Hearing his favorite classics mangled by a dance band, many a music lover has longed to take out after the guilty man, but most lovers of the classics do not know where to look. A 32-year-old Tin Pan Alleyite named Ted Mossman is their man.
By setting classics to 4-4 jazz time and adding banal lyrics, Mossman has made more money rewriting masterpieces than the original composers did in writing them. His most successful swipe was Chopin's Polonaise in A Flat, which he turned into Till the End of Time. It was the best-selling jazz record of 1945.* Taking Rachmaninoff's Piano...
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