Into Knives

Last week I got up at the sort of time you’d rather go to bed in order to stand in a wet, windy and cold field on the Cornwall side of Exeter before the sun was up. I had a sore finger, having cut it with a penknife I used to undo I screw (yes, I KNOW).

Everything was reminding me of having cut myself. I changed gear, my finger hurt; I pulled the handbreak on, my finger hurt; I turned on the radio and (I kid you not) the next song was ‘Mack the Knife’. Bobby Darin’s version, which is anyone will tell you is the one. Louis Armstrong’s and Ella Fitzgerald‘s versions are perfectly lovely, but his is head and shoulders above. Have a listen.

So, I’m driving along, singing along without thinking, as I always do. And it occurs to me that I know the words to a song that’s never on the radio and recorded over half a century ago because every early-teenage Sunday I would make my way down the stairs just in time to eat lunch and Jimmy Saville’s radio show would be on. Every week he’d play the top 10 of that week from two years in the past and sleepy as I was, the songs stuck in my head. Old songs week after week worked their way into my just-awake brain as I worked my sleepy way through a plateful of roast lamb (it was always roast lamb). At the age of 12 I knew who people like Roy Orbison, Mungo Jerry, Matt Munro, The Byrds and Babby Darin were, almost accidentally.

Now I’m driving along, singing along in the dark, and I started wondering about all the names in the song, names I’ve squawked along to a thousand times and never wondered who they were. And now, at silly o’clock, one cold morning in December, I’m wondering who they were.

So why was I driving along singing to Bobby Darin on a a cold dark morning in December? To meet Martyn Bragg of Shillingford Organics.

Why was I there? To make a film for Into Gardens, the ONLY gardening/growing app you need bother with. All the others are frankly crap. Or at least pale into insignificance. Go and have a play with it. Even the usually dull stuff about things you can’t eat is surprisingly interesting. And of course, it is a pleasure to play with.

Two things you should expect: that the writing and imagery of whatever kind is very fine; that it isn’t so much a straight magazine with a few nice pictures as a delightfully interactive experience. That word interactive is important: it implies YOU as well as IT. If you know how to use an Ipad or Iphone, you will enjoy it to the full. If you don’t, then don’t let your incompetancies stop you; let this be your excuse to have a play.

It is really very good. And I’m not just saying that because an old friend (in the uncomplementary sense) is behind it – it would be dreadful if it took off and he took to calling me from his idle weeks in hot climates.

Go and have a look, download it, buy it for gardening friends. They will like it very much.

When I got to Shillingford, it was still dark and Martyn was already out there with his suddenly very dangerous-looking knife, picking kale. When it got lighter I filmed a bit.

Why does he do it? Because he is one of the many farmers, growers and producers believes that what he’s doing makes a difference. That in growing delicious food in such as way that nurtures the soil as well as us is a good thing to do. I think he’s right.

Why the dawn picking? So that you have half a chance to buy, cook and eat his delicious veg on the same day it’s picked – while it’s at its peak nutritionally and in flavour.

So instead of carrying on unthinkingly [analogy alert: as I usually do when singing along to Bobby Darin] and buying your Christmas veg from anywhere, please let me encourage you to buy from your nearest version of Martyn – the veg will be delicious and full of vitality and he/she will get all the money, rather than having most of it creamed off by the middlemen. You’ll get the best varieties too – Cavalo Nero, Red Russian, Pentland Brig and Red Bor if you’re lucky. And once you taste the difference, you may well be hooked and buy from ‘him’ all the time. Better still, you may be moved to growing some yourself. It is ridiculously easy.

So, anyway, yes….the song, the characters.

Macheath was a steal-from-the-rich-give-to-the-poor character who appeared in The Beggar’s Opera by John Gay written 300 years ago. Berthold Brecht and Kurt Weill reworked Gay’s play in the 1920s as The Threepenny Opera. Brecht took care of the lyrical side and Weill the music. They kept the main character of Macheath but renamed him ‘Mack the Knife’ (Mackie Messer in German), transforming him into a proper villain rather than the Robin Hood rascal. The song itself, classic as it became, was only added late in the day to make the leading man (Harald Paulson) happy. The play, and its hastily added opening number, was a huge success.

A couple of decades later, in the 50s, Marc Blitzstein adapted the play and sanitised the song a little (no more rape and arson) and put the production on the stage. Louis Armstrong’s 1955 version did well, but it was Bobby Darin’s in 1958 that won the awards and propelled Darin to worldwide fame.

So who are the other people in the song? Sukey Tawdry, Lucy Brown, Jenny Diver and Louie Miller are all characters in the musical.

Lottie Lenya is different. She was offered the part of Jenny in the first performance of The Threepenny Opera, by the man who was to become her husband: Kurt Weill, the man who revamped the ancient story with Berthold Brecht. Thirty years later she played the role again in Blitzstein’s version. But it is probably as the harsh looking Rosa Klebb that you will have seen her – she’s the one wearing the rather-too-pointy shoes in From Russia With Love*. See: yet more knives.

She did, I’m afraid to say, record her own version of Mack the Knife, but I fear it may be one for completists only.

So, a rather convoluted way of saying go eat some kale bought direct from someone who grows it, go download the Into Gardens App right now, go download the next episode in a week or two when there will be more from me about kale including a recipe stolen from Lena Linedance, and don’t unscrew things with penknives.

 

* Robert Shaw in From Russia With Love is almost exactly Rutger Hauer in Bladerunner, is he not.