Re: Tribute to Brunettes
Quote:
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Originally Posted by Greg_S_H
Mack the Knife.
"Jenny Diver! Sukey Tawdry! Look out for Miss Lotte Lenya and old Lucy Brown!"
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"Oh that line forms, on the right - babe! - now that Maaaaackie's, back in towwwwwwn"
Trivia:
"Mack the Knife" is an English version of "The Ballad of Mackie Messer" (
Moritat vom Mackie Messer in the original German) from
The Threepenny Opera (Ger.
Die Dreigroschenoper) by playwright Bertolt Brecht and composer Kurt Weil. The musical opened in Berlin in 1928 with Lotte Lenya, Weil's wife, in the role of Jenny Diver. Jenny, Lucy Brown and Sukey Tawdry are all mentioned in the original lyric as victims of Macheath - AKA Mack the Knife. (Only Jenny and Lucy are speaking roles in the play. Sukey Tawdrey is a character name carried over from Englishman John Gay's 1728
The Begger's Opera, which Brecht and Weil freely adapted for their work. Most of the major characters are common to both, although Gay's Macheath is more a hero than anti-hero, and Lucy Brown is called Lucy Lockit in the original.)
In 1954 Lenya performed in an off-Broadway production of
The Threepenny Opera (supported by a stellar cast that inlcuded Charlotte Rae, Jerry Orbach - as Mack, Bea Arthur, Ed Asner and Jerry Stiller.) Lenya won a Tony award and popularized the show in America. Louis Armstrong did the first major cover recording of "Mack the Knife" in 1954, using a more upbeat, swing arrangement than that used in stage version. It was similar to the one used by Bobby Darrin two years later, in the best-known English recording. It was Armstrong who added "Lotte Lenya" the lyric. She was present at the session where he recorded his cover, and he just threw her name in spontaneously. Darrin and others followed Armstrong's example.
OK, enough for the history lesson. Back to good-looking dark-haired babes. Katy Perry, on the beach:
Joe
