Cultural English 457 -“Mack the Knife”; Monument Valley & the Valley of the Gods; Q&A

Complete Transcript

You’re listening to ESL Podcast’s English Café number 457.

This is English as a Second language Podcast’s English Café episode 457. I’m your host, Dr. Jeff McQuillan, coming to you from the Center for Educational Development in beautiful Los Angeles, California.

Today we are going to talk about a famous song called “Mack the Knife” in English. We’re also going to talk about Monument Valley and Valley of the Gods, two national parks in the American West. And, as always, we’ll answer a few of your questions. Let’s get started.

We begin this Café talking about a famous song from the early part of the twentieth century called “Mack the Knife.” “Mack the Knife” is a song that was made very popular here in the U.S. by a singer named Bobby Darin in 1959. It became his signature song even though many other singers, including the great Louis Armstrong and Ella Fitzgerald, also recorded the song. A “signature (signature) song” is the song that a singer is most famous for singing.

The song was written in 1928 – not in English originally, but in German – by the poet Bertolt Brecht and the German composer Kurt Weill. They wrote the song for an opera called The Threepenny Opera. An “opera” (opera) is a play with music and singing. A “threepenny” was a coin worth very little in the United Kingdom. In the opera, the main character, who is a gangster named Nick Macheath, marries a woman named Polly Peachum. A “gangster” (gangster) is a person who is a member of a group of criminals.

Polly is the daughter of a powerful criminal in London. Her father arranges to have Macheath arrested. Macheath avoids getting arrested, but the police later find him, thanks to the help from a woman named Suky Tawdry. Macheath is sentenced to death, but is saved, right before he is going to be killed, by the Queen of England.

The opera was based on a play by John Gay in 1728 called Beggar’s Opera. Brecht and Weill updated the characters to be similar to people one might find in Berlin in the 1920s. Brecht and Weill wrote the song called “Moritat” for the opera. A “moritat” is a special kind of song sung in the Middle Ages that is about murder or criminal acts. In Threepenny Opera, the moritat introduced the character Macheath – that is, in English, “Mack.”

The opera was translated into English when it was performed in English-speaking countries, and the lyrics, or words to the song, were also translated. These translated lyrics were what Bobby Darin and other American singers used when they sang the song “Mack the Knife.” Because the lines in the song were quite short, it was possible for singers like Darin to add noises and short words to personalize the song, to make it their own.

Darin’s version became the most popular version of the song with American audiences, or listeners. Darin, in fact, won two Grammy awards for his version of “Mack the Knife,” including best new artist or singer and best record of the year. The Grammys are the awards that are given out each year in the United States for the best and most popular music songs and singers of that year.

Before recording “Mack the Knife,” Darin was most popular with teenagers and best known for singing an upbeat, happy, and slightly ridiculous or funny song like “Splish Splash”:

“Splish Splash, I was takin’ a bath . . .”

Remember that one? No? Well, it was from the 1950s. Anyway, “Mack the Knife” talks not about taking a bath, but a murderer, and it helped Darin become popular not just with teenagers, but also with adults, and allowed him to continue his singing career with a focus on adult listeners. “Mack the Knife” introduces some of the characters in Threepenny Opera, including the main character Mack, who is, as we said, a murderer – someone who has killed someone.

Despite being a very what we would describe as “up-tempo” song, the lyrics are actually quite dark and unhappy. An “up-tempo song” is a song that is very fast and has a cheerful or happy tune, happy music. The song begins by describing how he evil or bad Mack the Knife really is. Note that there are a couple of different translations of the song. So, other versions might be different than the one I’m going to use here, but this is the one that the singer Bobby Darin used to make the song famous here in the U.S.

I’ll sing the first couple of verses or parts of the song, and then I’ll go back and explain the words. I’ll sing it a little bit like Bobby Darin sang it, adding a few extra surprises, shall we say. Here we go.

Oh, the shark, babe, has such teeth, dear
And it shows them pearly white
Just a jackknife has old Macheath, babe
And he keeps it out of sight

Let’s stop there and talk about the lyrics. The song begins by saying, “Oh, the shark babe, has such teeth, dear.” The song is comparing Mack the Knife to a shark who has beautiful, pearly-white – or very clean and well-cared-for – teeth. A “shark” (shark) is a very dangerous kind of fish. If you saw the movie Jaws, you know what a shark is. We sometimes refer to dishonest or greedy people as being “sharks.”

There are also several different uses of the word to describe a dishonest person at certain particular activities. For example, we talk about a “loan (loan) shark.” A “loan shark” is someone who will lend you money, but will charge you a lot for the loan – a lot of “interest,” we would say. Here, we’re talking just about a dangerous person: the murderer, Mack. The song says that Mack has these beautiful, and of course dangerous, teeth.

He says, “Just a jackknife has old Macheath, babe, and he keeps it out of sight.” A “jackknife” (jackknife) is a small knife with a blade – which is the sharp, thin piece of metal that is the knife – that you can hold in your hand. You can actually fold the jackknife up so that you can carry it in your pocket.

Mack the Knife carries his jackknife – “he keeps it out of sight.” To keep something “out of sight” (sight) means where no one can see it. If you put something out of sight, you’re putting it where no one can see it. Criminals sometimes carry jackknifes that they use to commit or to do their criminal activities.

The song continues, comparing Mack the Knife to a shark. Here’s the second verse:

You know when that shark bites with his teeth, babe
Scarlet billows start to spread
Fancy gloves, though, wears old Macheath, babe
So there’s never, never a trace of red

The second verse starts by saying, “You know when that shark bites with his teeth, babe.” The verb “to bite” (bite) is what we use when describing what your mouth does when it eats. You take a bite out of your food. You remove a piece of the food with your mouth. The shark also bites. That’s how the shark kills other fish and can kill, of course, human beings.

Mack the Knife is like a shark, and like a shark, when he bites, you see “scarlet billows” spreading. “Scarlet” (scarlet) is a kind of red, the color red. “Billows” (billows) are large amounts of something – in this case, large amounts of blood that come out of an animal or a person who has been, in the case of a shark, bitten – and in the case of Mack the Knife, cut with his knife. If you cut someone, blood will come out of the person’s body, and that’s what the second verse is referring to.

However, Mack the Knife wears “fancy gloves.” “Gloves” (gloves) are things you put on your hands to either keep them warm or to protect them. Mack the Knife wears gloves so that there is “never a trace of red.” A “trace” (trace) is a small amount. Mack the Knife wears gloves so that when he kills someone, he can take the gloves off and there won’t be any blood on his hands. “Blood,” of course, is red, and that’s why the song talks about a “trace of red.”

Notice that the lyrics of the song – which are, of course, like a poem – sometimes don’t follow the typical grammatical structure of a sentence in English. In the second verse, it says, “Fancy gloves, though, wears old Macheath, babe.” In normal English conversation, we would say, “Old Macheath wears fancy gloves,” but to make it a little bit more poetic, as songs are, the “fancy gloves” comes at the beginning of the sentence. The next verse of the song gives some examples about how you can know that Mack is killing people.

We meet, if you will, one of the bodies of someone that Mack has killed. It talks about a body “oozing life.” That’s an interesting verb, “to ooze.” “To ooze” (ooze) means to slowly release or pour out something that is liquid, such as water or, in this case, blood. If you kill someone with a knife, blood will come out of the person’s body. We might use this verb in that instance: “The body was oozing blood.” Blood was coming out of it. In the verse in the song, it actually says the body is “oozing life,” thinking of “life” as sort of a physical property that comes out of your body.

In the fourth verse of the song, we actually have a body that is thrown into the river, and typically when you are killing someone, you know, when you normally kill someone, you want to get rid of the body. I know I always want to get rid of the body when I kill people. So, you want to throw the body into the river or into a lake so that no one finds it. If you want to get rid of the body that way, you will want to put some sort of weight around the body so that it doesn’t come up to the top of the water.

One thing you could do is use a bag of cement. “Cement” (cement) is a material often used to build roads, and it’s made from a substance taken from a rock. Basically it’s clay (a type of dirt), sand, and water combined. And when it dries, it becomes very hard and very heavy. Well, in the fourth verse of “Mack the Knife,” we hear about a body being thrown into a river with a cement bag, and that’s one way to get rid of a body.

As the song ends, we’re reminded that Mack is not just a killer – he’s what we might describe as a “serial killer.” “Serial” (serial) means several things in a row, one after another. A serial killer doesn’t kill just one person, but many people. First one, and then another, and then another, and so forth. So, if you want to listen to a happy song about a serial killer, “Mack the Knife” is for you.

Let’s go to a slightly happier topic. We’ll talk a little bit about two very interesting parks, both of which are located in the western part of the U.S., not too far from California. The first one is called Mountain Valley Navajo Tribal Park. A tribal park is a park that belongs to an American Indian or Native American group called a “tribe.” This particular park is located in Utah and Arizona. It is on what we call a “reservation.” A reservation is an area of land that was set aside by the U.S. government for Native Americans to live on.

Back in the nineteenth century in particular, the U.S. government created areas to move the Native Americans to so they, of course, could take over the land the Native Americans were living on. Well, this is an example of that kind of arrangement called a “reservation.” Monument Valley itself is a park on the reservation. It is made up of about 30,000 acres of land.

What’s interesting about this park is that it contains some very unusual rock formations – areas of rocks that have unique and different shapes. The geologists – people who study rocks – say that these rocks are between 160 and 250 million years old, and they’re quite interesting, and some of them are quite beautiful.

I haven’t been to the park, but I have seen photographs of it, and it’s really quite amazing. Many of these rock formations contain what are called “petroglyphs.” “Petroglyphs” (petroglyphs) are basically pictures that were drawn in what we would describe as “prehistoric times.” “Prehistoric” (prehistoric) refers to before the point in history where there was a writing system – before the invention, if you will, of writing.

You can see these petroglyphs and rock formations by driving through the park. However, you have to stay on the road unless you’re traveling with one of the Native American tribes. Monument Valley is on the tribal land of the Navajo Nation, which is one of the groups of American Indians in the western part of the U.S.

Another park somewhat similar to Monument Valley, I want to mention briefly, is called Valley of the Gods. A “valley” is a flat area between two mountains. Valley of the Gods is located not on American Indian or Native American land, but on land owned by the United States government. There is a road that you can drive on that takes you through the Valley of the Gods. It has also some very interesting rock formations that you can see there.

So, if you can’t make it to Monument Valley, you can try Valley of the Gods. For those of you who are fans of a British show called Doctor Who, you might recognize Valley of the Gods. It has been used in a couple of the Doctor Who TV shows. As I mentioned, I haven’t been to either park myself, though I have seen photographs. When they put up a nice big hotel with comfortable rooms, a swimming pool, and a bar, I definitely plan on visiting both of them.

Now let’s answer a few of your questions.

Our first question comes from Kamran (Kamran) in Iran. The question has to do with parts of a plant, something that typically grows out of the ground. The three words are “stem,” “stalk,” and “shoot.”

Let’s start with “stem” (stem). The stem of the plant is the main part of the plant that grows out of the ground and that leaves grow from. “Leaves” on a plant are usually flat, thin parts of the plant that are connected to a thicker part of the plant called the “stem.” So, the stem comes out of the ground, and from the stem, just like on a tree, you have leaves that come out of the stem.

“Stalk” (stalk) is a thin section that supports the leaf or sometimes a flower or even a piece of fruit that is attached to the stem. Now, just to confuse you, for some plants the word “stalk” is the same as “stem,” especially when you’re talking about what we call “herbs.” An “herb” (herb) – notice that the “H” is silent (we don’t pronounce it) – is a type of plant that is often used in cooking. Examples of herbs include “parsley,” “sage,” “rosemary,” and “thyme.” That, by the way, was also the title of a Simon and Garfunkel album from the 1960s, as well as a line in one of the famous songs off of that album, called “Scarborough Fair.”

“Parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme . . .”

Remember that? No? Okay. Anyway, the third word that were being asked about here is “shoot” (shoot). “Shoot,” as you probably know, is a verb – in fact, all three of these words can be verbs – but here we’re talking about the noun “shoot.” When used as a noun, a shoot is a young branch that grows out of the main part of a tree or other plant. It’s a more general term to refer to any new plant growth, anything new that is growing out of the plant, including flowers and leaves and other parts that come from the main part of the plant.

So, when we’re talking about the main part of the plant, usually we say “stem.” In the case of herbs, we say “stalk.” “Shoot,” however, is a young, if you will, or new growth from one part of the plant. I’m not very good at plants, to be honest with you. I don’t garden. I don’t grow plants. I kill plants, but I don’t grow them.

Our second question comes from Gary (Gary) in China. Gary is confused about English names. Well, many people are confused about English names, Gary, so don’t feel bad. He gives the example of a famous English author, Beatrix Potter. Her full name is Helen Beatrix Potter. He wants to know if we should be calling her Helen Potter, or Beatrix Potter, or maybe her real name is Harry Potter. No. I don’t think so.

Well, the question has to do more generally with middle names and when they are used as first names. Many Americans – maybe most Americans, I’m not sure – have a middle name, and that middle name goes on their official legal documents. My middle name is Lawrence. My full name is Jeffrey Lawrence McQuillan.

Now, some people don’t like their first name, and they may decide to use their middle name as their first name. Now, legally their name doesn’t change, typically, but in terms of how they like to be known at school or at their work can really depend on the name that the person decides to use. Here in the land of Hollywood, a lot of actors and actresses change their names, and sometimes they decide to use their middle name as their first name.

You may have heard of someone called Brad Pitt. Well Brad Pitt’s real name is William Bradley Pitt. Brad is a short form of the name Bradley. He uses his middle name. You may also know Jose Antonio Dominguez Banderas, but he really goes by the name Antonio Banderas. And there is another actor, not my favorite, by the name of Ashton Kutcher. His real name is Christopher Ashton Kutcher, but he decided to drop the first name and just use his middle name as his first name.

There’s really no logic to this. It just depends on the person and whether he or she likes his or her first name. Some people use their first name, but just the initial. So, instead of calling me Jeffrey Lawrence McQuillan, you could call me J. Lawrence McQuillan, or J-Law.

Our final question comes from Reza (Reza) in Sweden. The question has to do with a word very common in English, “indeed” (indeed). “Indeed” is used a lot in English as a way of emphasizing something – of giving emphasis to what you have just said or simply as a way of emphasizing what you are saying.

I might say, for example, “This is a problem.” I could also say, “This is indeed a problem.” The “indeed” there is emphasizing the fact that this is a problem. Perhaps I would use that in a case where someone is doubting whether or not this is really a problem. I’m saying yes, it is indeed a problem – I’m giving extra emphasis to the reality, if you will, of this fact.

Sometimes we use “indeed” as a response. When someone says something and you want to confirm what they say, you might say, “Indeed.” For example, someone may say to you, “Oh, it’s very hot in here.” You could respond agreeing with that person, “Indeed, it is.”

Now I have to say, this is somewhat of a formal use of the word and is not very common in conversational English. It almost sounds a little too formal for most situations in English, so I would suggest that you not use it in that meaning, but you may sometimes read it in a novel, and now you have a better idea about what that means. The most common use of “indeed” is for emphasis.

From Los Angeles, California, I’m Jeff McQuillan. Thank you for listening. Come back and listen to us again right here on the English Café.

Glossary

gangster – a person who is a member of a group of criminals; a person who is involved in crime organizations or gangs

* In the 1920s, many gangsters in the United States were involved in making and selling alcohol, which was illegal at that time.

moritat – a special kind of song sung in the Middle Ages written about murder or criminal acts, usually sung by traveling musicians

* The minstrel sang a moritat that told the tale of a man who killed his wives.

up-tempo – fast, cheerful, and/or happy, usually used to describe music

* We played up-tempo songs that everyone could tap their feet and clap their hands to.

jackknife – a small knife with a blade that folds into the handle so that it becomes small and can be easily stored or carried

* The hiker took a jackknife out of his pocket and used it to cut open the bag that held his tent.

billow – a large amount of something, usually a cloud, smoke, or steam; a mass of something that moves like a wave

* Billows of smoke came out of the building that had caught on fire.

to ooze – to slowly release a liquid; to have liquid come out slowly from something, such as a container

* The honey oozed out of the bottle and slowly mixed into the yoghurt.

cement – a material often used for building that is made from lime, clay, sand, and water that begins as a liquid but becomes hard and heavy when dry

* Be careful! The cement sidewalks are still wet.

serial killer – a person who murders many people, often using similar methods in each killing

* One of the most famous serial killers in history is Jack the Ripper, who killed several women in London in 1888.

reservation – an area of land that the United States government set aside to be used for groups of Native Americans to live on

* Visitors to our Native American reservation can watch a demonstration of how to make bread and weave rugs in traditional ways.

petroglyph – a picture that was drawn thousands of years ago, usually found on the sides of rocks or inside caves

* The oldest petroglyphs were found in caves in France and showed images of horses and people.

prehistoric – referring to a time period thousands of years ago before people could write and when they lived in caves

* The wooly mammoth is an ancestor of the modern day elephant and lived in prehistoric times.

stem – the main body of a plant that usually grows out of the ground and that leaves grow from

* It’s surprising that a thin stem can have so many leaves and flowers growing out of it.

stalk – the thin section or support that a leaf, flower, or fruit is attached to

* Before cooking, remove the stalks, which are tough and difficult to eat.

shoot – a young branch that grows out from the main part of a tree or other plant

* It’s important to remove some of the shoots before they grow too long.

indeed – used to emphasize a statement or response confirming something already suggested

* It is indeed a pleasure to meet someone who is also a fan of early American architecture.

What Insiders Know

Nicknames of Famous Gangsters

The American Mafia, also known as the mafia, refers to criminal organizations that were “historically” (in the past) formed by Italian Americans. Mafia groups had their “heyday” (best or most successful period) in the late 1800’s and early 1900’s. Many of these “gangsters“ “adopted” (took; gave themselves) or were given “nicknames” (informal names). Here are a few examples.

Lester “Baby Face” Nelson was born in 1908. He was given the nickname “baby face” because he appeared younger and more “innocent” (not guilty) than he really was. “Baby Face” Nelson was only five-feet four-inches (1.6 meters) tall and had the appearance of a young man. He was able to use this “youthful” (young-looking) appearance to help him commit crimes. Seeing him, no one would “suspect” (believe) he could commit serious crimes, such as “murder” (killing of another person).

One of the most famous gangsters of all time was “Scarface” Al Capone born in 1899. Capone got his nickname because of the three large “scars” (marks on one’s skin left behind after a wound has healed) on the left side of his face. He received these scars as a result of a fight at a New York “nightclub” (place for entertainment with music and dancing). He didn’t like showing this part of his face and tried to avoid it being photographed. Al Capone was the subject of a famous 1983 film called Scarface starring the respected actor Al Pacino.

Other gangsters with nicknames didn’t actually like their nicknames. Charles “Pretty Boy” Floyd was born in 1904 and it’s not clear how he got this nickname. It is believed that he either got it from the “prostitutes” (people who sell sex for money) he “frequented” (visited) or from a description of him in the newspapers when he committed his first major “robbery” (the crime of stealing money and/or other valuables). He hated the nickname so much that he killed other gangsters who called him by his nickname. He was shot on October 22, 1934. Right before he died, he said, “I’m Charles Arthur Floyd,” to show others that he didn’t want to be known by his “Pretty Boy” nickname.