…
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For those of you who want to see Mr. Adler in action, here’s a clip from 1961, just a few years after Thurber saw him perform.
Thurber’s Spill A-Z Entry:
James Thurber Born, Columbus, Ohio, December 8, 1894. Died 1961, New York City. New Yorker work: 1927 -1961, with several pieces run posthumously. According to the New Yorker’s legendary editor, William Shawn, “In the early days, a small company of writers, artists, and editors — E.B. White, James Thurber, Peter Arno, and Katharine White among them — did more to make the magazine what it is than can be measured.”
Key cartoon collection: The Seal in the Bedroom and Other Predicaments (Harper & Bros., 1932). Key anthology (writings & drawings): The Thurber Carnival (Harper & Row, 1945). There have been a number of Thurber biographies. Burton Bernstein’s Thurber (Dodd, Mead, 1975) and Harrison Kinney’s James Thurber: His Life and Times (Henry Holt & Co., 1995) are essential. Website