"Mack the Knife" or "The Ballad of Mack the Knife",
originally "Die Moritat von Mackie Messer", is a song composed
by Kurt Weill with lyrics by Bertolt Brecht for their music
drama
Die Dreigroschenoper, or, as it is known in English,
The Threepenny Opera. It premiered in Berlin in 1928.
The song has become a popular standard.
A
moritat(from
morimeaning "deadly" and
tatmeaning "deed") is a medieval version of the murder
ballad performed by strolling minstrels. In
The Threepenny Opera, the moritat singer with his street
organ introduces and closes the drama with the tale of the
deadly
Mackie Messer, or
Mack the Knife, a character based on the dashing
highwayman
Macheathin John Gay's
The Beggar's Opera. The Brecht-Weill version of the
character was far more cruel and sinister, and has been
transformed into a modern anti-hero.
The play opens with the moritat singer comparing Macheath
(unfavorably) with a shark, and then telling tales of his
robberies, murders, rapes, and arson.
The song was inserted in the play shortly before its
premiere in 1928, because Harald Paulsen, who created the role
of
Macheath, wished a more effectful introduction of his
character. The original German text is:
At the 1928 premiere, the Moritat was sung by Kurt Gerron,
who was a noted film and stage actor in Germany, and who also
played the part of the Police Chief Brown. Weill also intended
for the Moritat to be accompanied by a barrel organ, which was
to be played by the singer.
In the best known English translation, from the Marc
Blitzstein 1954 version of
The Threepenny Opera, which introduced the song to
English-speaking audiences, the words are:
This is the version popularized by Louis Armstrong (1956)
and Bobby Darin (1959) (Darin's lyrics differ slightly), and
most subsequent swing versions. Weill's widow, Lotte Lenya, the
star of both the original 1928 German production and the 1954
Blitzstein Broadway version, was present in the studio during
Armstrong's recording. He spontaneously added her name to the
lyrics, which already named several of Macheath's female
victims.
The rarely-heard final verse—not included in the original
play, but added by Brecht for the 1930 movie—expresses the
theme, and compares the glittering world of the rich and
powerful with the dark world of the poor:
In 1976 the version translated by Ralph Manheim and John
Willett opened on Broadway, later made into a movie version
starring Raúl Juliá as "Mackie". Here is an excerpt:
This is the version later performed by Sting and Nick Cave.
It is also the version performed by Lyle Lovett on the
soundtrack of the film
Quiz Show(1994)—the same movie features Darin's
rendition over the opening credits.
A much darker translation by Robert David MacDonald and
Jeremy Sams into English was used for the 1994 Donmar Warehouse
theatrical production in London. The new translation attempted
to recapture the original tone of the song:
The song attributes many crimes to Macheath:
The arson, rape and disappearance of the cabbie were omitted
from the original cast recording of the Blitzstein version, but
remain intact in the libretto.
"Mack the Knife" was introduced to the United States hit
parade by Louis Armstrong in 1956, but the song is most closely
associated with Bobby Darin, who recorded his version at Fulton
Studios on West 40th Street, New York City, on December 19,
1958 (with Tom Dowd engineering the recording). In 1959 Darin's
version reached number one on the Billboard Hot 100 and number
six on the Black Singles chart, and earned him a Grammy Award
for Record of the Year. Dick Clark had advised Darin not to
record the song because of the perception that, having come
from an opera, it wouldn't appeal to the rock & roll
audience. To this day, Clark recounts the story with good
humor. Frank Sinatra, who recorded the song with Jimmy Buffett,
called Darin's the "definitive" version. Darin's version hit #3
on
Billboard's All Time Top 100.In 2003, the Darin version
was ranked #251 on
Rolling Stone's list of the 500 Greatest Songs of All
Time. On BBC Radio 4's
Desert Island Discs, pop mogul Simon Cowell named "Mack
the Knife" the best song ever written.
Brecht's original German language version was appropriated
for a series of humorous and surreal blackout skits by
television pioneer Ernie Kovacs, showing, between skits, the
vibrating soundtrack line.
Ella Fitzgerald made a famous live recording in 1960
(released on
Ella in Berlin: Mack the Knife) in which, after
forgetting the lyrics after the first verse, she improvised new
lyrics in a performance that earned her a Grammy Award. Robbie
Williams also recorded the song on his 2001 album
Swing When You're Winning. Other notable versions
include performances by Jimmie Dale Gilmore, Tony Bennett,
Marianne Faithfull, Nick Cave, Brian Setzer, Kevin Spacey,
Westlife, and Michael Bublé. Swiss band The Young Gods
radically reworked the song in industrial style, while jazz
legend Sonny Rollins recorded an instrumental version entitled
simply "Moritat" in 1956. A 1959 instrumental performance by
Bill Haley & His Comets was the final song the group
recorded for Decca Records. Tito Puente also recorded an
instrumental version. Salsa musician Rubén Blades recorded an
homage entitled "Pedro Navaja." Brazilian composer Chico
Buarque, in his adaptation of
Threepenny Opera(
Ópera do Malandro), made two versions called "A Volta do
Malandro" and "O Malandro No. 2", with lyrics in
Portuguese.
The song has been put to many other uses. American parodists
the Capitol Steps used the tune for their song "Pack the Knife"
in their 2002 album
When Bush Comes to Shove. In the mid-1980s, fast food
giant McDonald's introduced "Mac Tonight", a character whose
signature song was based on "Mack the Knife." Comedian Steve
Martin famously parodied "Mack the Knife" in his opening
monologue to the premiere of
Saturday Night Live'sthird season in 1977.
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