October 26, 1959. Forget about gangster rap. If you want a hit song praising murder and mayhemlook at "Mack The Knife," performed by Bobby Darin. It reached Number One on the charts today. Originally "Die Moritat von Mackie Messer," the song appeared in The Three Penny Opera, in 1928, written by Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill.
While Darin's pop version left out the verses about child rape and the woman stabbed in the chest, he did warble enthusiastically about "a body oozing life," and someone being dumped into the water with a bag of cement.
Ah, for the innocence of the 1950s.
