It Ain't Necessarily So

Résumé du livre

This autobiography concerns an unusual musical career on an unusual instrument, the mouth organ. Adler raised this humble instrument to a featured part of the classical repertoire, inspiring compositions by Ralph Vaughan Williams and others. He played with the great orchestras and jazz bands. The book is anecdotal and loose with details. Baltimore-born harmonica player Adler, who admits to being the world's greatest, recalls his appearances with Fred Astaire, Eddie Cantor and George Gershwin, tours with Jack Benny, his dislike of Humphrey Bogart, and reverence for Al Jolson. Mainly in a series of wise-cracking anecdotes, he describes life in Hollywood, London and Paris, his affairs with Ingrid Bergman and other glamorous women, and his several marriages. Two long, forthright chapters deal with the question of whether he was a communist (he was not), his experiences during the McCarthy era when he was blacklisted and his passport confiscated.