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BBC R2 50s showcases the best music and nostalgia from the 1950's.

BBC Radio 2 50s

BBC R2 50s is a four day digital only pop up service showcasing the best music and nostalgia from the 1950's. The service will compliment “My Generation”, a new BBC TV season on the history of popular music, where music fans will share their most precious, personal and rarest music memorabilia from the 1950's.

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Famous figures reveal the hidden stories and personalities behind some well-known songs

Song Stories: Mack the Knife

Song Stories Mack The Knife (pres. Andy Serkis) - programme image in iB2 - p01h09ch.jpg

16/02/2011

Mack the Knife

BBC Radio 2 - Song Stories, Mack the Knife

Andy Serkis looks at Mack the Knife's long journey from Weimar Berlin to glitzy Broadway.

Andy Serkis takes a look at Mack the Knife, which started life in Weimar Berlin, a time and a place far removed from the glittering lights of 1950s showbiz America.

Andy Serkis takes a look at Mack the Knife, the second track under the spotlight in Radio 2's Song Stories. It's catchy, it swings and it's instantly hummable. Few could mistake the opening notes of this smash hit, yet many would never dream that "Mack'" started life far removed from the glittering lights and dizzying heights of 1950s showbiz America.

Its actual beginnings were in Berlin, during the decadent Weimar Republic era. German playwright Bertolt Brecht and composer Kurt Weill hastily wrote the Mortitat - or Mack the Knife - to open their new play, The Threepenny Opera. Brecht's lyrics of murder, rape and arson introduced Macheath, a cutthroat criminal of Victorian London's underworld, and soon the play became a massive success in Europe.

In 1954, two decades later, The Threepenny Opera finally became a hit on Broadway but nobody could predict what would happen next. With the Blitzstein translation cast recordings as a template, Louis Armstrong breathed swing into the song with his big band sound. Soon Bobby Darin followed with his Grammy-winning "definitive" rendition. And the roll call includes Ella Fitzgerald, Sonny Rollins, Marianne Faithfull, Nick Cave, Westlife and Frank Sinatra. 

Andy Serkis tells the phenomenal tale of how Mack moved from east to west, bad to good and a gritty tango to sugary pop. We hear from those who where there: Kurt Weill's wife Lotte Lenya, George Avakian, who brought the song to Louis Armstrong, Ahmet Ertegun, who produced Bobby Darin's rendition and his manager Steve Blauner.

Marianne Faithfull, Ute Lemper and Richard Butler (Psychedelic Furs) discuss what made them sing it; Alan Cumming talks about "being" Mack; and theatre composer Dominic Muldowney examines the different versions throughout the years and explains why Mack the Knife will be sticking around for a long time yet.

This programme was first broadcast on Radio 2.

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