Al Lerner

Al Lerner (1919 – January 19, 2014) was an American pianist, composer, arranger, and conductor from the big band era. He was a member of the Harry James band for many years, playing piano. He wrote music for several artists, including Allan Sherman and Liza Minnelli. He also wrote the music for "So Until I See You", the closing theme for The Tonight Show with Jack Paar in the early 1960s, and was the pianist for A Tribute to Eddie Duchin, which was a soundtrack for the 1956 biographical film pic The Eddy Duchin Story.

Biography Lerner was born on April 7, 1919, in Cleveland, the youngest of three children. Their father Abraham had died on November 11, 1918, before Al's birth, a victim of the 1918 flu pandemic. Lerner's mother Jennie Takiff then married a sheet metal worker named Abe Lerner, who became Al's adopted father. During the American Prohibition banning the sale of alcohol, Abe Lerner used his metalworking abilities on the side to make stills for Cleveland gangsters and bootleggers, and used his seven-year-old son Al as a courier for payments. It was a rough neighborhood with regular mob wars between rival gangsters, multiple killings on Lerner's street, and payoffs to the local police. Abe Lerner was eventually arrested and the still business was shut down, after which the family went broke. Lerner then traveled in search of work, going to Miami Beach but the job fell through, so he then went to Havana, Cuba, aboard The Cuba. When he returned to the United States, he got a call from Harry James, who invited Lerner to join his band in New York. There, Lerner discovered that James wanted to have an unheard-of two pianos in his band, with Lerner playing one, and Jack Gardner the other. With a steady job, Lerner proposed to his Cleveland girlfriend, Ruth Levkovitz, and they married on June 15, 1941, and settled in New York, though Lerner spent much of his time on the road with the band, doing 50 and 60 one-night-stands at a time.

In 1941, when Ray Bolger (later the Scarecrow in The Wizard of Oz) was a featured act with the James band at the Paramount Theatre in New York, Lerner and Bolger would do a "challenge" tap dance as part of the show. It was recorded by singer David Lucas for Arwin Records.

Lerner's first wife, Ruth Levkovitz Lerner, died in 1986. In 1991 he remarried, and as of 2014, Lerner was living in Palm Desert, California, with his wife, Jonne. He has two children by his first marriage. Al Lerner died January 19, 2014, from Prostate Cancer at Eisenhower Hospital in Rancho Mirage, CA. He was 94. At the time of his death he was the sole surviving member of the Harry James Orchestra of the early 1940s.

Notable works Pianist, Tribute to Eddie Duchin, soundtrack for the film The Eddy Duchin Story, 1957 Composer, "So Until I See You", closing theme for the Jack Paar Tonight Show in the early 1960s Conductor and Arranger of "My Son the Box", performed by humorist Allan Sherman Composer, arranger, and pianist, "Jump Sauce", performed by the Harry James band Pianist, LP "Rockin'" (1957) by Frankie Laine Pianist, "Sentimental Journey", sung by Helen Forrest 1989, co-executive producer for TV special "Glenn Miller Band Reunion" "Only If We Love" (with Frankie Laine) "Torchin" (with Frankie Laine) Music in 1942 film Give Out, Sisters