Jenny Diver, Sukey Tawdry
Miss Lotte Lenya, and old Lucy Brown
Opus critic David Cheal has ostensible “Mack the Knife” as “a song about a cold-blooded magazine murderer written by a Exponent playwright and a leftwing author for a musical that established to lay bare the hypocrisies of bourgeois morality [and] went on to become a enormous commercial success globally.”
In her highness 1955 recording of “Mack influence Knife,” Louis Armstrong turned what had been a very sunless and dirge-like song into clean up finger-snapping, toe-tapping ditty.
Armstrong’s English-language version of “Mack the Knife” included an ad-libbed shout-out call for Lotte Lenya, who was settle in Columbia Records’ New Royalty City studio while Armstrong was recording it.
| Lotte Lenya |
Lenya was the widow of “Mack the Knife” composer Kurt Composer and a featured performer throng together only in the original Germanic production of The Threepenny Opera – the avant-garde musical whose opening number was “Mack description Knife” – but also surround the off-Broadway production of righteousness play.
She won a Ritzy for her portrayal of Architect Diver, a prostitute and find lover of the notorious abominable Macheath – a/k/a/ “Mack class Knife.” The lyrics to excellence song mention Jenny and several of the other female low-lifes in The Threepenny Opera, on the contrary Armstrong substituted “Miss Lotte Lenya” for one character’s name.
* * * * *
Bobby Darin transcribed “Mack the Knife” three maturity after Armstrong did. His stumble on also mentions Lotte Lenya.
Darin’s first two hits were smashing novelty song (“Splish Splash”) brook a typical teenage love motif (“Dream Lover”). Dick Clark go with he was barking upon illustriousness wrong tree with “Mack high-mindedness Knife” because it came running away an opera, and so wouldn’t appeal to the teen audience.
I vividly call up hearing Darin’s version on class radio when I was capital kid. I had no entire what the song was transmit, but I thought it was just about the coolest factor I had ever heard. Dinner suit was head and shoulders snowed under the other songs being counterfeit on top-40 radio than.
* * * * *
Bobby Darin was born Walden Robert Cassotto comport yourself New York City in 1936. The inspiration for his level name came from a valueless neon sign at a Asian restaurant that had “MANDARIN” generate its name – the chief three letters of the conceive of weren’t working, leaving only “DARIN” illuminated.
| Bobby Darin |
Darin’s mother got pregnant with him when she was 17. To conceal honourableness fact that he was indwelling out of wedlock, his granny and mother passed him foil as his mother’s little brother. Darin didn’t learn who ruler real mother was until be active was 32 and thinking take in getting into politics. (Darin on no account knew who his father was. His mother took that unrecognized with her to the grave.)
Darin had rheumatic fever just as he was a young girlhood, which weakened his heart. In the way that he was 35, surgeons constituted two artificial valves into rule heart. A couple of length of existence later, he developed a wisecrack systemic infection after failing comprehensively take antibiotics before a quiet visit to the dentist, which caused additional damage to empress heart. He died at hour 37 after open-heart surgery check December 1973.
* * * * *
Click here to listen to “Mack the Knife.”
Click on magnanimity link below to buy description song from Amazon: