Every now and then, probably like most people, I stumble upon some topic that I find mildly curious. Before I know it, I end up deep down some internet bunny trail. Here is the story of one of those times.
Twenty years ago or so, I bought my first iPod. At that time, iTunes was this amazing application that, for the small price of $1.99 (I think that it might have even been 99 cents in those days), you could buy almost any song made. Compared to the hassle of going down to the CD store and buying a CD when you only wanted one or two songs off of it, it was pretty amazing.
Over the ensuing years, I just kept on buying and buying more songs. I even continued buying songs long after iTunes jumped the shark and actively began to suck. Finally, one of my friends shamed me into abandoning buying songs off of iTunes and just use a music subscription service.
The end result is that I now have several thousand hand picked songs. Most of the time, I just keep it shuffling on one playlist that contains nearly all of my songs. Over the past twenty years, my music tastes have ebbed and flowed, so I now have built up a weirdly eclectic set of music. I have everything from psychobilly to punk rock to torch songs to yodeling to Russian chanson to early jazz to Christmas songs to gangsta rap to reggaeton. Keeping all of those songs in the same shuffle, it makes me smile when NWA's Straight Outta Compton is immediately followed by Pat Boone's cover of Smoke on the Water.
For some reason, Bobby Darin's version of Mac the Knife has been coming up regularly. It's actually a pretty awesome song, building to a slapping climax. Released in 1959, it was a huge hit, selling millions of copies and winning him a couple of Grammys.
I'd always pictured Bobby Darin as a silky smooth, non-threatening crooner. I figured that his songs were just vehicles for his butterscotch vocals.
For some reason, I decided to read the lyrics to Mac the Knife. Never listening too closely to the words, I imagined that Mac was some kind of mafia like crime figure who was handy with a knife that is now back in town for some reason. I had in mind some slightly comedic and colorful but also dangerous character that might have appeared in the musical Guys and Dolls.
Nope. Mac is actually a serial killer. Named MacHeath, he's in town and he's offing people left and right. The song is basically a list of people that he's going to kill. In fact, one of his victims is known to have had a wad of cash. Now he's dead and MacHeath is spending money like a drunken sailor.
It seems like a strange subject for a mainstream performer like Bobby Darin, especially considering that at that time, his main fanbase was still teenage girls.
Curious, I dug deeper.
Bobby Darin was not the first performer of the song. In fact, the song is quite old. It dates all of the way back to 1928. It first appeared in a German music drama called The Threepenny Opera. The lyrics were written by Bertolt Brecht. The original lyrics were even more hardcore than Darin's version. In addition to the stabbing, the original lyrics had Macheath (yes, the 'h' is not capitalized in this version) committing an arson that killed seven children and raping a young widow.
So, yeah, someone heard this song and said, let's get Bobby Darin to record this song. I bet all of the bobbysoxers will really love it!
I've written about this before, but since it's been several years, I'll talk about it again. I have to admit that I'm a bit obsessed with murder ballads. It just seems so strange to write songs that seemingly glorify murderers.
This isn't new. Murder ballads date back centuries. The story is that, before public executions, minstrels would go around singing the killer's crimes to the assembled audience for their entertainment and edification. Some of the more enterprising performers would even sell their music on broadsheets so that their songs could live on in posterity.
Hundreds of years later, murder ballads are still sung and enjoyed. Some of the more modern versions include Cocaine Blues (many people, including Johnny Cash), Hey Joe (many people, including Jimi Hendrix), Janie's Got A Gun (Aerosmith), Long Black Veil (many people, including Johnny Cash yet again), and Tom Dooley (again, many people, but most famously The Kingston Trio).
Back to The Threepenny Opera, it in turn was based upon an English ballad opera called The Beggar's Opera, which included a highwayman named Macheath. That Macheath was based upon a historical thief named Jack Sheppard. Sheppard was born in 1702 and was hanged at a very young age in 1724. He was not a murderer. He was a thief that got caught pretty quickly. He proved adept at escaping. He was arrested and escaped four times. After his final arrest, he was encased in 300 pounds of chains. His jailers charged gawkers four shillings to look at him in prison. His final escape attempt was thwarted and he was hung.
So, to sum up, the serial killer in Mac the Knife was based upon an earlier musical that featured a character even more violent that in turn was based upon an opera featuring a highwayman that in turn was based upon a historical young man that was a thief and escape artist. Bobby Darin's Mac the Knife was released in 1959 and the original young thief was executed in 1724.
I know that I'm running long, but I have one more thing. For those of you into the dramatic arts, the name Bertolt Brecht (the lyricist) might seem familiar.
Typically, the point of a dramatic play is to pull an audience into the play. Brechtian plays are the opposite. Brecht wanted the audience to be thinking critically about the play even as the play was being performed.
To accomplish this, a Brechtian play tries to break through the traditional illusion of an on stage performance. This can be done in several ways. An actor can break character. The so-called fourth wall can be broken by the audience being openly acknowledged by the actors. An actor might assume several characters, including costume changes.
If you've seen a dramatic performance that leaves you, the audience, feeling somehow discomfited or alienated, then you've probably seen a play with Brechtian elements.
Remember that we started with a snappy little song by a crooner. Somehow we ended up with a eighteenth century thief and a major innovator of the dramatic arts.
Thank you, Mac the Knife. It was quite the ride!
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