Hi,
This has probably been asked a gadzillion, and one, times already…but I’m new here, so I ask for your patience.
The song “Mack the knife”…just what is it about, who wrote it originally, and just how did such a song become so popular? Were not the music populace, at the time, not sympathetic to the victims of murder? And, in turn, sympathetic TO a serial killer?
That how it appears from my POV, can someone enlighten me, so I can understand.
Thanks for the help.
Jet Black
Bobby Darin had a hit version, but listen to Ella Fitzgerald’s version on “The Complete Ella in Berlin - Mack the Knife” and you’ll see just how swinging this tune can be.
I didn’t read the entirety of the page refered to by Ukelele Ike, so forgive me if I’m repeating something.
Bertolt Brecht wrote the play ‘The Threepenny Opera’ based on a much older (late 18th century, I think) play by John Gay, called the Beggar’s Opera. The character of MacHeath (a.k.a. Mack the Knife) is presented somewhat sympathetically, as he is sort of an adventerous rogue type, and in love with the main female character. She of course loves him back, in part because of his bad boy appeal, and of course they are kept apart by her parents who do not want their daughter to marry a murderer. At the end of the play he is hanged, and it is certainly touching when you see the play in performance.
Brecht adapted the play for him Threepenny Opera. If you know anything about Brecht, you know he liked to practice the alienation of his audience. One of the ways he did that was to introduce absurdisms, like the catchy song about murder, which, if you read the lyrics, is pretty much a love song.
Marc Blitzstien adapted the lyrics into English. He was a playright during the Depression years in America, and he wrote the play “The Cradle Will Rock”, which now has a fairly decent movie with the same name based on it. He was also into political topics and trying to present the people with a portrait of themselves, much like Brecht. He and Orson Welles defined 20th century American theatre and caused a great deal of upheaval. Both were followers of Brechts work and ideals.
Hope all that clears something up.
The OP has pretty well been nailed, but I thought I should add a warning to MTK fans. Just because you’ve heard the swinging Bobby Darin version, don’t be fooled into thinking you know what to expect when you see your first production of Threepenny Opera. The original song is a plodding, durgey downer.
(Bobby worked the same magic with the tune Artificial Flowers from the Broadway show Tenderloin. When I eventually heard the Tenderloin cast recording I could not believe that he had managed to make a rockin’ tune from that.)
When I saw the Threepenny Opera, it was a downer, but not plodding or durgey, but more dark and beguiling (still not the swinging tune that Darin did.)
But I’ve also heard from everyone else who has seen it -that the show is a bunch of people wailing in a slow dirgey manner for hours on end. The production I saw was anything but… so I’m wondering, did I see a rogue version? Or am I just strange?
I visited both links posted above, and I appreciate all the hard facts, thanks!!
However, as I had queried, how was it this song became so popular among the American public…with such lyrics. I guess I’m asking for speculation.
Reeder’s link had this tidbit of info:
So, with all it’s obscurity, even among opera fans, the background surrounding the song lived mystery…yet, despite that, it becomes a great hit. Surely, jazzing up such lyrics isn’t enough to smoke screen the public. Is it possible the reinvention of the song also created a resurgence in the Threepenny Opera? Call me a pessimist, but I don’t see those folks at Las Vegas recounting “Mack the knife” along Brecht’s dark humor, or romanticism for “poor ole Mackie”.
But perhaps I’m overlooking the mentality of the American public of the 50’s-60’s-70’s (which may have had more unity…hey, I’m reaching here, give me a break - hah!)
Nonetheless, thanks for the links, and the extensive background info…I, for one, am prepared to fend “Mack the knife” questions…even if others only think the song is merely, “cool, or hip”.
Thanks,
Jet Black
I don’t really understand the comment that not many opera fans were familiar with Mack the Knife. I mean, neither the Beggars Opera or the Threepenny Opera were that kind of opera. Brecht is just, well Brechtian, and the original play has more in common with She Stoops to Conquer or School for Scandal than Aida.
Anyways, you want speculation, here it is. The popularity has nothing to do with the lyrical content. Armstrong just made the song catchy enought that people didn’t pay attention to the lyrics. Look at the popularity of songs like Y.M.C.A., which I’m pretty sure most people don’t listen to the lyrics of.
Incidentally, Brecht had a knack for writing catchy lyrics. He also wrote Alabama (The Next Whisky Bar), which can be heard done by the Doors or Tom Waits.
I read The Beggars Opera way back in high school. It’s interesting, but not my cup of tea. It deliberately makes its hero a profoundly amoral character, MacHeath. The end is a deus ex machina that seems absurdly tacked on, as if to say, “Well, we need a happy ending, because you Groundlings won’t have it any other way”. I never liked it, because it seemed conbdescending. There’s a lot of pardody about the contemporary talents and doings of rival divas that are lost of modern audiences, who just don’t have the background to appreciate it.
When Brecht and compant churcned out The Threepenny Opera they stayed pretty faithful to a lot of this, so MacHeath stayed the hero, even though he chopped up people. The idea of a guy like that as a hero is repellant to most folks, unless you take it in the spirit of having Homer Simpson as a hero – you accept this profoundly stupid and self-centered guy as hero not because you sympathize or identify with him, but because it leads to absurd and funny situations, and you don’t mind seeing him getting his comeuppance. Except I could get along with the relatively benign Simpson, or Alan Rickman as Sheriff of Nottingham, but I just can’t get into MacHeath.
Actually, Darin’s version is an abomination. The best version I’ve heard was Lotte Lenya’s (in the original German). Lenya (best known to Americans as Rosa Kleb in “From Russia with Love” and Brecht’s widow) makes the song truly haunting and memorable, a far cry from the faux Sinatra approach of Darin.
There is a version of Mack the Knife, performed by Sting, on an interesting CD called “Tribute to Kurt Weill: Lost in the Stars”. The lyrics he sings are known as “the Mannheim/Willett translation,” and they differ somewhat from the more well known English translation by Marc Blitzstein.
A German title for the song is “Moritat vom Mackie Messer,” and I believe I’ve seen the title just called Moritat. The follwoing is gleaned from a web page about Nick Cave (he has covered the song, as has Lyle Lovett):
“A Moritat - the word is formed from Mord (“murder”) and Tat (“deed”) - is a traditional type of ballad about legendary criminals that used to be sung at German street fairs” - Ronald Sanders in his biography of Kurt Weill The Days Grow Short.
Man, those wacky Germans! Anything for a little night music, huh?
While acknowledging the tongue-in-cheek tone to your comment, there’s a point to be made here that touches on the OP. Street ballads were an important form of popular culture in the days before most of the populace was literate. Well into the nineteenth century, the majority of the poor and working-class citizens (and by far most people were one or the other) of any European city were illiterate, and even those who who could read had little opportunity to while away the hours reading newspapers and novels, etc. – that was a luxury reserved for the middle and upper classes. Street ballads were written and perfomed about nearly every “newsworthy” event; the details were often changed or made up, inconvenient ones ignored, and if any effort was made to distinguish between fact and fiction, it was pretty desultory.
The types of stories that capture the public imagination haven’t changed much over the years: sensational murders, intrigues, jealousies, are still served up to and avidly consumed by the public today, they just take the form of the National Enquirer, Jerry Springer, Cops, CourtTV, and the like at the low end of the spectrum, true crime books and crime novels in the middle, and Congressional hearings at the high end, instead of street ballads. In an era where popular music is almost entirely limited in its subject matter to romantic love, murder and mayhem might seem unusal topics for popular songs, but it wouldn’t have seemed at all out of place before the twentieth century.
My favorite version was always “Moritatensanger,” performed by Wolfgang Neuss, recorded at Afifo Studio, Tempelhof Berlin, 1958.
It could be heard at the beginning of the Ernie Kovacs Show, accompanying quick gag sketches, punctuated by an oscillating soundwave across the teevee screen.
Second favorite: the “Moritat” from Saxophone Colossus, the 1956 jazz masterpiece with Sonny Rollins on tenor saxophone, the recently-deceased Tommy Flanagan on piano, Doug Watkins on bass, and Max Roach on drums.
While the 1931 film has a wonderful murkiness about it, I must confess to a certain affection for the version starring Raul Julia as Mack.
Wow - really?! Now I have to go back and listen again - I love that CD (who wouldn’t?) but hadn’t made that connection. Thanks!
Jet Black, whoever wrote the page you quoted is rather confused on a couple of counts…
Name nonwithstanding, The Threepenny Opera isn’t really an opera. It’s a musical, and certainly was considered as a musical during the 1950s. So it’s not surprising opera fans of the day weren’t familiar with it!
While Joe Average American probably had never heard the song “Mack the Knife” before Louis recorded it, it’s not the case that the composer or the musical was unknown in the US.
Kurt Weill, the composer, was one of the most famous Broadway composers of the 1940s, scoring such hit shows as Lady in the Dark, One Touch of Venus, and Lost in the Stars.
Weill died in 1950, but an off-Broadway English version of The Threepenny Opera was staged in 1954. (It was originally staged in Germany in 1928.) This New York revival was doubtless what inspired Louis to record Mack the Knife the next year. (Needless to say, jazz and pop musicians of the 1950s covered Broadway show tunes all the time.)
Wow, this is great. I really love this discussion. I’m glad to have discovered this forum.
Thanks for all the insights, facts, and theories. I’ll never listen to “mack the knife” the same, ever again.
Jet Black
rackensack’s explanation of Moritaten explains the song rather well. Some original ones can be read here(in German). The 1931 film, referenced by jr8 has a pretty good rendition of the song as a street singer would have done it.
I think the contrast between Weill’s catchy tunes and Brecht’s lyrical content was deliberate. They knew that people would just hum or sing the songs without ever paying attention to the words, even if that wasn’t exactly the hope. Listen to songs like Pirate Jenny, or the Kanonen-Song for more violence with a tune that gets stuck in your head.
A minor mistake was made earlier here regarding Lotte Lenya – she was Kurt Weill’s wife/widow, not Brecht’s. Brecht was married twice in his life (he also had a child with another woman before being married), but not to Lenya.
Also, the Threepenny Opera is meant to be a criticism of society, not a chronicle of an anti-hero. Of course one is supposed to hate someone as amoral as Macheath. The bigger problem, though, is how he is continued to be treated by the rest of society. This play was written as Brecht was getting into Communism, so it could also be read as a direct criticism of Capitalism as well. I don’t think it’s coincidence that this song contrasts sharks with Mack, and that Brecht later wrote a story called *Wenn die Haifische Menschen waeren * (If sharks were people).
Panamajack,
Now that’s a unique correlation I never considered…
The angle of the song as criticism of the popularity of serial killers in America (capitalistic) society. True enough, at least in America, our love for the bad boy criminal has had a long history. Billy the Kidd, Bonnie and Clyde…et.
Likewise, Europe as well. Even Robyn Hode (Robin Hood - as us yanks like to spell it) engaged in rather unethical tatics to snare the money from the rich - often resulting in death of others. Though I admit, his motivations had more merit. Hah!
And in every case the killer is romanticized, often quickly after their death…even in Macheath’s case - with his hanging.
panamajack, I’ll check that link you provided…I’ll use Globalcafe to translate…being that I don’t know a lick of German. Hah!
Jet Black