Regarded as the world’s best harmonica player, Adler made it to the top the hard way: by pushing. At age 14, he snuck into Rudy Vallee’s dressing room to ask for a break.
“Save your money because once they hear you, that’s it,” Vallee told him. “They’ll never want to hear it again.” But Vallee hired him anyway, and he became a hit. “Man, you don’t play that thing, you sing it,” Billie Holiday once told him. His moxie continued: after playing for President Harry Truman, Truman returned the favor by playing for Adler on the piano. Adler’s reaction: “You’re a hell of a better president than you are a pianist.” He died August 6 from cancer. He was 87.