Alabama Song
| "Alabama-Song" | |
|---|---|
| Single by Lotte Lenya | |
| B-side | "Denn wie man sich bettet" |
| Recorded | 24 February 1930 |
| Genre | |
| Label | Homocord H3671 |
| Writer(s) | Bertolt Brecht, Kurt Weill |
| "Alabama Song (Whisky Bar)" | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Song by The Doors from the album The Doors | ||||
| Released | January 4, 1967 | |||
| Recorded | August 1966 | |||
| Genre | Psychedelic rock | |||
| Length | 3:20 | |||
| Label | Elektra | |||
| Writer(s) |
Bertolt Brecht Kurt Weill |
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| Producer(s) | Paul A. Rothchild | |||
| The Doors track listing | ||||
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| "Alabama Song" | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
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| Single by David Bowie | ||||
| B-side | Space Oddity | |||
| Released | 15 February 1980 | |||
| Format | 7" single | |||
| Recorded | Good Earth Studios, London, 2 July 1978 | |||
| Genre | ||||
| Length | 3:51 | |||
| Label |
RCA Records BOW 5 |
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| Writer(s) |
Bertolt Brecht Kurt Weill |
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| Producer(s) | David Bowie, Tony Visconti | |||
| David Bowie singles chronology | ||||
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The "Alabama Song"—also known as "Moon of Alabama", "Moon over Alabama", and "Whisky Bar"—is an English version of a song written by Bertolt Brecht and translated from German by his close collaborator Elisabeth Hauptmann in 1925 and set to music by Kurt Weill for the 1927 play Little Mahagonny. It was reused for the 1930 opera Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny and has been notably covered by The Doors and David Bowie.
The "Alabama Song" was written as a German poem and translated in idiosyncratic English for the author Bertolt Brecht by his close collaborator Elisabeth Hauptmann in 1925 and published in Brecht's 1927 Home Devotions (German: Hauspostille), a parody of Martin Luther's collection of sermons. It was set to music by Kurt Weill for the 1927 play Little Mahagonny (Mahagonny-Songspiel) and reused for Brecht and Weill's 1930 opera Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny (Aufstieg und Fall der Stadt Mahagonny), where it is sung by Jenny and her fellow prostitutes in Act I. Although the majority of all three works is in German, the "Alabama Song" retained Hauptmann's English lyrics throughout.
Brecht and Weill's version of the song was first performed by the Viennese actress and dancer Lotte Lenya, Weill's wife, in the role of Jessie at the 1927 Baden-Baden Festival's performance of Little Mahagonny. The first recording of the song—by Lenya for the Homocord record label—came out in early 1930 under the title "Alabama-Song"; it was rerecorded the same year for the Ultraphon record label for release with the 1930 Leipzig premiere of The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny, despite Lenya not being a member of that cast. She continued to perform and record the song throughout her life, including for her 1955 album Lotte Lenya Sings Kurt Weill (Lotte Lenya singt Kurt Weill), released in the United States under the title Berlin Theater Songs.
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