Larry Adler, wit, rebel, lover and the greatest harmonica player to have drawn breath, has died aged 87.
He didn't quite go as he wanted to - "on a tennis court, having won match point" - but it was the next best thing. He died on Monday night surrounded by his friends and family in St Thomas's Hospital, London, where he was being treated for pneumonia and other complications after a long battle with cancer.
If Adler had been merely a musician, his achievements would have been striking enough, having inspired composers like Vaughan Williams and Joaquin Rodrigo to write for the humble mouth organ, then the instrument of the ghettos and the downtrodden. Ravel even decreed from his deathbed that Adler should not pay any royalties for playing Bolero.
But his music was only one part of a complex character who commanded devotion too for his gifts as a storyteller as well as his stand against the McCarthy anti-communist witch-hunts in the US. In 1949, after refusing to appear before the Senate UnAmerican Activities Committee, he moved to England, where he wrote the music for films such as Genevieve (1953), The Hook (1963), King and Country (1964) and A High Wind in Jamaica (1965).
As tributes poured in from around the world last night from politicians, artists and musicians as diverse as Elton John, Elvis Costello and members of the London Symphony Orchestra, his former manager, Jonathan Shalit, described him as "without doubt one of the greatest musicians of the 20th century". Pop star Sting, who worked with Adler on a number of projects, said he was "one of the youngest old people I have ever met".
Elton John and Beatles producer Sir George Martin sent messages to him in hospital during his last days. Sir Elton yesterday paid tribute "to a great man and a great musician".
Veteran jazz trumpeter Humphrey Lyttleton said Adler was "just a great man, and a lovely man too". As a child, "he was my first idol - I didn't play the trumpet till I was 15, before that I played the harmonica. I had pictures of him in my room and everything. To raise the mouth organ to the status of an accepted instrument was a miraculous feat".
Much of his amazing chutzpah Larry Adler inherited from his grandfather, a Russian Jew who changed the family name from Zelakovitch because he was tired of always being last in the queue.
Born in the hard-as-nails port city of Baltimore, Maryland, Adler's rebel streak surfaced early when he was thrown out of the Peabody Conservatory of Music for playing Yes, We Have No Bananas, instead of the scheduled Grieg's Waltz in A Minor at a recital.
His rise, once he moved to New York, was meteoric, becoming one of George Gershwin's favourite performers and making up tennis foursomes with Charlie Chaplin, Greta Garbo and Salvador Dali in between entertaining the likes of Al Capone.
But even child prodigies have to struggle. His attempt to join Borrah Minevitch and His Harmonica Rascals was rebuffed with the legend: "Kid, you stink."
His adoption of the lowly mouth organ, and the almost revolutionary zeal with which he later brandished it before the world's greatest orchestras, made perfect sense for this champion of the underdog.
As a Jew growing up in the Depression, his political awakening came early but he also soon realised that prejudice was double-edged. "My family told me not to talk to the little Nigger kids. So I made friends with every coloured kid I could find."
In 1994, to celebrate his 80th birthday he brought out an album, The Glory of Gershwin, which featured among others Sting, Elton John, Cher, Meatloaf and Sinead O'Connor