It's hard to say which is Larry Adler's greater talent -- playing harmonica or telling stories.

Granted, his reputation on the mouth organ is formidable. It would be tempting to call him the Casals of his instrument, except that Adler's interests extend well beyond the classical repertoire. True, he has had pieces written for him by Ralph Vaughan Williams, Hector Villa-Lobos, Darius Milhaud and Malcolm Arnold. But the Baltimore-born musician has also recorded with everyone from Duke Ellington and Django Rheinhardt to Sonny Terry and Sting.

In fact, his new album, "The Glory of Gershwin" (Mercury 314 522 727), places him alongside a who's who of contemporary pop. In addition to Sting, Adler's duet partners include Elton John, Peter Gabriel, Sinead O'Connor, Lisa Stansfield, Meat Loaf and Cher -- pretty good company for a man who turned 80 earlier this year.

Even so, what Adler can do with a melody is nothing compared to the way he can spin a story. It helps that's he's quick-witted, well-spoken and often wickedly funny, but he also seems to have known everyone and been everywhere. As such, he can drop names with breathtaking ease.

"I once won a contest with Walter Cronkite," he says, as he sits in a conference room at his label's New York offices. "I said, 'I'll bet I can drop more names in one story than you can.' And all he could do was one with John and Jackie Kennedy, and Bobby."

Surreal story

So what was Adler's topper? It had to do with his old tennis buddy, Charlie Chaplin.

"I used to play tennis with him a lot, because he lived near me in Beverly Hills," says Adler. "He had a court with a cork surface, so your feet never got tired.

"My great name-dropping story is, he once called me and said, 'Come up right away. Bert Tilden has dropped out, and we need somebody to make up a fourth.' Tilden was only the world's greatest tennis player. So I came up there, and we're hitting against two people: Greta Garbo and Salvador Dali."

If it seems hard to imagine a more surreal sight than Salvador Dali playing tennis, don't worry. Adler says the painter was hopeless on the court. "Couldn't hit a ball," he says. "Garbo wasn't bad, and Chaplin was easily the best of the four of us."

As for his own abilities, Adler adds that he tried to get into "The Guinness Book of World Records" as the world's only tennis player who couldn't beat anybody. "They rejected that. But now, I'm in the 'Guinness Book.' I came in this year as the oldest musician ever to make the pop charts. So I'm in the next edition of the 'Guinness Book.' "

"The Glory of Gershwin" is, in fact, a smash in Britain, where it sits in the Top-40 albums chart alongside the likes of Eric Clapton, Oasis and the Pet Shop Boys. To say that Adler is pleased would be an understatement; truth is, he almost didn't make this album.

When he began planning the album, more than a year ago, the idea was to celebrate his 80th birthday (which took place in February). "I wanted to make a record," he says. "But my idea was to make a classical record. I had already approached Itzhak Perlman, Placido Domingo and Isaac Stern, and they all seemed agreeable. Because I'd worked with all of them, I knew them. In fact, if you want to go into it, Placido told me I was responsible for his first paid engagement."

Oh?

When Domingo was 17, relates Adler, he was knocking around in Mexico City, unsure of what he wanted to do in life. Word came along that there was a part for him in a film, playing mouth organ.

Domingo told him he didn't know how to play the mouth organ, but he had a record of Adler's on which Adler played "Caravan." He told Adler: "So I bought a mouth organ, took it home, put your record on, and in four days of playing along with your record, I found I could do a pretty good impression of you. So I went out to the studio, played 'Caravan,' got the job, and that was my first paid engagement."

"I said," adds Adler in perfect deadpan, " 'Placido, are you telling me you gave all that up to become a singer?' "

[Rimshot!]

But back to the album. "So I was planning this classical record, and then Sting calls me and says, 'I heard you're making a birthday record. Would you like me on it?' "

Sting, it turns out, became an Adler acolyte after the mouth organ man played on his album "Ten Summoner's Tales." The two got on so well that Sting asked Adler to join him for shows at the Albert Hall in London. "At the first concert, I had to make a beg-off speech," says Adler. "I said, 'At my age, it's unlikely that I'll have any more children. But if I adopt one, I'd like it to be Sting.' And he came to the mic and said, 'Thanks, dad.' "

Sting's eagerness to get involved "changed my whole conception," Adler continues. "I then decided to make it with pop stars, rather than a classical record. I got Elton John, Sting and Issy van Randwyck for the album; [producer] George Martin got everybody else."

Out of nowhere

Although it sometimes seems as if Adler has spent his entire life surrounded by stars, his beginnings were fairly humble. As a child, he was constantly entering music competitions here in Baltimore (in fact, he credits one Baltimore Sun-sponsored contest as having started his career), but he says that musical talent didn't exactly run in his family.

"In fact, I'd love to be able to trace where my musical talent comes from," he says. "My father was a plumber. He had no other interest but plumbing, and when he was 50 years old, he looked older than I do now. My whole life has been absolutely antithetical to that of my parents. Just different. And I think in a strange way, they were scared that I had musical talent. Because there was no precedent for it."

His parents couldn't have been too displeased with his success, though. Adler started working while still in his teens, playing as many as six shows daily on the Paramount Theater circuit. That, he says, is where he learned his craft, and he must have learned it well, because by the time he was in his 20s, he was hobnobbing with the likes of George Gershwin.

"I knew him very well," Adler says. "The first time I played the 'Rhapsody in Blue,' it was with Gershwin at the piano, at a farewell party." Midway through the festivities, the host told everyone that Adler and Gershwin were going to play "Rhapsody in Blue" -- an announcement that came as a surprise to the musicians.

"He didn't even know whether I knew it!" says Adler of his host. "But, you know, I've got the kind of ear that, if it's in my head, I can play it -- even though I've never played it before. And I'd heard the 'Rhapsody in Blue' so many times I was sure I could handle it.

"George sat at the piano and began to play it. We played it all the way through as if we'd rehearsed it together, and when it finished, George got up, put his hand on my shoulder, and said, 'The . . . thing sounds as if I wrote it for you.'

"Later, he authorized Robert Russell Bennett to do an orchestration, which I use on this album."

Still, there's quite a difference between the world Gershwin lived in and the one stars like Elton John and Peter Gabriel inhabit. Wasn't it odd for Adler to be sharing the studio with so many rock stars?

Not at all, he answers. "Well, you must remember I didn't know they were rock stars. I knew their names, but I didn't know what their status was in show business. I just knew they were names. I would come to the studio not knowing which performer I was going to work with, or what song I was going to be doing. So I was never in awe of anybody. But I'm not anyway."

He was, however, enormously impressed at the performances these stars gave. "They all seemed to me to have great integrity, and they approached the songs just trying to do the best version they knew how," he says. "I mean, Cher has never sounded at all the way she sounds on 'It Ain't Necessarily So.' And Elton John's people said they'd never heard him sing like that."

Adler does have one regret about the album, though, and that has to do with "The Man I Love," which on the album is sung by Kate Bush. "I love the way Kate Bush did it," he says. "At the same time, the original idea was to have Boy George do it. I would love to have had Boy George, and I think he would have done it absolutely straight. He would not have camped it up. But I think the company was afraid he would camp it up.

"I've sent him a letter of apology," he adds, "because I really wanted him on the record. And if we do another record, I want him on it doing something. I feel I owe him that."

SOUNDS OF ADLER

To hear excerpts from Larry Adler's "The Glory of Gershwin," call Sundial, at (410) 783-1800 and punch in the four-digit code 6113. For other Sundial numbers, see the SunSource directory on Page 3A.