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Music: Old Ragtimer

Perky, wiry Theodore Metz, 87, occupies a desk in the Manhattan offices of Edward B. Marks Music Corp. He speaks with a thick German accent, looks like an oldtime German music master with his white mustache, flowing necktie and fusty frock coat. Puttering about in the music business, Theodore Metz began last week to celebrate—a little ahead of time—the 50th anniversary of the composition of his No. 1 song, A Hot Time in the Old Town Tonight.

As Composer Metz lovingly and frequently tells it, "I was with Mclntyre & Heath's Minstrels as...

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