Anton Karas

By some reckoning, Anton Karas was the quintessential one-hit wonder, a man associated the world over with one song, and one song only, "The Third Man Theme" (also known as "The Harry Lime Theme.") Few musicians, however, ever did more to insinuate the sound of a single, relatively obscure musical instrument on the consciousness of the world -- Karas and the "Third Man Theme" did for the zither what George Harrison and a handful of Beatles tunes did for the sitar, only in a much bigger way, selling many millions of copies. That piece of music turned Karas into a wealthy man af...