Number 1 With A Bullet: Bobby Darin’s “Mack The Knife”

Bobby Darin Performs "Mack the Knife" (YouTube Video)

Taken from Kurt Weill and Berthold Brecht’s The Threepenny Opera, Bobby Darin‘s “Mack the Knife” was not his choice to be a single. But his label, Atco, insisted and it became Darin’s biggest hit ever, scoring him two Grammy awards.

Darin’s musical career started in his early 20s when he and a fellow Bronx Science High School student began writing songs together. That collaborator, a guy named Don Kirschner, went to be one of pop music’s great impressarios while Darin went on to sign with Decca Records.

When his Decca deal produced no success, his friend Kirschner encouraged Atlantic’s Ahmet Ertegun to sign Darin to their Atco subsidiary. With no immediate success, Darin recorded what he thought would be his last single on Atlantic’s brand eight-track recorder. The song, “Splish Splash,” became an immediate hit and Darin’s fate at Atlantic was sealed.

His background as a nightclub singer is what inspired him to include “Mack the Knife” on his album, That’s All. The song went to Number 1 in October 1959 and stayed there for an unprecedented 9 weeks.

For those who enjoy a bit of numerology, a little confluence of the number “59″: the song was the 59th Number 1 song of the rock era; entered the charts at Number 59 and it was one of the most popular singles of ’59.

There’s a lot more ammo where this came from. Check out more songs that were “#1 with a Bullet” here…