I'd been meaning to pick up a CD of Bobby Darin's greatest hits for a long time. The other day I was in a bookstore (which I'm sure the Oxford English Dictionary defines as "a store where they sell knick-knacks and CDs") with 30 minutes to kill while my daughter was at her tap lesson. I was browsing through the CDs and found The Bobby Darin Story -- Mack the Knife. I just thought it was a collection of his hits: You know, "Mack The Knife", "Splish Splash", "Dream Lover", "Beyond The Sea". And it was produced by the music industry giant Ahmet Ertegun, so I figured, how could I lose?

Bobby recorded his first LP That's All which included "Mack The Knife". Taken from the album and issued as single, it became the biggest record of 1959, selling over 2,000,000 copies. As Bobby says on the CD, "...it changed my life forever..."

Musical theater has a way of doing that...

The coolest thing about the CD is Bobby's narration, wherein he chats a bit about his start in the biz. After the first five songs he says "You better hurry up and turn the record over before I crash into the label..." This is followed by crashing sounds and then he says "Somebody bring me some bandaids!" High-lariously cool...sometimes I really miss vinyl!

Another curiosity about the CD is that it contains three songs ("Mack the Knife", "Artifical Flowers", and "Clementine") that are either very sad or gory, set to hot swinging rythms and sung with great hep pep.

Especially odd is "Artificial Flowers" which is a very morose song about a 9-year old orphan girl (whose parents have died) who makes artificial flowers for rich society ladies until her little fingers go numb from the cold. She is eventually found dead, covered in ice, and still grasping her shears. All the while Bobby Darin is swinging his little heart out! Very peculiar, but very entertaining!

So why post this on Blogway Baby? As I'm sure you know, "Mack The Knife", Bobby Darin's biggest hit, is written by and comes from the Threepenny Opera by Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht.

And with the recent movie Beyond the Sea with Kevin Spacey, can a Broadway stage adaptaion (Splish Splash!) be far behind?

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