Music: Best Seller

Ninety-eight per cent of the tunes published by Tin Pan Alley (Manhattan's sheet-music publishing industry) are in 2/4 or 4/4 time. But when, once in a blue moon, a waltz (3/4 time) catches on, it usually leaves the best selling of its rivals trailing by laps. Most sensational Spanish-style waltz hit was a tune by Tunesmith Mabel Wayne called Ramona (1928). One of the biggest sellers in Tin Pan Alley's history, Ramona ended by piling up sales of two million copies.

Last December a plump, middle-aged Mexican song writer, Maria Grever, lay bedridden with...

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