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Tuesday, November 29, 2011

This day in music - November 29, 1959: Bobby Darin wins a Grammy Award for Record of the Year for "Mac the Knife"


Bertolt Brecht
Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht wrote "Mac the Knife" in 1928 for the German play The Threepenny Opera. "Mack" is Macheath, the title character, a criminal. Despite the bouncy melody, the song is actually about a murderer.

Bobby Darin decided to perform this song when he saw a production of the opera in Greenwich Village in 1958. He found a way to make it his own and started performing it in his nightclub act, where it become a popular number.

Beside winning a Grammy for the song, Darin was also named Best New Artist at the awards in 1959.

It really does seem like an awfully upbeat melody for such a dark topic.


(Cross-posted at Lippmann's Ghost.)

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