Download    Until about a week ago, I had no idea Frank Sinatra and Jimmy Buffett recorded this classic jazz piece together.  We used a couple of different arrangements of “Mack the Knife” depending on where we played, but when I heard this one I just had to give it a try.  I used a guitar for Sinatra’s part and a clarinet for Jimmy’s – must be some symmetry there somewhere.

A music drama called Die Dreigroschenoper (known in English as The Threepenny Opera) premiered in Berlin in 1928.  It was a tale of a deadly but dashing chap named Mackie Messer (Mack the Knife).  This song opens the play, comparing our hero to a shark and then telling sinister tales of his murders, rapes, and robberies.  Nice fellow, this Macheath.

“Mack” was first introduced to the U.S. by Louis Armstrong in 1956, but it’s the 1958 Bobby Darin version that is most noted today.  Ella Fitzgerald in a live performance forgot the words (there’s a lot of them) and made up her own as she went.  That recording earned her a Grammy Award.  Of course, Sinatra recorded it on his own  but always insisted that Darin’s record was the “definitive” version. Tony Bennett gave it a shot, as did Kevin Spacey, Marianne Faithfull, and Michael Buble.  Even the restaurant chain McDonalds introduced a character in the mid-eighties called “Mac Tonight”, whose signature song was a parody of “Mack the Knife”.  And now we can throw Jimmy Buffett into the mix.  The circle is now complete.

Listen to Sinatra and Buffett:

http://en.musicplayon.com/Frank-Sinatra-Mack-The-Knife-feat-Jimmy-Buffett-Music-Video-175324.html