My wife and I took a 10000-island cruise recently to treat her parents to an open water outing with dinner on a very pleasant fall day. As is the custom there was a live narrator who, because there wasn’t really enough material to fill in 3 hours, also performed some music in between the barely-informative monologues. The music ranged from old rock (Simon and Garfunkel) to older rock (Elvis). The music that got the biggest crowd reaction (actually, the only crowd reaction) was Bobby Darren’s Mack the Knife. This audience was on the elderly side and, judging by the material, this was the norm. A number of things struck me about this moment. First, that they were clapping and swaying to a song about a serial killer and a rapist and, second, that there was probably no-one else on board that new the storied history of this song whose origin went back to a time before Handel’s Messiah.
Oh, the shark, babe, has such teeth, dear
And it shows them pearly white
Just a jackknife has old MacHeath, babe
And he keeps it, ah, out of sight
You know when that shark bites with his teeth, babe
Scarlet billows start to spread
Fancy gloves, oh, wears old MacHeath, babe
So there’s never, never a trace of red.
Now on the sidewalk, huh, huh, sunny morning, un huh
Lies a body just oozin’ life, eek
And someone’s sneakin’ ’round the corner
Could that someone be Mack the Knife?
There’s a tugboat, huh, huh, down by the river, don’tcha know
Where a cement bag’s just a-droppin’ on down
Oh, that cement is ust, it’s there for the weight, dear
Five’ll get ya ten. Old Macky’s back in town
Now, did ya hear ’bout Louie Miller? He disappeared, babe
After drawin’ out all his hard-earned cash
And now MacHeath spends just like a sailor
Could it be our boy’s done somethin’ rash?
Now Jenny Diver, ho, ho, yeah, Sukey Tawdry
Ooh, Miss Lotte Lenya and old Lucy Brown
Oh, the line forms on the right, babe
Now that Macky’s back in town
I said Jenny Diver, whoa, Sukey Tawdry
Lookout to Miss Lotte Lenya and old Lucy Brown
Yes, that line forms on the right, babe
Now that Macky’s back in town
Lookout, old Macky’s back
Now, Bobby Darren’s was by no means the first or only American hit version of the song. The honour of first belongs to Louis Armstrong who, in 1955 presented it (both vocally and instrumentally) on hit radio, followed by The Dick Hyman Trio, Richard Hayman& Jan August, Les Paul & Mary Ford, and Lawrence Welk. Then Darren did it and had a huge hit in 1959 – which is the one most people remember. Check it out on you-tube and see how he builds with key changes. After that, Dave Van Ronk did it, and Frank Sinatra, Bing Crosby, Jimmy Buffet, Marianne Faithful, David Cassidy, Tony Bennett, Dr. John, Michael Bublé and Bill Haley (not to mention the Comets). Ella Fitzgerald won a Grammy with it in1960.
They all used (more or less) the same lyrics which were translated from the original German in 1954 by Marc Blitzstein, and are identifiable by the same errors – and this is where the story gets interesting. In 1954 Blitzstein translated a German theatre piece called The Threepenny Opera into English for an Off-Broadway production that ran for six months and that’s where the song comes from. The translation is identifiable in that it left out some of the good (and very dark) bits of the lyrics and muddled up the characters names with the actors in the song. Sukey Tawdry, Jenny Diver and Lucy Brown are characters in the original piece, but Lotte Lenya was the name of the actress who played Jenny Diver in the original German production AND in the 1954 American revival. More about Lotte later. We know that the Americans were at least partially aware of some of the origins of the song because (as the story goes) Dick Clark, of American Bandstand, warned Bobby Darren not to release Mack because it was from “an opera” and rock’n’rollers wouldn’t like it. He was wrong. They just didn’t have a clue it was from an “opera.”
Sidebar: a similar thing happened when the Doors released, on their first album, Show Me the Way to the Next Whiskey Bar. No-one told their fans that it was a tune from a German Opera called The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny, by the same authors as The Threepenny Opera.
So, Mack the Knife, was from a German “opera” called The Threepenny Opera, words by Bertolt Brecht and music by Kurt Weil (who was married to singer and actress Lotte Lenya). Had this been generally known it might have caused some problems for the American rockers as Brecht was a well-known communist ant-fascist – he was number 6 on Hitler’s kill-list. Brecht, Weil and Lenya had all fled Germany when Hitler came into power. But apparently no-one in American music knew or cared – money to be made here. Weil had repented his left-wing ways and was now writing America nmusicals, so that was ok, too.
The Threepenny Opera is vey hard to categorize. It has all the elements of opera but none of its tone. It is a savage attack on public corruption that would not look out of place in today’s America. Mackie and his gang thrive because they have bought all the authorities and actually run everything. They are an amusing bunch unless they are crossed – and then the bodies pile up. Their misogyny is extraordinary. It was very hard to think of the steely eyed Mack the Knife (and yes, there is a movie version) contemplating his next kill amid all those 80 plus folks snapping their fingers on the tour boat. Brecht’s opera for the poor, which opened in 1928, made him well off and famous – it subsidized the rest of his career with successful productions all over Europe. But that is not the end of the story. Not even close.
You see, Brecht was (like many artists) a borrower and he borrowed the entire concept and a lot of the plot from an earlier theatrical production that had also rocked a few boats in its time: John Gay’s Beggar’s Opera.
This takes us back to the early1700’s in London, where Italian opera (complete with castrati) ruled under the not so gentle hand of George Friederich Handel. It was also in the early days of the House of Hanover (all those German speaking King George’s) and crime and corruption were rife in England. Theatre was in artistic and financial decline– it simply could not compete with opera but after a time the sheen of opera was beginning to wear off. The popular audiences were getting a little tired of having all of their entertainment in a language that they could not understand. And along came John Gay with an idea.
John Gay was a man who would do almost anything for money, but above all he adored satire and satire was the style of the age. Gay was close friends with the great satirical poet Pope and the idea for a play set among thieves and murderers in prison was suggested to Gay by his other great satirist pal, Johnathan Swift. The Beggar’s Opera was an attack on almost everything at once: it satirized opera, happy endings, the government, the justice system and c10ontemporary political figures. It borrowed music from everywhere – street ballads to Handel arias. It opened on January 29, 1728 and was a colossal success. It ran for 62 consecutive performances in an era when 4 or 5 was considered pretty good. It has never fallen out of favour since then. In 1920 it had a run of 1,463 performances, which set a musical theatre record.
The main character, MacHeath, (our Mack the Knife) was a brutal highwayman, killer and robber who had numerous wives (simultaneously)and who is saved from the noose in the end by his newest wife. The action is actually stopped while two characters discuss, hilariously, why a happy ending is absolutely necessary. The actress who played the female lead was so successful that she ended up as the Duchess of Bolton. The producer, John Rich made a fortune as did the author leading to the saying “the play made Rich gay and Gay rich.” Handel’s operas lost their audiences and Handel went broke until he revived his fortunes with a new format and presented The Messiah. The government and the politicians were so embarrassed by their on stage presentation that when Gay wrote a sequel (Polly) it was banned for life from the stage. Just as well, it wasn’t very good. Everybody, except the castrati, made out like bandits. Most of them were. Even Lotte Lenya did well out of it.
Lotte was the one who got inserted into the 1954 lyrics, as you recall. The 1928, original German production made her famous in Germany. In 1933 she had to escape from Hitler’s Nazi regime along with Weill and Brecht. But her reputation went with her and after the war she was working in English speaking films. She won a Tony for her1954 appearance in the American Threepenny Opera. Her most bizarre appearance was as SMERSH operative Rosa Kleb in the James Bond movie From Russia With Love, with Sean Connery. All that from one hit single from 1959. Rock on Bobby Darren.
