Over the last fifty years I have heard countless versions of Mack the Knife. Undoubtedly, the most acute – and probably the quietest – can be found on One Endless Night, the 2000 album by a master of the “honky tonk” end of country music!
Click here to discover a little of the song’s wondrous-strange history.
It began as a last minute “murder ballad” insertion into The Threepenny Opera – Brecht and Weill’s 1928 German refashioning of John Gay’s The Beggar’s Opera, a 1728, also-satirical, English work.
Most English “translations” soften the song more than a bit – most egregiously in the 1980s, when the world’s most-promoted junk food brand pulled the lyric’s teeth in order to sell more burgers by night.
Only an incurable allergy to/snobbery about “country” music/musicians could blind an attentive listener to the fact that Jimmie Dale Gilmore is a brilliant interpretative singer.
Mack the Knife is one of the more sardonic songs.
Get Together is its antithesis – an idealistic anthem of peace and brotherhood, written by Chet Powers in the 1960s.
Most famously covered by The Youngbloods, this song can all too easily become merely saccharine.
However, given the right singer, it can be poignant, stirring…
(The high quality video refuses to “embed”, but works perfectly. Simply click the“right singer” link, above)
The studio version is on Jimmie Dale Gilmore and Dave Alvin’s excellent duo album Downey to Lubbock, which does have a reliable Australian distributor.
Jimmie Dale Gilmore has a website.
Incidentally, if you are a Coen Brothers fan you have probably seen Jimmie in The Big Lebowski.
Paul Kelly fans ought be aware that his Sydney from a 747 was inspired by Jimmie’s Dallas from a DC9. (as acknowledged clearly by Paul)