Day 272 | Alabama Song

Bowie performed this song frequently and released it as a single, but never included it on a studio album. It is a cover, but not by who you might think. I had long thought of it as a Doors song because the Doors have a well-known version, but the song originated as a poem in the 1920s. In addition to the Doors association, there are other strange connections. The song was written by Bertold Brecht, Elisabeth Hauptmann and Kurt Weill. Bowie would later perform in Brecht’s play Baal, the soundtrack to which is possibly Bowie’s most obscure actual record. The first person to perform the song, in 1927 was Lotte Lenya, who nearly 40 years later would play Rosa Kleb in From Russia With Love. I’ll include a link of Lenya performing the song in the 60s, and what’s striking about it is how similar her rendition is to Bowie’s. I don’t especially like this song, but I don’t know too many others that translated from the 1920s into the rock-era pretty much as is.