Mack the Knife

"Mack the Knife" is the ballad of a murderer from The Threepenny Opera (1928) by Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht. This page has the Mack the Knife chords and a backing track you can slow down, speed up and transpose.

Who wrote "Mack the Knife"

Kurt Weill wrote the music and Bertolt Brecht the German words, "Die Moritat von Mackie Messer", for Die Dreigroschenoper, first staged in Berlin in 1928. Marc Blitzstein's English version, written for the 1950s off-Broadway production, carried the song into American popular music.

Recordings that made it a standard

• Louis Armstrong (Columbia, 1955) — the first jazz hit with it.
• Sonny Rollins — "Moritat" on Saxophone Colossus (Prestige, 1956).
• Bobby Darin (Atco, 1959) — the swinging big-band version that topped the charts.
• Ella Fitzgerald — Ella in Berlin (Verve, 1960), with improvised words once she forgot the lyric.