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When pop mogul Simon Cowell dubbed “Mack the Knife” the best song ever written, he more than likely based his judgment on the ballad’s phenomenal billboard success during the later half of the twentieth century. As this song was received as a popular standard in England and America, not all of the audiences and performers were aware of its literary origins. Kurt Weill composed the original music and Bertolt Brecht wrote the words for this song, which was featured in his 1928 musical drama, Die Dreigroschenoper (The Threepenny Opera). Brecht and Weill’s artistic and political investments are well known, and no summary is needed here. It is less well known that Brecht borrowed major portions of his plot from the eighteenth-century British playwright, John Gay, whose Beggar’s Opera (1728) features a rogue hero named “Macheath.” In this audio-visual post will position Gay's complexly ironic hero alongside a range of musicians, from Lotte Lenya to Clay Aitken, Louis Armstrong to Liberace, Marianne Faithful to the Muppets.