Word: macke
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...Hamburg, Germany, anyone can dial 4166 and hear hit records of the week. Most startling selection: Louis Armstrong playing and croaking a catchy 4/4 time ditty called Mack the Knife...
...appearance of this song as an American jazz hit marks the end of a remarkable odyssey; Mack the Knife, originally the prologue of Kurt Weill's famed Threepenny Opera, was first heard in Berlin 28 years ago. It also marks a remarkable revival, on records, of Kurt Weill's other music-the legacy of a strange, half-angry, half-sentimental genius...
...echoed that city. Vaguely based on John Gay's 18th century original, the German libretto by Poet Bert Brecht (now a propaganda wheel in East Germany) had a vicious underdog snarl ("First fill our bellies, then talk morality") and magnificent, vulgar humor. Like the rest of the work, Mack the Knife* was a bitter satire of society and of schmalzy, popular music; it gave a ragtime catalogue of murder, arson and rape...
There are now no less than 17 recorded versions of Mack the Knife spinning across the U.S., and most of the horror has gone out of it. U.S. Composer-Author Marc Blitzstein has effectively translated the Berlin slang into American, but as Satchmo growls the words, the listener is amused rather than chilled by the corpse sinking into the river, weighted down by what Armstrong insists on calling "ceee-ments...
...even more ancient sight than Lucille Ball with shoulder pads is the short subject, featuring Ben Turpin in Mack Sennett's Small Town Idol. The only entertaining thing about this relic is the realization that great-grandmother once laughed at it. More to modern taste are the two Mr. Magoo cartoons. Good old Magoo staggers through a skiing trip and the sale of his furniture in grand style. He is even better than Groucho Marx, which is quite a feat...