1959 Bobby Darin: Mack The Knife

A Berlin cabaret song detailing the antics of a vicious rapist, arsonist and murderer seems unlikely fodder for a fingersnapping makeover and number one single, but that's precisely what Bobby Darin provided with 'Mack The Knife'; the man is nothing if not versatile. Sourced from Berthold Brecht and Kurt Weill's 1928 work Die Dreigroschenoper, 'Die Moritat von Mackie Messer' (to give it it's full title) lays bare the nefarious deeds of Macheath , London's greatest and most notorious criminal, which sets the scene for the opera to come.

Darin's version arrives via the stepping stone of Louis Armstrong's 1956 jazz swing version, and though the lyric is watered down (via Marc Blitzstein's 1954 translation) from the 18 rating of Brecht's original to a 12 (with Armstrong adding a sly reference to Weill's wife and famed performer of the song Lotte Lenya which Darin retains), it's still hardly pop friendly with MacHeath's crimes laid out no less baldly for all to see.

'Mack The Knife' was originally scored for rubbed raw voice with a gritty edge of disdain, not celebration (track down Brecht's own guide vocal version as a good as example as any of this). Darin, on the other hand, lights it up with the sparkle of Vegas with a vocal that relishes his walk on the wild side, providing dispatches from the lowlife like a tourist passing through a slum in a Bentley. Bad taste? It could have been, but Darin's reportage is no less wide eyed and disaproving for all the glamour and his 'Mack The Knife' builds in intensity with each verse, breaking up his telling of the tale with gasps of 'Ah', 'Oooh, and even an 'Eeek' mingling with the stabs of brass that carry you along in the rush till the final warning of "Look out … old Macky is back!!" Wonderfully subversive, 'Mack The Knife' helps close the generation gap from the other side, being as it is a song for the hipper grown-ups that would equally alienate the square ones. Something of a classic.