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Ballad to Billboard: An Audio-Visual Tribute to “Mack the Knife”


Video Credit: Youtube.com

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.     

Video Credit: Youtube.com

3 Groschen Oper, Ernest Busch, “Macky Messer,” film 1931

In John Gay’s wildly successful ballad opera, Macheath eludes a thief-catcher (“Peachum”) and a jailer (“Lockit”), each of whom seeks to profit from his hanging. Peachum and Lockit turn to legal remedy when Macheath’s engagement to their daughters threatens to obtrude upon their benefits from his racket of theft and extortion. William Empson has highlighted the ironic “Double Plot” of implied likenesses between these official authorities and the criminal underworld of Macheath. This “Double Plot” enables Gay to revel in his outlaw hero while embedding a trenchant critique of a corrupt power structure (he targeted the loathed Prime Minister, Robert Walpole). An even lesser known aspect of Gay’s Beggar’s Opera is that it had a sequel, which Walpole and Lord Chamberlain suppressed after its initial rehearsal. Gay’s sequel, Polly, portrays the trials of Macheath’s jilted lover, Polly Peachum, as she ventures to the West Indies in search of her transported fiancé. In this sequel, Macheath re-appears in blackface disguise as “Marano“—the leader of a band of pirates who mirror the colonial planters and slave-traders. By disguising herself as a man, Polly manages to escape the iniquitous pirates and lawless planters. In the process of her escape, she forms a sentimental bond with a captive Indian prince named “Cawwawkee.” The shell of The Beggar’s Opera’s “Double Plot” persists in Gay’s sequel, although Polly and Cawwawkee emerge as heroes of a more vehement and earnest satire on British iniquity. Gay published the text of the sequel in 1729, it did not appear on the stage until 1777. In fact, the Duchess of Queensberry was expelled from Court for helping Gay gather his initial subscriptions for the printed text of Polly. In light of this original “Double-Plot,” in which Macheath functions as both a charming rogue and the harlequin embodiment of unchecked corporate authority, we might look more critically at a barrage of twentieth-century imitators of the ballad “Mack the Knife.”

 


Video Credit: Youtube.com

The Muppet Show, “Dr. Teeth & Same the Eagle: Mack the Knife,” Television 1978–79

Video Credit: Youtube.com

Lotte Lenya (Weill’s wife), “Macky Messer,” recording c.1928

Video Credit: Youtube.com

 

Louis Armstrong, “Mack the Knife,” live 1956

 

Video Credit: Youtube.com

Bobby Darin, “Mack the Knife,” 1967 (his original cover appeared in 1959)

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Ella Fitzgerald, “Mack the Knife,” live [year?]

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Liberace Show, “Mack the Knife,” Television 1969

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September Songs, Nick Cave, “Mack the Knife,” Television 1994

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The Psychedelic Furs, Pretty in Pink, “Mack the Knife,” Recording 1981

 

Video Credit: Youtube.com

Marianne Faithful, “Mack the Knife,” recording 1996

 

Video Credit: Youtube.com

Sting, “The Ballad of Mack the Knife,” performance 1989

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Robbie Williams, “Mack the Knife,” Television 2001

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Clay Aitken, “Mack the Knife,” Television 2006

Video Credit: Youtube.com

 

The Doors, “Mack the Knife,” Live 1968

 

 

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