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 the bandmaster in

1886, and we were trouping through Louisiana. . . . On the train we passed a village called Old Town and there was a Negro's cabin burning. Mac turned to me and said: 'There'll be a hot time in Old Town tonight.' It had the ring a good title ought to have and I jotted it down on the top of an envelope upon which I was scribbling the notes of a new march I was composing for our parade in New Orleans. The march became the song and the title was Mac's."

Bandmaster Metz's rousing tune, in ragtime which was then becoming the rage, became the theme song of the Spanish-American War a dozen years later. Theodore Roosevelt, says Theodore Metz. took a baton and led Metz's band through A Hot Time. Also, with typical Roosevelt enthusiasm, the President of the U. S. exclaimed: "I'm proud to shake the hand of the man who wrote the song that stirred the nation."

Composer Metz also claims he wrote that other ragtime classic. Ta-Ra-Ra- Boom-De-Ay, a matter of dispute since the tune may have sprung from oldtime honky-tonks as did Frankie & Johnny, or may have been written by one of Metz's colleagues, the late Henry J. Savers. For writing A Hot Time, which Publisher Marks estimates has sold more than 1,000,000 copies, Composer Metz still receives royalties from its frequent cinema and radio performances.

Last month Publisher Marks gave the genial oldster who is featured on such nostalgic occasions as the advent of Repeal a song title, told him to write a waltz to it. Metz went home, scratched out a tune on his violin. Last week his waltz, There's A Secret in My Heart, was publicly sung for the first time by Dale Wimbrow on the Eskimo Pie program over the NBC Blue Network. Theodore Metz was introduced to the radio audience. His latest song turned out to be "corny," smooth, banal. Publisher Marks predicted success for it. But many a kindly listener preferred to like it because it was written by the old man who, nearly 50 years ago, thought up a lively tune after passing through Old Town, La.

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