Along with fellow American John Sebastian (father of the same named folk-rock performer), Adler was responsible for the harmonica, or mouth organ, becoming accepted in serious musical circles. Such distinguished composers as Darius Milhaud, Ralph Vaughan Williams, and Cyril Scott, wrote works especially for him, and Maurice Ravel was so impressed with his arrangement of Ravel's "Bolero" for harmonica that he asked to keep it as a souvenir.
Although both of his trials for having alleged Communist ties ended in hung juries, Adler's U.S. engagements dried up virtually overnight. Soon thereafter, he went into self-imposed exile in England, and never returned to America permanently again.
Despite his self-imposed exile, he remained an American citizen, and turned down a knighthood for that reason.
Harmonica player.
He said on his tour in Australia, that George Gershwin felt that Rhapsody in Blue had been written for him after hearing how well the song sounded when Larry played it on his harmonica. He always wished he could perform it in public with Gershwin and then realized he could despite Gershwin's death because he had an old recording made of Gershwin playing the piece which he then got transferred to a keyboard. This performance of him with Gershwin's recorded version can be heard on the Live in Australia CD.
His last recording was a duet of "Young at Heart" with Cerys Matthews from the Welsh pop band Catatonia.
It took 31 years after the Oscar nomination of the Genevieve score before the committee finally sent him his certificate of nomination.
Surname should be Zelakovitch, however his grandfather changed it to Adler as he was sick of being the last to be called in US Immigration queues.
Three months after performing 'Sophisticated Lady' with Duke Ellington, the two of them performed the piece at a nightclub. After the performance they were introduced to Billie Holiday, whose greeting was claimed by Adler to have been 'Man, you don't play that bloody thing, you sing it'.
Was nominated for an Oscar for his work on the soundtrack of Genevieve (1953), though he was originally kept off the credits because of a McCarthy blacklisting.
When he was asked to do the score for Genevieve his agent asked for 750 pounds but was told the studio couldn't afford that much and instead offered him 2.5% of the profits. The agent tried to convince him to decline saying this film was intended to be a 'quota' film which would probably never make back its cost in takings. He decided to take the chance having liked what he had seen of the work thus far and as a result, within four weeks it made back the costs and he found himself able to pay to send his children through college with the money he made from the movie.