August 4, 2023: Mack the Knife made famous by Bobby Darin is in the member's section.
This is a lot of work, but it'll be a great test of your ukulele skills, and if you search YouTube for the Bobby Darin version from 1959 you'll understand why you want to have this one in your rotation. It was written for a 1928 German play "Three Penny Opera" so it's public domain in America now, and when else will you have the opportunity to celebrate cement galoshes and blood on the sidewalk? The key changes a half step up between each page and makes for some really ugly standard notation. Don't freak out and rage. On the piano, this would be a nightmare, but with our lovely bar chords and tablature, we just move up a fret, ignore all the mess, and plink away. And, you can tell your friends you're playing in seven sharps and they'll think you're a wiz. As always, play slow and develop those pretty old-school jazz tones. There's a huge and unfortunate stretch in measures 27 and 45, but it's the best voicing for the chords. Believe me I tried to find a better way out, and it's just not there. I used the advanced chord shapes, so it might be a more work to sing and strum or play as a duet than you might like.