Don Asher

Planning to enter the family trade, Don Asher studied chemistry at Cornell University but found himself more at home in local jazz clubs. He graduated from Cornell in 1947 and briefly worked as a research chemist but never found his footing in science. “If I were you, kid,” his brother told him after the twenty-one-year-old Asher accidentally dissolved a pair of rayon pants in acetone, “I’d keep right on practicing the piano.”