Sour Notes

After 20 years of handling musicians, Charles O'Connell had had enough of his job. As RCA Victor's musical director, "I was solely responsible for virtually every Red Seal record made in America" from 1930 to 1944. He had "played ping-pong most of the night with Jascha Heifetz (a good player and a bad loser); jumped naked and shivering into Albert Spalding's icy pool at 7 a.m. . . . soothed the childish rages of Iturbi . . . softened and diverted the bovine stubbornness of Flagstad; ignored Pons's sulks and Moore's tantrums. ....

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